Category Archives: George Will

Equivocation, False Dichotomy, George Will

The beam in your eye

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Just like one should be careful not to misspell “misspelling,” one should be certain not to call someone else’s argument “intellectually disreputable” in an intellectually disreputable way. And so George Will cluelessly claims Bush has forced the Democrats into a choice of two equally unpalatable alternatives. But, first, the alternatives are speciously dichotomous. And second, in his zeal for victory in argument, Will didn’t even wait for actual obliging democrats to make any such arguments; his intellectually disreputable democrats are hypothetical, that is to say, fictional, as in not actual. Back to the main point. Along the way to the claim about the not-yet-existent argument being intellectually disreputable, Will points out:

>Now Reid deplores the Alito nomination because it was, Reid says, done without Democratic “consultation.” But it was during such consultation that, Reid says, he warned the president not to nominate Alito. So Reid’s logic is that nothing counts as consultation unless it results in conformity with Democratic dictates.

It is not *Reid’s* logic that dictates the childishly narrow interpretation of “consultation.” It’s *Will’s*. Children do this when they want to stick it to their parents–they play on newfound subtleties of words. Here Will’s puerile Bush takes “consultation” to include any conversation on the topic of judges, without the obvious component of, say, seriously considering the objections of the consulting party.

And that’s an insult to Bush as much as it is to the Democrats whose arguments Will cannot even be bothered to wait for.

Begging the Question, Equivocation, George Will

Conservative as Him

Again on the subject of terms. George Will argues that those who advocate the benching of Harriet Miers betray the conservative cause. He writes:

>Other arguments betray a gross misunderstanding of conservatism on the part of persons masquerading as its defenders.

Sounds like we’re heading towards the bright light of conceptual analysis of “conservative”. Or so one would hope. The closest we get is this:

>In their unseemly eagerness to assure Miers’s conservative detractors that she will reach the “right” results, her advocates betray complete incomprehension of this: Thoughtful conservatives’ highest aim is not to achieve this or that particular outcome concerning this or that controversy. Rather, their aim for the Supreme Court is to replace semi-legislative reasoning with *genuine constitutional reasoning about the Constitution’s meaning as derived from close consideration of its text and structure.* Such conservatives understand that how you get to a result is as important as the result. Indeed, in an important sense, the path that the Supreme Court takes to the result often is the result. [italics added]

Genuine constitutional reasoning sounds very impressive and very desirable, but that hardly seems an adequate (non-question begging) definition of “conservative.” There are 8 justices who would all (one hopes) claim to be doing *genuine* constitutional reasoning in light of close considerations of text and structure (some of them *not* conservatives). Some do it with old editions of the dictionary, others in light of different, but equally well justified, tools of textual interpretation. More fundamentally, since such obtuse originalism constitutes the true “conservative” hermeneutics, Miers might seem to be supremely well qualified: she apparently has a mind that is so blissfully uncluttered with legal theories or constitutional concepts that she can go directly to the original meaning of the text.

Begging the Question, George Will

Teminal-Logical

Subtle but uncharitable shifts in the verbal characterization of an opponent’s position violate basic principles of rational discourse. Wholesale terminological substitutions meant to achieve a similar result are simply dishonest. And so today George Will writes:

>GM has been forced to allow product development, pricing and other decisions to be driven by the need to keep sufficient revenue flowing in so it can flow out in fulfillment of GM’s function as a *welfare state*.

One has to wonder whether “welfare state” is the proper term for characterizing contractual obligations to employees. But Will uses it three times, so he certainly thinks it is appropriate. Here it is again:

>Herb Stein, the University of Chicago economist who served as chairman of President Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, famously said: If something cannot go on forever, it won’t. Delphi’s resort to bankruptcy and GM’s attempt, with the cooperation of the UAW, to avoid, for now, doing that, suggest that America’s welfare state — its private sector as well as its public-sector components — is reaching its Herb Stein Moment.

It might also be observed by some that the benefits afforded by those lucky enough to have a GM job far exceed those available to “welfare” recipients, so the term is not only inappropriate (as it suggests that the typical GM worker does nothing to earn these literal (not social) contractual benefits) but inaccurate (the benefits are more extensive). A titillating use of the term “welfare,” perhaps, but question-begging to anyone with a conservative view of language.

