Category Archives: Fallacies and Other Problems

This category covers all broken arguments. Some are straightforwardly fallacious, others suffer from a lack of evidence or some other unidentifiable problem.

Bad Explanations, Lack of Evidence, Michael Gerson

Vexillated

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Perhaps Michael Gerson has suffered a twinge of guilt at his recent behavior (see previous posts).  Now has has stepped away from making an affirmative claims himself.  Instead, he puts such views in the mouths of the average American.  Such a person nearly always seems to confirm what the pundit himself or herself thinks.  The Average American finds all of punditry in re flag pan to be so revealing about Obama.  It just wasn't so much nonsense an obsessed press could not get past.  

The issue of the lapel flag pin is a good illustration. Obama's explanation for its absence — that it had become a "substitute" for "true patriotism" in the aftermath of Sept. 11 — is perfectly rational. For a professor at the University of Chicago. Members of the knowledge class generally find his stand against sartorial symbolism to be subtle, even courageous. Most Americans, I'm willing to bet, will find it incomprehensible after 20 additional explanations, which are bound to be required. A president is expected to be a patriotic symbol himself, not the arbiter of patriotic symbols. He is supposed to be the face-painted superfan at every home game; to wear red, white and blue boxers on special marital occasions; to get misty-eyed during the most obscure patriotic hymns.

The problem here is not that Obama is unpatriotic — a foolish, unfair, destructive charge — but that Obama has declared himself superior to an almost universal form of popular patriotism. And this sense of superiority, revealed in case after case, has political consequences, because the Obama narrative reinforces the Democratic narrative. It is now possible to imagine Obama at a cocktail party with Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis, sharing a laugh about gun-toting, Bible-thumping, flag-pin-wearing, small-town Americans.

Now that strikes me as absolutely snobby–even if he says it's snobby, it's still snobby.  What's worse is that it doesn't make any attempt to support it's broad empirical generalizations with facts about how real Americans feel about flag pins and the President "embodying" patriotism.  Perhaps–just a suggestion without empirical basis (I'm a philosopher, I don't need facts)–real Americans have had enough of that.

False Dichotomy, Michael Gerson, Red Herring, Straw Man

The Power of Science

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To my mind at least, the op-ed in a major national newspaper aims at a general audience–including if not composed entirely of people whose views differ from that of the writer.  The point, in fact, in writing one of these pieces is to convince people who disagree with you of the strength of your view.  Some writers, like E.J.Dionne (sorry I keep saying this–but it's true) don't seem to have a view to advocate.  Others, like Paul Krugman, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Michael Gerson (to name a few) most definitely do.  Gerson, after all, worked as a speech writer for the current President.  That's the very definition of political advocacy.

Should this political hack write for the Washington Post op-ed page?  I'm inclined to say no, because the current administration has enough paid advocates and media access (Fox news anyone?); it's hard to see in other words what Gerson, as a political hack, brings to the discussion that can't be found elsewhere–besides, his words have been driving the discussion ("axis of evil" etc.) for years now.

So when he oils up and engages the "liberal view" one can only shake one's head at the inanity.  Today he writes:

There are few things in American politics more irrationally ideological, more fanatically faith-based, than the accusation that Republicans are conducting a "war on science."

Few things, really?  This would mean that the current administration does not disregard scientists or punish those whose views disagree with their own, cultivate skepticism about widely understood phenomena, and so forth.  The documentary evidence for those things is too overwhelming to be disregarded as faith-based (which, by the way, is a silly twist of a twist of a phrase probably excogitated by Gerson himself).  Since Gerson seems to know that claim is false, he switches his focus ever so slightly to the political debate:

For the most part, these accusations are a political ploy — actually an attempt to shut down political debate. Any practical concern about the content of government sex-education curricula is labeled "anti-science." Any ethical question about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells is dismissed as "theological" and thus illegitimate.

Liberal views are "objective" while traditional moral convictions are "biased." Public scrutiny of scientific practices is "politicizing" important decisions.

These arguments are seriously made, but they are not to be taken seriously. Does anyone really believe in a science without moral and legal limits? In harvesting organs from prisoners? In systematically getting rid of the disabled?

Harvesting organs from prisoners.  Hm.  I think Gerson is talking here about moral questions relating to science.  No one has advocated that that debate be shut down.  Nor has anyone (by "anyone" I mean the minimally reasonable but informed person) suggested that there be no debate about the practical recommendations of scientific "conclusions."

What to do about global warming?  Well, it's happening–that's what scientists say–so now it's time for a political discussion about what to do.  That's a rather different thing from denying that it's happening–which is what the "war on science" is all about.  And Gerson cannot possibly claim that there isn't a strong global warming denier movement in the Republican party.  

It turns out, however, that Gerson means to claim that because liberals embrace scientific questions of fact, that they therefore embrace scientific definitions of value.  I can't think of what the justification for this claim would be, other than that Gerson has no understanding of that distinction.  He writes:

This last question, alas, does not answer itself. In America, the lives of about nine of 10 children with Down syndrome are ended before birth. In Europe, about 40 percent of unborn children with major congenital disorders are aborted.

