Category Archives: George Will

E.J.Dionne, George Will, Op-Eds and other opinions, Plain Bad Arguments

Robin Hood

1 Comment

Try to guess who wrote the following:

>Sims’s idea reminds Democrats that a commitment to active government is not simply about redistributing wealth.

In case you thought it was the author of this:

>He annoys the establishment because he, unlike it, believes things. He believes that the establishment is proof of a conservative axiom: Any political group or institution that is not ideologically conservative will become, over time, liberal. That is so because, in the absence of a principled adherence to limited government, careerism — the political idea of the unthoughtful — will cause incumbents to use public spending to purchase job security.

You’d have been almost right. Despite their ideological differences, each seems to embrace the same shallow caricature relentlessly broadcasted by the pith and vinegar right wing argument army. The first, in case you you’re still wondering, is E.J.Dionne–liberal columnist. The second, of course, is none other than Dionne’s *Post* colleague George Will.

Dionne finds it refreshing, even instructive to *Democrats* (not just to those who have swallowed the Republican talking point whole), that there exists a Democrat who does not merely steal from the rich to give to the (undeserving) poor.

Such hokum one might expect of Will. If for him purchasing job security is identical with being liberal, then Tom DeLay, and all of the other criminally indicted and soon to be indicted of the party he so frequently shills for are liberals. Rather than embracing such shallow caricatures, Dionne ought to use his space in the *Post* to call Will and others out on such obvious dishonest and malicious equivocations.

That Dionne adopts such empty talking points as this merely underscores the spinelessness of most of the liberal commentariat.

George Will, Ignoratio Elenchi

Missed opportunity

1 Comment

After recounting the several independently sufficient reasons the current administration’s wiretap program violated the law, George Will comes to the following inexplicable conclusion:

>But 53 months [after September 11th], Congress should make all necessary actions lawful by authorizing the president to take those actions, with suitable supervision. It should do so with language that does not stigmatize what he has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from Will’s own premises, however, seems to be another one. To this point the President has been engaged in a pattern of illegal activity (of, by the way, dubious use as intelligence). Such illegal activity, for the reasons Will has detailed, ought to be stigmatized by Congress. Second, a legal structure for that type of intelligence gathering already exists (the President can even get a warrant *after* surveillance). Furthermore, the current “monarchical” (that’s Will’s word) administration shouldn’t be rewarded for its clueless and lawless attempts at protecting the American people by undermining civil liberties. Finally, the Republican Congress can be trusted even less than their constitutionally challenged leader.

Had Will meant to argue *for* the President’s action, then perhaps he should have outlined reasons he of all Presidents should be trusted with even greater authority than the law now allows. None of the reasons he has outlined indicate this.

George Will, Slippery Slope

Unequal unfairness

8 Comments

Maryland has passed a law aimed specifically at corporations with more than 10,000 employees that fail to provide health benefits to fiscally significant portions of their workforce (and thus burden the state's real welfare system). Not surprisingly, of the four corporations that fall under the new law, only Wal-Mart falls short. According to the *Washington Post*:

Wal-Mart says that more than three-quarters of its sales associates have health insurance but acknowledged that some of its low-wage workers are on Medicaid, the state insurance program for the poor. Wal-Mart's not providing even the 21st Century version of benefits (that is to say, extremely reduced) to some of its workforce, constitutes, according to the Maryland legislature, a kind of corporate welfare; they are receiving a benefit but doing nothing to earn it. The state has to pick up the cost of Wal-Mart doing business (or figure out some other way of paying for the healthcare of those of Wal-Mart's workers and their children). Under the new law, passed over a veto, they have asked that Wal-Mart pick up the slack.

Maybe it's wrong to treat some corporate monoliths less equally than others, as George Will today writes, but the frothy eagerness with which he presses his case makes that argument hard to assess. He responds to the Maryland legislature by claiming that Wal-Mart's benefits are substantial and generous: a fact he had already denied–it's not a welfare state (i.e., a corporation that pays out benefits)–and not even Wal-Mart is willing to assert. Rather than dwell on the generosity of the benefits, or the principled view that low wage workers do not deserve benefits, Will opts for the ridiculous libertarian classic: the slippery slope:

Maryland's new law is, The Post says, "a legislative mugging masquerading as an act of benevolent social engineering." And the mugging of profitable businesses may be just beginning. The threshold of 10,000 employees can be lowered by knocking off a zero. Then two. The 8 percent requirement can be raised. It might be raised in Maryland if, as is possible, Wal-Mart's current policies almost reach it.