Accident, George Will, Straw Man

Sweet Charity

Charity is a basic principle of rational and civilized discourse. We’ve talked about it here many times. Failing to be charitable to an opponent’s argument is playing dirty, playing dirty is a form of cheating, cheating is a form of deliberate dishonesty–i.e., lying. So being uncharitable is a kind of lying. How is one uncharitable? There are many ways. The most typical form is to characterize an opponent’s argument in an unfavorable light. Another more greviously dishonest form–one we see today from George Will–is to pick out only a small part of that argument and claim you’ve fairly or accurately represented the whole (when you haven’t). Arguments are not like sports matches: while you can’t (unfortunately) get disqualified for cheating, you can’t ever win by dishonest means either.

That said, let’s compare Feinstein’s argument with Will’s characterization of it. First, Will:

>Dianne Feinstein’s thoughts on the nomination of John Roberts as chief justice of the United States should be read with a soulful violin solo playing, or perhaps accompanied by the theme song of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Those thoughts are about pinning one’s heart on one’s sleeve, sharing one’s feelings and letting one’s inner Oprah come out for a stroll.

Here is how Feinstein’s speech began:

There is no question that Judge Roberts is an extraordinary person. I think there is no question that he has many stellar qualities, certainly a brilliant legal mind and a love and abiding respect for the law, and I think a sense of its scope and complexity as well.

But before taking the momentous step of agreeing that a nominee serve as the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court, for what in this case could be over 30 years, I wanted to have a reasonable sense of confidence that he would uphold certain essential legal rights and protections that Americans rely on, and rights that reflect the values and ideals that make our country so great.

I don’t ask for certainty.

I don’t ask for promises – especially as to how a nominee would rule in any case in the future – even one as important as Roe v. Wade.

But I ask for some ability to find a commitment to broad legal principles that form the basis of our fundamental rights:

* Equal protection under the law, and the ability to remedy discrimination.

* A basic right to privacy that extends from the beginning of life to the end of life.

* The ability of the American public to elect representatives that have the constitutional power and authority to protect and respond to America’s safety, social, and environmental needs; and

* A view of Executive Power that extends deference – but within the law.

It’s important to know that a Justice will be willing to at least start with these fundamental rights.

In making the judgment as to how Judge Roberts evaluates these fundamental rights, I must start with his record.

This hardly seems like the episode of *Oprah* Will suggests that it is (besides, what’s wrong with Oprah?). But how is it that Will makes it seem so vapid? For the sake of brevity–we’ve seen too much of this tripe from Will in the past–we’ll give two examples from Will’s argument. First, by way of response to some remarks about the (so-called) right to privacy, Will rhetorically questions:

>But what would make such a right a “general” right? Do Americans have, say, a constitutional privacy right to use heroin in the privacy of their homes? No. To sell prostitution services in the privacy of their homes? No again.

One would hardly think that criminal activity is covered by a “general” right; we have a general right to freedom of speech, but that does not include yelling fire in a crowded theater or inciting riots. No one other than a mind as nimble as Will’s would think that such things would follow from the assertion of a general right of privacy (or for that matter, would think that someone else thinks so). But for the sake of clarity and completeness, to draw such conclusions would be to commit the fallacy of accident–the clueless misapplication of a general rule.

But in a more general sense (this is our second example), Will woefully invents Feinstein’s main argument (the thesis of which we quoted above):

But the crux of Feinstein’s case against Roberts concerns not the adjective “general” but his general deficiency of empathy. Specifically, she faults his failure to talk to her “as a son, a husband, a father,” and to understand “the importance of reaching out.”

Exploring Roberts’s “temperament and values,” Feinstein asked him about “end of life” decisions, urging him to talk to her “as a son, a husband, a father.” Instead, she says disapprovingly, he “gave a very detached response.”

