This category covers all broken arguments. Some are straightforwardly fallacious, others suffer from a lack of evidence or some other unidentifiable problem.
It's Easter Monday (or Pasquetta), so let's have a contest. In traditional term logic, a syllogism whose conclusion distributes the minor term but whose minor premise does not is guilty of the fallacy of the illicit minor, or the Father O'Malley Fallacy. A student of mine today suggested another name, the Father McPheeley Fallacy.
Anyone have any other suggestions?
And in the tradition of making up gestures descriptive of the fallacies, the one for this one is moon walking.
Time to pay your federal taxes, so it's time for people to complain about how much we're taxed, or, alternatively, how little some people are taxed relative to their income, etc. Now comes Gregg Easterbrook, whose work I do not know (and now I know why, if this is a measure of his intellect). It is well known now that Barack Obama is for reductions in revenue expenditures–i.e., he's for increasing taxes (a phrase for which he was justly lampooned by Jon Stewart). But, Easterbrook spies a problem:
President Barack Obama wants to increase taxes on the wealthy, and surely is correct that this must be part of any serious plan to control the national debt. Consider the case of a wealthy couple who made $1.7 million in 2010, yet paid only 26.2 percent in federal income taxes — though the top rate supposedly is 35 percent, and the president says that figure should rise to 39.6 percent. The well-off couple in question is Barack and Michelle Obama, whose tax returns, just released, show they paid substantially less than the president says others should pay.
If Obama is in earnest about wanting increased taxes on the wealthy, then he should send the United States Treasury $182,998. That’s the difference between his Form 1040 Line 60 (“This is your total tax”) and what he would have owed at the higher rate (plus limits on itemized deductions) he himself advocates.
So why doesn’t he tax himself more? The Form 1040, after all, only stipulates the minimum tax an American must pay. More is always welcome. Obama should write a check to the United States Treasury for $182,998.
Wealthy people who say the rich should pay higher taxes — Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have joined Obama in declaring this — are free to tax themselves. If you believe the top rate should rise to 39.6 percent (Obama) or 50 percent (Buffett), then calculate the difference and send a check for that amount to the Treasury. Of course no one individual doing this, even a billionaire, would have much impact on the deficit. But if rich people who say they believe in higher taxes were willing to practice what they preach, this would prove their sincerity, making legislation on the point more likely.
This argument is so dumb that Megan McArdle made it (can't remember where I read the refutation). Normally, accusations of hypocrisy need to posit some actual or hypothetical (counterfactual) hypocrisy.
On Easterbrook's view, Obama is a hypocrite for not unilaterally taxing himself. He's rich, he advocates higher taxes for the rich, ergo, ipso fatso. But of course he's not a hypocrite, because he's advocating a tax policy he'll obey if given the chance.
As a practical matter, a bunch of rich people donating to the Treasury will likely delay tax increases on the wealthy–see, for instance, the free rider problem.
Link via Mother Jones via Atrios.
And, BTW, happy Charles Krauthammer Day!
Cal Thomas just finished watching a movie on the Hallmark channel. Yep. Now, I, too, love me some Hallmark Channel, as they have been known to play old repeats of Columbo on Sundays (my TiVo knows when). But Thomas watches Hallmark channel for the movies.
Today, Hallmark's commitment to quality television hasn't change (sic); it even has its own cable channel, which shows films that affirm the values most of us hold dear.
Well, the movie Thomas saw was called "Beyond the Blackboard," which was a movie about a teacher. I know, a teacher.
It's one of those "based on a true story" projects about a young woman (Stacey Bess) who desperately wants to teach, but finds there are no jobs available in her Salt Lake City school district. There is, however, an experimental program and Bess (played by Emily VanCamp), eagerly accepts the job. There's a problem, though. She is to teach homeless children in a rundown warehouse.
Okay, so this is a movie about the good done by a school and its teachers for the least-well-off. Perhaps it could even be a case for more experimental programs like this to be started. Perhaps it could be a case for supporting the programs out there right now that need financial backing. Perhaps it could be a dramatization of how hard teachers work and how they deserve respect. Alright, now, I don't think I'd like this movie as a movie (I'll admit, I don't like movies unless there are aliens or zombies), but I endorse its values. Oh, wait, Thomas sees another set of values on offer.