The dumb thing about this argument is that it's just one tweak away from being cogent. Rather than alleging that any law aimed at a corporate monolith could one day be aimed at the small businessman, Will could argue that as a matter of fairness, other employers ought to be required to bear healthcare costs.

Even dumber, however, is the claim that such a taxing of a corporate giant is somehow on par with actual illegal corruption:

 Meanwhile, people who are disgusted — and properly so — about corruption inside the Beltway should ask themselves this: Is it really worse than the kind of rent-seeking, and theft tarted up as compassion, just witnessed 20 miles east of the Beltway, in Annapolis?

No. It is not worse. The behavior of an elected body even in the perhaps imprudent exercise of its power to tax is quite unlike the demonstrably corrupt and illegal behavior of leading Republican politicians and lobbyists. Quite unlike it indeed.

George Will, Ignoratio Elenchi

Bathwater

The fallacy of *Ignoratio elenchi* is so named because the arguer shows a manifest ignorance of the direction of the argument. Usually his evidence suggests a mild conclusion, but he opts instead for something more radical. Here’s a good example:

>The way to reduce rent-seeking is to reduce the government’s role in the allocation of wealth and opportunity. People serious about reducing the role of money in politics should be serious about reducing the role of politics in distributing money. But those most eager to do the former — liberals, generally — are the least eager to do the latter.

It’s obvious by the mention of “liberals” that this is our dear friend George Will. In light of this observation, he offers two suggestions: congressional term limits or “the philosophical renewal of conservativism.” Congressional term limits will, he argues (and he’s probably right) never take place; the philosophical renewal of conservatism, by which he means something like the Grover Norquist drown the federal government in a bathtub variety, appears to be the only other option.

This obviously false dichotomy ignores the less extreme (and therefore more probable) solution: elect and hold accountable representatives who do not prostitute themselves or otherwise cluelessly (even if good-heartedly) waste taxpayer money. Maybe our readers might suggest some names. But I’m certain that such public servants exist in great numbers.

Even though Will correctly asserts that lobbying is a constitutionally protected activity, no one is thereby forced to listen to a lobbyist.

George Will

Stupid Tax

The stupid tax is what you pay when you fail to put money in a parking meter. I think it ought to be extended to people who publish dumb arguments, such as the one we find today in *The Washington Post* from our favorite author, George Will. At issue is the explicit moralizing of the tax code–taxing or otherwise excluding from tax benefits industries that promote certain vices–gambling, hot-tubbing, among other things. The absurd reality of the selective tax-code moralizing probably even turns out to be dumber (and more inconsistent) than Will suggests.

But that’s not really the point. Will argues that the problem with such silly moralizing consists in government’s engaging in, of all things, speech:

>But do we really want to march down this road paved with moral pronouncements? When government uses subsidies to moralize, as with tax preferences for bonds that can be used to finance this but not that, government is speaking. It is expressing opinions about what is and is not wholesome. And once government starts venting such opinions, how does it stop?

If you’re wondering what “government” means, you’re not alone. As far as we know, the government responsible for the tax code is that government so frequently re-elected by the people. Theoretically, people of every party elect them to represent them–often they are even called “representatives.” Part of this representation involves the crafting of laws to reflect, or to represent the will of the interests that elect them. Some of these interests are “moral” ones. And so they engage in all sorts of moralizing with laws (don’t do this or that, or you’ll be fined or otherwise punished). The tax code is a subset of this explicit moralizing. Taxes are one (often unfortunate) means of doing this.

As for the slippery slope problem Will alleges to abide in such behavior: such moralizing stops when the moralizers violate constitutional protections or, as is more likely to be the case, don’t get re-elected (or perhaps get indicted).

George Will

It’s not pristine

5 Comments

Speaking of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Former Senator from Alaska (and present day Governor) Frank Murkowski, on the floor of Congress, said that ANWR is

>”flat, it’s unattractive, it’s not pristine — this is what it looks like. Don’t be misinformed.”

In a similar vein, George Will writes:

>Few opponents of energy development in what they call “pristine” ANWR have visited it. Those who have and who think it is “pristine” must have visited during the 56 days a year when it is without sunlight. They missed the roads, stores, houses, military installations, airstrip and school. They did not miss seeing the trees in area 1002. There are no trees.