It’s difficult to look this stuff up (see the above link), so we were able to see if Will accurately quoted Feinstein. Nope, here is what she actually said:

Then when I couldn’t get a sense of his judicial philosophy, I attempted to get a sense of his temperament and values. And I asked him about end of life decisions – clearly, decisions that are gut-wrenching, difficult, and extremely personal.

Rather than talking to me as a son, a husband, a father – which I specifically requested that he do. He gave a very detached response.

The reader will notice what’s missing from Will’s selective quotation. Feinstein specifically asked that Roberts respond to that question because he failed to respond (to Feinstein’s satisfaction) to other more relevant questions about his judicial philosophy. In the end, Feinstein may have a terrible argument, perhaps George Will should direct his efforts at that. Then again, why bother? The confirmation of Judge Roberts is a forgone conclusion. Picking on Feinstein at this point is almost like a late hit in a football game.

False Dichotomy, George Will, Straw Man

Poverty of Argument

George Will reminds us of the reason one finds so little rational discourse in his columns or the columns or cable tv or radio shoutfests of his right wing brethren. However difficult–and we have no doubt it must be very difficult–to pen a column twice or thrice weekly on any topic whatever, this is hardly an excuse for engaging in a running debate with a caricature more ludicrous than which hardly Rush Limbaugh could conceive. By “liberals” or “liberalism,” we are able at this point to surmise, Will clearly means nothing other than some sort of shallow and irrational bleeding-heart variety–the Rush Limbaugh of liberalism. As it would be a mistake to think Limbaugh represents the best of conservativism, it is equally wrong to think Will’s liberal represents the best of liberalism.

In today’s *Post* column, having warmed up with some easy targets–among them the clueless Mary Landrieu and the whole of the self-serving congressional mob–Will turns his sites on the Liberal with a capital “L”:

>The senator [Barack Obama] is called a “new kind of Democrat,” which often means one with new ways of ignoring evidence discordant with old liberal orthodoxies about using cash — much of it spent through liberalism’s “caring professions” — to cope with cultural collapse. He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: Graduate from high school, don’t have a baby until you are married, don’t marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.

So the classical liberal, a clueless and shallow bleeding heart big-spender unaware that the real cause of poverty is right there in front of her nose–the poor:

>Liberalism’s post-Katrina fearlessness in discovering the obvious — if an inner city is inundated, the victims will be disproportionately minorities — stopped short of indelicately noting how many of the victims were women with children but not husbands.

And certainly as people were being plucked from rooftops or as they waited in the fetid stench of the Superdome or Convention Center, or worse, it would have been wise to point out that their predicament was the result of their own poor choices. But that would be tasteless and inappropriate.

There’s an even greater mistake lurking underneath Will’s perpetual straw man–it’s not only the mistaken belief that knocking him down constitutes a victory; it is also the clueless inference that “Liberal’s” defeat implies conservativism’s victory.

George Will, Straw Man

More on Law

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The other day George Will raised his lance and charged at full gallop at the straw effigy of Charles Schumer, ranking Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee. Mind you, this committee, the one that gets to hold hearings on John Roberts, the President’s nominee for the position of Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, like every other committee in the House of Representatives or the Senate, is dominated by *Republicans*. Will’s rhetorical questioning of the minority representative Schumer about *his* legal philosophy, with its consequent lampooning of the actions of Congress, ridiculous snippets from some of the “liberal” Justice’s opinions, and series of “questions” about non-literalist legal hermeneutics is prima facie moronic: Schumer is not on trial here; Schumer doesn’t sit on the Supreme Court; Schumer didn’t write the opinions of the Justices Will lampoons; Schumer isn’t even in the majority party. If Will means to question Schumer’s competence as a Supreme Court candidate, then perhaps he should wait until such time as he is nominated; if Will means to question the competence of a public official, then perhaps he can do so in a less undergraduate way–Schumer might very well have good answers to Will’s inane questions–motivated as they are by the selective and therefore untenable constitutional literalism favored (when it suits them) the Justices Will admires–but never are Schumer’s actual pronouncements presented. That said, Schumer might actually be incompetent (though that would still not disqualify him to sit next to Orrin Hatch), it’s just that on Will’s argument, we’ll never know.