[T]he film could easily veer off into a political diatribe and a call for more government spending on education. It is a tribute to the restraint of the creators that it does not. What it does depict is the power of one person to make a difference in other people's lives, not with government funds, but with the currency of a loving and dedicated heart.
So, I didn't see the movie, but this is weird. Where Thomas sees the power of a loving heart to do what it can, I, just from what Thomas has said, see the need for government programs. The poorest of this community don't have access to public education? What is wrong here? A capable teacher can't find work in a school district as big as Salt Lake? Wuh? And then the other shoe drops. Thomas quotes the real Stacey Bess approvingly:
[Y]ou don't have to be sophisticated to love somebody, you don't have to have grand skills, you don't have to have a degree, you just have to want to care just a little bit further than what's expected.
Ah, you don't have to have a degree to be a teacher. You just have to care a lot. Remind me to go crazy when Thomas complains that teachers don't teach anything in school.
Thomas Sowell thinks most of the contemporary rhetoric about school bullying is nonsense. Empty rhetoric, says he.
There is a lot of talk from many people about bullying in school. The problem is that it is all talk. There is no sign that anybody is going to do anything that is likely to reduce bullying.
The trouble, as Sowell sees it, is that teachers can't decisively respond to bullies in the classroom. Why is that? Because the courts are more interested in protecting the rights of the bullies. And you see, when the courts are all over the teachers, when the government interferes with how discipline in the classroom is handled, nobody can be in charge. And then there are bullies.
Might educators abuse their power, if the courts did not step in? Of course they could. Any power exercised by human beings can be abused. But, without the ability to exercise power, there is anarchy.
And so there are two choices: anarchy consequent of judicial meddling to preserve the rights of bullies or . . . What?
For years, there have been stories in New York and Philadelphia newspapers about black kids beating up Asian classmates. But do not expect anybody to do anything that is likely to put a stop to it.
If these were white kids beating up Hispanic kids, cries of outrage would ring out across the land from the media, the politicians, the churches and civic groups. But it is not politically correct to make a fuss when black kids beat up Asian kids.
I am going to take a shot at what Sowell's suggestion is: racial profiling for bullying. Alright, that's crazy. How about not being worried about the racial politics of identifying violent individuals, regardless of the color of their skin? That seems plausible, but is that outlawed by the courts? No. So that's not a different option. Okay, I don't know what the proposal is. Certainly not about how teachers should run class, now.
Sowell isn't very clear about what he sees as the alternative. Fine, maybe we can see his alternative in the way he handles a contrast case:
Britain was once one of the most law-abiding nations on earth. But the reluctance of the left to put some serious punishment on criminals has been carried so far there that only 7 percent of convicted criminals actually spend any time behind bars. Britain has now overtaken the United States in various crime rates.
Ah, so it is the state punishing criminals, but more severely? How does that have anything to do with teachers in classrooms? Or bullies? Now it's about crime rates. Huh. Some false dilemmas derive from there being two options posed, but the best third option suppressed. This false dilemma has one option posed (and rejected), and then no clear alternative offered. Maybe should be called the 'false whatever-lemma'.
I'm pretty sure you can count on James Taranto to criticize Obama for abolishing medicare. So it's not surprising when Obama points out that market pressures–namely high prices–ought to encourage people to take a little personal responsibility; the government, on Taranto's view perhaps, is not here to "feel their pain." Or so one would think. But, sadly, no (link courtesy of Sadly, No!):
At a town-hall meeting yesterday in Fairless Hills, Pa., a man in the audience asked Obama about gasoline prices, which are currently in the range of $4 a gallon. According to the Associated Press, Obama responded "laughingly" and "needled" the questioner. The president's sarcasm comes through in the White House transcript:
I know some of these big guys, they're all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. You're one of them? Well, now, here's my point. If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting eight miles a gallon–(laughter)–you may have a big family, but it's probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.) . . .
So, like I said, if you're getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in. You can get a great deal. I promise you, GM or Ford or Chrysler, they're going to be happy to give you a deal on something that gets you better gas mileage.
The transcript shows that Obama got lots of laughs. But presumably he was speaking to a friendly audience–to people who regard the burning of gasoline as sinful and who, at least in theory, are attracted to the idea of $8-a-gallon gasoline.