All of which highlights a real conflict, a war within liberalism between the idea of unrestricted science in the cause of health and the principle that all men are created equal — between humanitarianism and egalitarianism.

In "Science and the Left," his insightful article in the latest issue of the New Atlantis, Yuval Levin argues that a belief in the power of science is central to the development of liberalism — based on the assertion that objective facts and rational planning can replace tradition and religious authority in the organization of society. Levin summarizes the liberal promise this way: "The past was rooted in error and prejudice while the future would have at its disposal a new oracle of genuine truth."

But the oracle of science is silent on certain essential topics. "Science, simply put," says Levin, "cannot account for human equality, and does not offer reasons to believe we are all equal. Science measures our material and animal qualities, and it finds them to be patently unequal."

Since there is distinction between fact and value–and a vigorous discussion over those terms in the scientific (broadly speaking) community, I can't figure who Gerson is talking about.  Besides, the alternative to the strictly "scientist" point of view is not religious or traditional authority (whose grasp, by the way, of human rights, equality, and so forth, seems tenuous at best).

But as Gerson seems little interested in the actual objection to the administration's handling of matters of scientific fact, one can see that he has little use for logic as well.

Ad hominem circumstantial, Sebastian Mallaby

Menace 2 society

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Sebastian Mallaby takes a stand against all of the Obama-Wright crap up with which the American people have had to put in recent days.  His basic position is that the accusations against Obama are logically incoherent–he's an effete snob who goes to a firebrand's church, for instance.  While we're all for pointing out logical incoherence, such accusations are only incoherent if they're believed by the same person at the same time.  I'd venture to guess that some believe Obama is some kind of Harvard snob, perhaps because some other Harvard types in the media won't shut up about it, while others believe Obama is some kind super left-wing radical.  Nonetheless, for those who repeat all of the conventional wisdom about Obama, Mallaby's piece may be instructive.

We're put off–unfortunately–by his closing analysis.  He writes:

The real character issue, in this campaign as in others, comes down to one thing: Does a candidate have the guts to espouse positions that are not politically expedient? Here there are serious questions about Obama, who pledges to pull out of Iraq no matter what, and who promises both to increase spending and not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year, ensuring the perpetuation of crippling federal deficits. For that matter, there are serious questions about Hillary Clinton, who proposes an irresponsible gas-tax holiday, and about John McCain, who couples gas pandering with a flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts, which he once (correctly) viewed as unaffordable. But these genuine character issues have been shunted aside by the spectacle of Obama's falling-out with his preacher.

After complaining–almost correctly–that we're awash in irrelevant character issues, Mallaby makes policy questions character issues.  Perhaps these candidates really believe the things they're saying about the gas tax, Bush tax cuts, and so on.  If that's the case, then it's not a character issue at all–at least in the sense Mallaby is alleging.  It's a policy question. 

But even if it's a character issue, it's not a very important one.  Politicians take stands they don't entirely endorse all of the time.  It's their job.  The important thing is that they not take stands that they don't believe in and which are folly.  

Op-Eds and other opinions, Red Herring

Life isn’t fair

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Deep thinking on the issue of race, poverty and justice from a former CEO.  Here is the quick and uncharitable summary: life is unfair to people unjustly deprived of opportunities, but they don't have to go around complaining about it–that only makes it worse. 

Life isn't fair for people of any skin color. And sadly, in America today, many blacks face barriers such as economic insecurity, scarce jobs and poor schools, which create even higher hurdles for them to overcome. There is no cure-all for this inequity. But the effect that Jeremiah Wright has on Barack Obama's presidential campaign is far less important than the effect of the terrible message that Wright and others like him send to their congregations.

Positive thinking isn't going to solve America's race problems. But vitriol will only ensure that our nation's racial divide is sustained. We need to listen to the messages being sent in our communities and ask whether they encourage progress. A positive mind-set is at least a start toward success.

This has an almost Daily Show-like quality to it.  The vitriol of Wright (and people like Wright–you know, those people) is so bad that it distracts us from the real problem their vitriol is pointing out–you know, the fact that:

Sadly, in America today, many blacks face barriers such as economic insecurity, scarce jobs and poor schools, which create even higher hurdles for them to overcome.

If only someone could point out that injustice in a rhetorically effective way–then people would notice that attempts to resolve it, such as the following, have failed to address the core problems:

This challenge has not gone unnoticed. Each year the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars — specifically, more than $10,000 per poor person for welfare, Medicaid, the earned-income tax credit, job training and food stamps. Put another way, taxpayers are doing their share. 

Where could we find such a person to draw attention to this injustice?

Bad Explanations, Contradictions, General discussion, Michael Gerson

Irresistible

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In the blind squirrels and nuts category, here's Michael Gerson today:

In the past few weeks, Barack Obama has learned the political perils of condescension.

His Philadelphia speech on race was filled with it. People who don't share Obama's views were not refuted, they were explained.