Ad Hominem, George Will, Plain Bad Arguments

Bottomless Chum Bucket

While one would certainly expect to encounter stench in the gutter discourse of the likes of Limbaugh and O’Reilly (as well as Hannity, Krauthammer, Liddy, Coulter and Malkin–to name a few), we were somewhat–but mind you only somewhat–surprised to see that George Will has stuck his arm full to the shoulder in the bottomless chum bucket that constitutes much of the conservative discussion of Cindy Sheehan’s request for a meeting with the President:

>Since her first meeting with the president, she has called him a “lying bastard,” “filth spewer,” “evil maniac,” “fuehrer” and the world’s “biggest terrorist” who is committing “blatant genocide” and “waging a nuclear war” in Iraq. Even leaving aside her not entirely persuasive contention that someone else concocted the obviously anti-Israel and inferentially anti-Semitic elements of one of her recent e-mails — elements of a sort nowadays often found woven into ferocious left-wing rhetoric — it is difficult to imagine how the dialogue would get going.

Never mind also the implication that the President of the United States is too thin-skinned to meet with someone who has called him names, or has, God forbid, expressed disatisfaction with his protean justifications for the war in Iraq. What’s interesting about Will’s remark is the claim that Sheehan is “*inferentially*” anti-Semitic apparently for (unquoted here) anti-Israel remarks. What, however, does “*inferentially* anti-Semitic” mean? Who draws the inference? On what grounds? Is the inference correctly drawn–or is it, as is more likely the case, drawn fallaciously in the service of character assassination? Anti-Semitism, a form of racism, is too serious a charge to be drawn “inferentially.”

Had Will stopped at “inferential” racism, he would only have been guilty of wallowing neck-deep in the rancid tripe of irrelevant character assassination. Whatever your position on the personal political views of Mrs. Sheehan, she continues (despite Will’s claim that she has “has already been largely erased from the national memory by new waves of media fickleness in the service of the public’s summer ennui”) to occupy the front pages of newspapers. Not to mention the fact that George Will favors her with a column in the *Washington Post*. Beyond that, he promotes her to Michael Moore:

>Do Democrats really want to embrace her variation of the Michael Moore and “Fahrenheit 9/11” school of political discourse? Evidently, yes, judging by the attendance of 12 Democratic senators at that movie’s D.C. premiere in June 2004, and by the lionizing of Moore at the Democratic Convention — the ovation, the seating of him with Jimmy Carter.

This just doesn’t make any sense. That 12 Democratic senators attended the opening of a documentary (one milder in tone, more solidly based in fact, and more cogently argued than many of the accuser’s columns) in 2004 (among other things) can have nothing to do with whether they will embrace *Sheehan’s* variation on it (which shows up in 2005–a year after 2004 by our count).

The logically and temporally impossible connection between Moore and Sheehan is only a set-up for Will’s sneering dismissal of the Democrats’ political position:

>It is showing signs of becoming an exhausted volcano. Regarding Iraq, it is mistaking truculent asperity and tiresome repetition for Churchillian wartime eloquence. Regarding domestic policy, intellectual anemia has given rise to behavioral patterns not easily distinguished from corruption, as with the energy and transportation bills. Yet the Democratic Party, which by now can hardly remember the far-distant past when it was a volcano not of molten rhetoric but of serious thought, seems preoccupied with the chafing around its neck. The chafing is caused by the leashes firmly gripped and impudently jerked by various groups such as MoveOn.org that insist the party adopt hysteria as a policy by treating the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. as a dire threat to liberty.

As is usually the case with the ever clever Will, some of these phrases have a nice lilt (however irrelevant, Churchillian [the analogy fails here–the one who should sound Churchillian is the current war leader, Mr.Bush] always sounds nice)–but they would be more interesting if they were arguments (or at least parts of arguments) rather than simply hyperbolic–and therefore likely to be false or at best (“inferentially”) misleading–*assertions*, more appropriate (therefore not appropriate at all) for “TV’s bottomless chum bucket” than the op-ed page of even of the *Washington Post*.