People like that, to paraphrase Pauline Kael, live in a rather special world. For most Americans (we Manhattan residents are a notable exception), driving is a day-to-day necessity, and high gas prices are a constant source of economic pain. Sure, if you're driving a guzzler, it might make sense to trade it in. But not everyone has the money lying around to buy a new car at the drop of a hat. And owners of dinky cars and hybrids still have to buy gasoline for them.
The government is not here to solve the problem of high prices, one might argue. Indeed, when the price of health care gas is high, the market will sort it out–and responsible people will make responsible choices about finite, expensive, but necessary resources. They can't expect the government to sort it out. Or at least, they will recognize the limitations.
Anyway, it goes without saying that Taranto has completely misrepresented the tone of the President's comments. Here is a passage from the opener:
The fact is, for a lot of folks, money was already tight before gas prices started climbing, especially for some families where the husband or the wife had been out of work or you’ve had to get by with fewer customers or hours on the job. Having high gas prices is just one more added burden.
But I want everybody to remember, every time gases go up, we see the same pattern. Washington gets all worked up, just like clockwork. Republicans and Democrats both start making a lot of speeches. Usually the Democrats blame the Republicans; the Republicans blame the Democrats. Everybody is going in front of the cameras and they’ve got some new three-point plan to promise two-dollar-a-gallon gas. And then nothing happens. And then gas prices go down, and then suddenly it’s not in the news anymore and everybody forgets about it until the next time gas prices go back up again.That’s what was happening when I was running three years ago. You remember “Drill, baby, drill”? That was because the economy was overheated, gas prices were skyrocketing, and everybody made a lot of speeches but not much happened. And I said then that we can’t afford to continue this kind of being in shock when gas prices go up and then suddenly being in a trance when things go back down again. We’ve got to have a sustained energy policy that is consistent, that recognizes that there’s no magic formula to driving gas prices down; it’s a steady improvement in terms of how we use energy and where we get energy from — that’s what’s going to make a difference. That’s how we’re going to secure our energy future.
It's as if he does feel their pain. You can read the rest at the link–the link Taranto does not provide. Wondering why. And of course, his answer to the question about fuel efficiency is nothing like Taranto alleges.
*a later edit included this title (I forgot to put a title on the original post). I searching for the quoted Obama passage, I found scores of right-wing criticism of it (no surprise, it was repeated without context). Surprising, however, that one called it Obama's "let them eat caek moment." Now I wonder, isn't that just want conservatives would have the government do for health care, etc.? I mean, how can Obama be a heartless French royal, and a communist with false beliefs about the environment trying to get us to drive fuel-efficient cars?
Here's a connection I never would have made:
Every time I hear Donald Trump talk about President Obama's birth certificate, I think of O.J. Simpson.
I can't think of what these two things have in common.
People acquainted with media narratives know that the "adults" and the "grown ups" and the "serious people" are very often the Republicans, especially when we're talking about entitlements. Democrats and their union friends, we're often told, are childish or immature for wanting something–public benefits such as medicare and social security–at no cost. Click here for a funny illustration of that sorry meme.
We have something along these lines in this Steve Chapman column from the Chicago Tribune. The "real world," of course, demands cuts and reforms just like the Republicans want:
After House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., unveiled a plan to overhaul Medicare, Democrats announced that despite its minor flaws, it was a brave and thoughtful attempt to grapple with a serious problem that has been ignored for too long.
Just kidding. They said it was the worst thing they've seen since "Sex and the City 2."
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi accused Ryan of offering "a path to poverty for America's seniors." Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Ryan's proposal would not reform Medicare but "deform it." The White House faulted Ryan for "placing a greater burden on seniors."
The chief outrage, in their minds, is his proposal to restructure Medicare for Americans currently younger than 55 while keeping the old version for older folks. Instead of guaranteeing a certain set of benefits regardless of cost, the government would pay a fixed premium so recipients could choose their own packages.
The other meme is the "brave" or "courageous" meme. This one, unfortunately, has even been adopted by Democrats. On the unity of the virtues theory, however, you can't be stupid and courageous, or wrong and courageous.
Back to the point. The "reality" meme usually requires that you show that someone else's plan is unrealistic. You can do that by carefully demonstrating the shortcomings of their views or their presuppositions, or you can do that by misrepresenting them. The second is faster. Here's Chapman again:
I have news for people old enough to be thinking about retirement: Your children may love you, but not enough to be taxed into poverty. Ryan's detractors pretend we can go on enjoying the status quo indefinitely. But it's only a matter of time before we hit a fiscal wall, hard.