A marked improvement over the former Senator. But not visiting ANWR doesn’t disqualify one from speaking of it; the absence of trees in an *arctic* area (and the presence of a small number of humans) doesn’t disqualify it from being “pristine.” By the way, *Post* editors and Mr.Will, “pristine” means “in original condition” (whatever that condition might be–cold, boring or even treeless). Determining what might deserve this designation will perhaps be a matter of reasonable disagreement. But there seems to be little doubt that ANWR qualifies.

More inane than the pristine confusion, however, is Will’s claim that

>But for many opponents of drilling in the refuge, the debate is only secondarily about energy and the environment. Rather, it is a disguised debate about elemental political matters.

No evidence (not even the usual straw man kind of evidence) is offered for this claim. He continues:

>For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society’s politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.

In addition to the lack of evidence, no actual people are named. Will can usually muster up a few badly misinterpretated arguers or arguments to make his outlandish claims. But here no one.

>The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society’s balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals’ lives. This is done in the name of equality.

And so what started as an argument about the proper disposition of *federal* property, has ended with the claim that objections to its privatization are motivated by a desire to control individual choices and expand government supervision over individuals’ lives. We’ll not bother with the grand conspiracy claim that concludes the argument–liberals are trying to create energy scarcity (fuel efficiency anyone?)–we’ve already wasted too much time on this psuedo-intellectual pablam.

George Will

Just Opposition

1 Comment

Among Aristotle’s many innovations in logic, the square of opposition illustrates logical opposites–contradictories to be exact; these relationships obtain of all general categorical statements. As introductory logic students often learn, most phrases outside of logic textbooks do not behave so logically and some–at times significant–translation is required. Take for instance the following contrast:

>Federal assistance to institutions of higher education was about $35 billion last year, so the schools flinch from the price tag on their gay rights principles, which in this case dovetail neatly with their anti-military prejudices. *The schools cite the principle that government cannot condition receipt of a government benefit on the loss of a constitutional right. The government replies that Congress frequently makes the receipt of federal funds conditional on the recipient’s doing certain things to further a legitimate government interest, such as recruiting.*

The italicized part is the alleged opposition. Before we get to that, I should note that it will come as no surprise to readers of George Will that the entire weight of his column falls on the government’s side and that his portrayal of what he takes to be the “academic” position is an obvious distortion (he doesn’t even bother to cite–let alone quote out of context–one of their arguments). It’s also not surprising that the column is peppered with the usual (and groundless) conservative attack line on the privilege of academia (my students–especially the many veterans of recent foreign entanglements will express surprise at his claims). My colleagues urge me not to bother with such arguments, and my friends tell me I expect too much of people. In deference to them I’ll not bother with these and other logical outrages.

The opposition, however, merits some brief attention. The school’s position rests on the claim that Miltary’s distinctions among types of people in recruiting is unconstitutional (some law students would not be welcome at their table simply in virtue of who they are). The government’s position as presented by Will hardly opposes this. Just because congress can make people do things for federal funds doesn’t mean that it can make people do anything or restrict their constitutional rights. The question–for the schools–is one of civil rights. Violations of civil rights by the government do not constitute a “legitimate” interest–such violations can never be legitimate as they violate the constitution. To insist they do simply begs the question (presumes what you’re trying to show) against the schools.

In the end, the government might have a good argument. But for their sake I hope that this isn’t it.

George Will

Dura Lex

4 Comments

Some arguments are just tiresome; it’s getting so boring pointing out the childishness of the following that in future perhaps we’ll simply link and refer as *res iudicata*. So, maybe for the last time, here’s a classic fallacious argument. Citing the deceased Henry J.Friendly’s unpublished opinion on abortion, George Will writes,

>The assertion of such a privacy right would, he said, invalidate “a great variety” of statutes that existed when the 14th Amendment was adopted — e.g., those against attempted suicide, bestiality, even drug use.

And the child screams: you said I have a right to privacy, so anything I do privately, including crimes, is protected by the constitution. Nope. An assertion of a right to privacy is merely an invitation to the clueless to raise such objections.

More to the point, in the same article, we see yet another variation on the “subverting the democratic process argument” against *Roe*:

>The day after Roe was decided, the New York Times called it a “resolution” of the abortion issue. Not really. Roe short-circuited a democratic process of accommodating abortion differences — a process that had produced a larger increase in the number of legal abortions in the three years before the Roe decision than were to occur in the three years after.