George Will, John Tierney, Op-Eds and other opinions, Plain Bad Arguments

Abortion writers

Despite their opposing positions on abortion, John Tierney and George Will each subscribe to some version of the never more popular view that abortion is not or should not be a question of constitutional rights. What better way to circumvent those pesky constitutional questions–questions about which, suprisingly, people seriously disagree–than to deny the relevance of the question to constitutional law. At least, so Tierney argues:

The abortion debate, unlike the civil rights debate, can’t be resolved by appealing to any widely held moral or legal principles. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court discovered a right in the Constitution for pregnant women to be left alone by the government. But that just ducked the question – what about the fetus’s right to be left alone? – and angered huge numbers of Americans.

For starters, *Roe v. Wade* doesn’t duck the question at all; it (rightly or wrongly) clearly maintains that the fetus has no legal rights (at least in the first two trimesters). Second, evidence of a conflict of rights (mother-fetus) or sincere disagreement of a vocal number of Americans does not mean that it (1) is not, or should not be, a civil rights issue, or (2) that the justices were wrong. Finally, a conflict of views about the status of the fetus does not demonstrate that the issue “cannot be resolved by appealing to any widely held moral or legal principles” unless by “resolved” Tierney means “subject to wide consensus” in which case he would be saying the abortion issue cannot be resolved (subject to wide consensus) until it’s resolved (subject to wide consensus). But that’s nonsense. Supreme Court cases, whatever their outcome, resolve (answer for some span of time) legal questions concerning constitutional rights; they do not, so it seems, end moral debate about the same questions.

The idea that abortion might constitute a right entailed by the Constitution appears so ridiculous to George Will, that he can muster only a barely intelligible drunken parody of the “Ride of Paul Revere.”

Judging by the river of rhetoric that has flowed in response to the court vacancy, contemporary liberalism’s narrative of American constitutional history goes something like this:

“On the night of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere galloped through the Massachusetts countryside, and to every Middlesex village and farm went his famous cry of alarm, ‘The British are coming! The British are coming to menace the ancient British right to abortion!’ The next morning, by the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world in defense of the right to abortion. The Articles of Confederation, ratified near the end of the Revolutionary War to Defend Abortion Rights, proved unsatisfactory, so in the summer of 1787, 55 framers gathered here to draft a Constitution. Even though this city was sweltering, the framers kept the windows of Independence Hall closed. Some say that was to keep out the horseflies. Actually, it was to preserve secrecy conducive to calm deliberations about how to craft a more perfect abortion right. The Constitution was ratified after the state conventions vigorously debated the right to abortion. But 74 years later, a great Civil War had to be fought to defend the Constitution against states that would secede from the Union rather than acknowledge that a privacy right to abortion is an emanation loitering in the penumbra of other rights. And so on.”

It’s hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, it seems like a version of the obtuse constitutional originalism that claims there are no other rights in Constitution than those explicitly mentioned by the framers or somehow consequent upon the attitudes of the founders.
On the other hand, it suggests that opponents to the Roberts nomination can think of only one thing. That’s true of some opponents–but geez Louise–that’s true of some of his supporters. But in any case it doesn’t absolve Will of the need for an *argument*. If Will wants to use the pages of the *Washington Post* to lampoon *some* liberal groups, rather than argue against them, then we suggest his purpose would be better served on the Rush Limbaugh show, where no one will fault him for not having any good reasons for his conclusions. Granted a slight difference in vocabulary, the level of discourse is about the same.

The exhibits at the National Constitution Center can correct the monomania of some liberals by reminding them that the Constitution expresses the philosophy of natural rights: People have various rights, including and especially the right to property and self-government. These rights are not created by government, which exists to balance and protect the rights in their variety.

But such bland truisms about the constitution don’t resolve anything. Whatever the source of rights–nature, God, or social contract–there always remains the question as to what is entailed by them. Determining their source doesn’t resolve this question; it only pushes it back one step further.

George Will, Slippery Slope, Straw Man

Will on Frist’s stem cell flip flop

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We can’t be all negative all of the time. Sometimes praise should be given where it is due. Today, suprisingly, George Will takes on those on the extreme right who would challenge what he takes to be Bill Frist’s eminently reasonable and (as it turns out) scarcely modified position on stem cell research. According to Will,

many thoughtful people fear that the House-passed legislation puts the nation’s foot on a slippery slope leading to such a commodification of life.