There are three basic choices. We can keep on just as we have in the past until the program collapses of its own weight. Or we can restrain costs by letting the federal government ration medical care. Some patients would have to wait months or years for procedures now taken for granted — and some wouldn't get them at all. Death panels, anyone?
"Ryan's detractors" sure seem stupid, don't they? There's a reason they don't have a name–they don't exist. They're hollow men. Whatever you say about the opposition to Ryan, you'll have to admit that they tried to have a discussion about health insurance reform in light of the problems of rising health care costs, an aging population, and, of course, the limitations of the private insurance model. Whatever you say about them, you cannot say that they embraced the status quo indefinitely.
One more thing along these lines. Notice that Chapman considers three options for reforming medicare: (1) do nothing; (2) death panels; (3) Ryan's plan. That's a false trichotomy. It's like a false dichotomy, only you add two unworkable choices rather than just one. Since (1) and (2) are ridiculous, ergo, ipso fatso, (3) is our only realistic option.
A courageous adult conversation about the realities of health care systems in the industrialized world, however, would consider many other empirically tested options. Would it be immature to want that?
Roger Scruton is a serious philosopher. That's why I was disappointed to read his American Spectator article defending an English couple's right to refuse to allow a gay couple to share a room at their hotel (see the Guardian report). It's not that I was disappointed that Scruton would defend these folks (I expected that), but that I expected a good argument. Instead, I got the old canards.
Maybe that [laws prohibiting discrimination] is the only way to proceed, but it involves curtailing freedom in ways that can easily be resented.
Ah, prohibiting discrimination curtails the freedom of discriminators to discriminate. That is a very important freedom, indeed. And we must be very careful not to cause people the harm of feeling resentment. That's a much worse harm than not being treated as an equal.
We discriminate between people on grounds of their height, their age, their strength, their virtue, their looks.
Oh, the false analogy! The familiar, yet utterly irrelevant, old saw of the discrimination apologists. Yes, we discriminate on the basis of characteristics relevant to a job, opportunity, and so on. Isn't the burden of proof always on those who do the discriminating to explain why some characteristic is relevant? If there is a relevant connection between the characteristic and the opportunity, we don't call the decision 'discriminating,' but 'distinguishing.' Is there a relevant bit of distinguishing to be done with homosexuality?
The purpose of including sexual orientation in the open-ended "non-discrimination" clauses of modern legal systems is to overcome "prejudice," to normalize homosexuality…. It is, however, much more of a prejudice to think that matters of sexual conduct can, in this way, be simply placed beyond moral judgment — as though they were not, for ordinary people, the very essence of the moral life.
Ad populum, too. Everyone thinks it is unnatural and immoral, so that's evidence it is. But why think that these views are right?
It is one part of a considered religious morality that has stood the test of time.
But why does the fact that it is an old view make it a good one, yet? Surely at some point in time over the course of the long testings of time someone must have said that perhaps the view needs to be worked out in some detail. After all that time, all they have to say for the view is that it is old and keeps getting older… standing the test of time. Oh, but the times are changing.
THIS, IT SEEMS TO ME, shows what is really at stake in these disputes. They are not about human rights, or about the perennial conflict between liberty and equality. "Non-discrimination" clauses are ways of smuggling in vast moral changes without real discussion . . . . Sex, sexual orientation, and maybe soon sexual practices — so that the hotel keeper will no longer be able to discriminate against the person who happens to live as a prostitute.
And the slippery slope to running a flophouse for prostitution for a finale! Well, at least he didn't have the slippery slope to bestiality. And after having repeated the same old weak arguments for discrimination, has Scruton made any headway in helping this real discussion he wants to have? I'm sad to say I don't think so. Which, again, is too bad. Because he's the best thinker that conservatives have. That may be evidence as to just how bad-off the conservative case against gay rights is.
P.J.O'Rourke, the satirist, writes a satire-filled (April 2nd) op-ed against (of course) urban biking. Sure, it has some funny lines–funny if you think making fun of misfortune is funny:
Even Dublin, Ireland, has had portions of its streets set aside for bicycles only—surely unnecessary in a country where everyone's car has been repossessed.