First, for good or for ill, *Roe* answered a constitutional question; as a branch of a democratic government, duly appointed according to procedures outlined in the *Constitution of the United States of America* the Supreme Court of the United States embodied a democratic process as it always does. Second, a vigorous debate has taken place ever since (as well as a terrorist campaign of violent extremists). Third, democratic processes have played around the edges of the issue ever since (primarily restrictions and limitations on funding and so forth). Finally, the very democratic process of a constitutional amendment has always remained.

To assert then, as Will and Friendly do, that the occurrence of all of the vigorous democracy was the product of an unwise decision makes one wonder what they have in mind by “democratic process.”

George Will

Feigned Praise

Living in a democracy constantly reminds one of the views and the tastes of others, or at least it should. Among the many (and no, David, there are not just two) reactions to this sometimes unpleasant fact are the following: (1) search for the source–the motivation, the justification, the history, you name it–of the disagreeable (to you) belief; or (2) don’t search out the source, but rather make up a dumb story. If this were a moral imperative (and considering how often we’ve run into it on this page it might as well be), it would run something like this: act as if the maxim of your opponent’s belief is really stupid. Since your views are opposite their stupid ones, you must therefore be smart.

Worse than acting on this perverted maxim, is using it to praise others. And so, in praise of Mitch Daniels, George Will writes:

>Ending bottled water for employees of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (annual savings, $35,000). Ending notification of drivers that their licenses are expiring; letting them be responsible for noticing (saving $200,000). Buying rather than renting floor mats for BMV offices (saving $267,000 this year). Initiating the sale of 2,096 surplus state vehicles (so far, $1.95 million in revenue from 1,514 sales). Changing the state lottery’s newsletter from semimonthly and in color to a monthly and black-and-white (annual savings, $21,670). And so on, and on, agency by agency.

All of those seem like reasonable budget-cutting measures. But,

>Such matters might be dismissed by liberals who think government spending is an index of government “caring,” and perhaps by a new sect called “national greatness conservatives” who regard Daniels’s kind of parsimony as a small-minded, cheeseparing exercise unworthy of government’s great and stately missions. But it seems to be an Indiana approach.

Who are these liberals? Who are these conservatives? To Will, it doesn’t matter. Sure, you may find one or two liberals (and perhaps the same number of conservatives) who hold these views. Why argue against *them*? Their view is a strawman of itself. Will (and Daniels) perhaps should consider the fiscally responsible type liberal–the ones who didn’t advocate expensive foreign entanglements among other things.

Contrary to Will’s attempted encomium, we can only assume that Mr.Daniels has good reasons for his beliefs.

George Will

Bad Manners

3 Comments

George Will writes in today’s *Washington Post*:

>Actually, manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related — as a foundation is related to a house — to the word civilization.

Nevermind the specious analogy. The real surprise is that one of the most mannerless of newspaper opinion mongers utters it. But we should thank him. We’ve been looking around for a new analogy. The principles and practices of informal logic (those first scientifically studied by Aristotle) are like manners (and to some degree the rules of punctuation) to the extent that they seem much to *our* dismay to be “unenforceable.” But unfortunately, if it’s the case that

>a nation’s greatness is measured not only by obedience of laws but also by “obedience to the unenforceable”

as Will himself affirms, then we are in deep trouble; for civil society–a society of *cives* who persuade by reason rather than force–is grounded sound reasoning. The citizens who argue–especially those gifted with semiweekly spots on op-ed pages of world-wide circulation–have a special duty to be on their best behavior in their discursive interactions with others. That such has not been the case with this particular author is amply demonstrated by the archives of this website.

We would certainly agree that “manners are means of extending respect, especially to strangers.” And for this reason we bristle at the following:

>It is politeness to the league’s customers who, weary of seeing players dressed in “edgy” hip-hop “street” or “gangsta” styles, want to be able to distinguish the Bucks and Knicks from the Bloods and Crips. Stern also understands that players who wear “in your face” clothes of a kind, and in a manner, that evokes Sing Sing more than Brooks Brothers might be more inclined to fight on the floor and to allow fights to migrate to the stands, as happened last year.

The suggestion that the clothes caused the fight (and only one fight in all of the games–hockey anyone?), or made the fight more likely is as unmannered as judging a person by the way he or she dresses.