This is not a thoughtful way to argue, as Will correctly points out:

Life, however, is lived on a slippery slope: Taxation could become confiscation; police could become gestapos. But the benefits from taxation and police make us willing to wager that our judgment can stop slides down dangerous slopes.

Good points all of them. We might add that the slippery slope is not some kind of physical or logical law; it’s a fallacious form of argument, an error in reasoning, and therefore a form of deception.

Unfortunately, Will cannot sustain this positive momentum; he is quick to return to battle the straw men that populate the imaginary cohorts of his argumentative opposition. In the first place, he cannot help himself from quoting a doctored version of a John Edwards quote about stem cell research under a Kerry presidency. Will says,

It is carelessly said, and hence widely believed, that in 2001 President Bush halted ongoing stem cell research — “banned” it — thereby denying suffering Americans imminent medical marvels. Remember John Edwards’s fantasy that “when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

First, probably few people believed that. Second, John Edwards never said that. What he said was this:

Christopher Reeve just passed away. And America just lost a great champion for this cause. Somebody who is a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through the tragedy. Well, if we can do the work that we can do in this country — the work we will do when John Kerry is president — people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.

Which is more or less what Bill Frist is saying. In the second place, Will takes issue with those who would question the motives of either Frist or Bush on the matter of stem cells (or for any question of deeply held beliefs).

The minor disagreement between Bush and Frist refutes the crackpot realism of those who cannot fathom the fact that people in public life often do what they do because they think it is right. Both Bush and Frist have thought seriously about this subject and come to mildly divergent conclusions. But neither conclusion crosses the scarlet line of supporting the creation of embryos to be mere sources of cells. And neither conclusion is the result of the sort of slapdash thinking that exaggerates the differences between them and explains those differences in terms of banal political calculations.

Will is certainly correct to point out that one should critique an opponent’s views on their merits, not on the motivations for them. But Will should also know–and he relished the Kerry flip-flop talk as much as the next conservative–that politicians do very little by accident (isn’t that what their media advisors are for?); so people are rightly skeptical. Besides, even though he is returning to his original position on the matter, Frist has stopped supporting the President’s position of stem cell research (he even apprised the President of this fact in a phone call before the change became public). It makes perfect sense then to ask that, if the facts surrounding the President’s policy have not changed, why has Frist stopped supporting it (or why has he returned to his original position)? In the end Will’s insistence on the principle of charity–on considering the stated justifications for someone’s position–for such thoughtful people as *Bush and Frist* (but not, mind you, for academics) raises another more important question: how do we decide when to apply, as Will has here, the principle of charity? I suggest we do so all of the time.

Formal Fallacies, George Will, Informal Fallacies, Op-Eds and other opinions

Circularity

Contrary to his usual flair for linguistico-historical constitutional originalism on the Scalia model, George Will seems to have taken a step towards coming to terms with the sorts of difficult and at times insoluble interpretative questions responsible readers of texts and traditions face. He writes
,
>Historians continue to deepen our understanding of how varied and occasionally contradictory were the intentions of the framers and ratifiers. History always informs constitutional deliberations; it rarely is dispositive.

No kidding. But appearances are deceiving. Near the end of a column agreeably rich in such descriptions of the shortcomings of the purely historical and originalist attempts to eliminate liberal discretion (i.e., legislating from the bench) from judging, Will writes,

>In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton said that courts have a duty “to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.” So one of the Constitution’s most distinguished framers thought judges’ discretion must extend to measuring governmental acts against their sense of the document’s “manifest tenor.” The inexpugnable role of judicial discretion demands of judges the virtue Wilkinson calls “modesty.” That is a modest man’s synonym for judiciousness.

And how does one determine which acts are contrary to the “manifest tenor”? Well, judicial discretion demands modesty, which is another word for “judiciousness”. Judicial discretion then demands judiciousness. But what, we are left to wonder, does “judiciousness” demand? My guess is modesty.