Stupid Irish. And then there are the lines that are funny because of their sheer ignorance:
Bike lane advocates also claim that bicycles are environmentally friendly, producing less pollution and fewer carbon emissions than automobiles. But bicycle riders do a lot of huffing and puffing, exhaling large amounts of CO2. And whether a bicycle rider, after a long bicycle ride, is cleaner than the exhaust of a modern automobile is open to question.
But he really does mean to object (seriously) to urban biking or bike lanes in traffic-dense urban areas. The most serious point he raises is this:
In fact, bike lanes don't necessarily lessen car travel. A study by the U.K. Department for Transport found that the installation of "cycle facilities" in eight towns and cities resulted in no change in the number of people driving cars. Bike lanes don't even necessarily increase bike riding. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the Dutch government spent $945 million on bicycle routes without any discernible effect on how many Dutch rode bicycles.
This is selective. There are lots of reasons to have bike lanes, such as increasing the safety of bicycle riders. Besides, if one takes the width of the average bike lane, it doesn't turn a two-lane street into a one-lane street. Further, bike lanes in very dense parts of New York City (which is what O'Rourke has in mind) are really a small set of bike lanes. And the alternative to biking there is not driving your personal vehicle (which takes up more space, pollutes more, etc.), but taking public transportation or waking.
Anyway, dismissing this argument unseriously is merely a set up for his darker purpose:
But maybe there's a darker side to bike-lane advocacy. Political activists of a certain ideological stripe want citizens to have a child-like dependence on government. And it's impossible to feel like a grown-up when you're on a bicycle if you aren't in the Tour de France.
Being dependent on your car is true, grown up freedom.
Satire is fun because it gives you a free pass on sophistries. For this reason it would be out of order to hit O'Rourke for the slippery slopes, etc. Nonetheless, underneath all of the nastiness he's trying to make a regular argument. It's just a crappy one.
Speaking of environmentalists and ulterior motives, here's Ayn Rand (courtesy of Crooks and Liars):
Ecology is the war on abundance, fought by the same people who are fighting the war on Poverty. The Ecologists claim that local pollution affects the whole world and threatens the survival of all living species. There is no scientific proof of this claim and none has ever been offered, on the grounds of nothing but arbitrary projections and panic mongering slogans, the ecologists are urging mankind to commit suicide by paralyzing industrial production. Their immediate but not ultimate goal is the destruction of the last remnants of freedoms of capitalism in our mixed economy and the establishment of a global dictatorship. In order to protect our natural environment, this means to enslave mankind on order to protect weeds, birds and reptiles.”
If only that were meant to be satire.
Our university now has an Objectivist club. Like all clubs, the Objectivist club puts up fliers to advertise its meetings. Walking up the stairs yesterday at school I spied their (I have to admit) well-designed and well-placed flier. What made it so well placed, you see, was that it was right exactly at eye level in the middle of the wall of similar fliers. On the second floor, the flier was tacked on top of–you cannot make this stuff up–a flier advertising a blood drive. On the third floor, the flier was tacked on top of a flier advertising a course on homelessness offered in the Department of Social Work.
In another, somewhat related, matter, a former real world star (I'm also not making this up), and current GOP congressman from Wisconsin, Sean Duffy, complained at a town all meeting that he struggles to pay his bills on his 174,000 salary (you can support him here). Video here. According to TPM, the congressman also supports cutting public employees' salaries:
Duffy also said that he pays more in health care costs and retirement savings than he did when he was a district attorney before he ran for Congress. That said, Duffy said he'd support the idea of "public employees across the board" taking a compensation cut.
"Let's all join hands together and say 'I'll take a pay decrease, absolutely," Duffy said.
Yes. Let us all join hands together. The median income in Polk County is around 50,000. Some sacrifices are more meaningful than others–wasn't there some Bible story about this?
Duffy, it appears, is not actually inconsistent. He supports Governor Walker-style cuts for everyone.
Nonetheless, we still might run a tu quoque on him–a subjunctive one. It might go something like this. The cash-strapped Duffy might be less likely to see the wisdom in that if he were actually cash-strapped. He's not, in other words, cash strapped in the relevant way. He is cash strapped relative to his expenses on a robust salary; he is not cash-strapped relevant to having cash at all.