Lower-income whites, he argued, "feel their dreams slipping away," and so they turn to resentment against busing and affirmative action, "anger over welfare" and "fears of crime." And Obama not only understands these angry and manipulated souls, he defends them. They should not, after all, be labeled as "misguided" or "racist."

This is the same argument, expressed more bluntly at a San Francisco fundraiser, that Obama made about bitter, small-town Americans who cling to guns and religion. He does not even admit the possibility that these folks might have actual convictions on issues such as affirmative action, welfare, crime, gun ownership or the meaning of the universe. The only thing more insulting than being attacked is being explained.

He's right about this (and we've complained about this a bunch).  And he would have been even more right had he said that his page at the Post is fully of explanations rather than arguments (rather than take a few words out of context from Obama).  But then Gerson inexplicably (hee hee) writes:

But black liberation theology takes this argument a large step further — or perhaps backward. The Rev. Wright's intellectual mentor, professor James Cone of Union Theological Seminary, retreats from the universality of Christianity. "Black theology," says Cone, "refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him." And again: "Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy." And again: "In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors."

This emphasis on the structural evil of white America has natural political consequences — encouraging a belief that American politics is defined by its crimes, a tendency to accept anti-government conspiracy theories about AIDS and drugs, a disturbing openness to anti-American dictators such as Castro and Gaddafi. It explains Wright's description of the Sept. 11 attacks as a "wake-up call" to "white America."

What would explain Gerson's condescending explanation of Reverend Wright?  Maybe the impulse to condescension is irresistible. 

Michael Gerson, Red Herring

Know your enemy

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Don't know what to call your enemy?  Try al Qaeda.  Note how Michael Gerson twists and turns in order to make all of the fronts in Iraq a "central" front in the war on, yes, al Qaeda.  He writes [our intrusions in brackets and italics–sorry about that, but I couldn't find another way to point out all of the fudging here]:

It is a central argument of the Bush administration that the outcome in Iraq is essential to the broader war on terrorism — which is plainly true. When it comes to Sunni radicalism, the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are a single struggle. Al-Qaeda [is it the case that Sunni radicalism is the same as al Qaeda?] has latched on to local grievances, tribal conflicts and general chaos in all three nations to extend its influence [what does this influence consist in?].

But this argument, used to justify U.S. efforts in Iraq ["used to justify" has a nice passive ring to it–sounds like it doesn't actually justify], cuts another way as well. Is America taking all three related insurgencies with sufficient seriousness?[odd, that wasn't the way I was thinking]

Iraq, while consuming greater sacrifice, is now producing the most encouraging results. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is reeling. U.S. Special Forces in Mosul — a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad — are conducting [conducting–why not "succeeding at"] about eight to 12 missions against al-Qaeda each night [what makes them sure it's "al Qaeda?"  And is "al Qaeda in Iraq" the same as "al Qaeda"?]. In Baghdad, the surge strategy of securing civilians has dramatically reduced sectarian violence [This is really a different issue]. And in Basra — located in the Shiite south — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has finally shown some fight against radical militias [what kind of "radical militias"?].  [What about general anti-American insurgency?]

Hurray for all of those things.  Maybe.  But let's not exaggerate.  These are all different things.  It's obvious from the most superficial news watching that Iraq has numerous sectarian struggles going on plus an anti-American insurgency.  The most obvious one of these sectarian struggles–that between Shiites and Sunnis–has the Sunni radicals on the losing end–as they are the religious minority in Iraq (and Iran–remember them–they're Shiites aren't they?).  That means the sectarian war does not intrinsically benefit Sunni radicalism, i.e., al Qaeda, as Gerson suggests.

But that can't be true, one might say.  The only way, I think, it could be true is if we consider "al Qaeda not to be a specific terrorist group, as it is, but rather a stand-in for all the forces of evil.  Why?  because al Qaeda is a force of evil and disorder.  Any disorder and evil is a victory for the terrorists.  And all terrorists are al Qaeda.  Well at least all terrorists share the evil aims of al Qaeda, which is the same thing. 

Except when it isn't.  

If Gerson's strategy of making al Qaeda the mother of all red herrings has done anything, it's given al Qaeda legitimacy as a global superpower.

Contradictions, John Hagee, Religion

Sheep and goats

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**UPDATED BELOW**

God's ways are a mystery, unless you're gay:

HAGEE: Well, I’m not saying it’s a result of sin, I’m saying it’s a result of God’s permissible will. You cannot say that everything on the Earth that happens is sin. It was carried in a newspaper that there was going to be a massive homosexual rally there the following Monday. Ah, but and I believe that homosexual marriage is sin and I believe that it’s an abomination because Moses said it was. But it is wrong to say that every natural disaster is the result of sin. It is a result of God’s permissive will, but who no man on Earth knows the mind of God…

PRAGER: Right, but in the case, did NPR get, is this quote correct though that in the case of New Orleans you do feel it was sin?

HAGEE: In the case of New Orleans, their plan to have that homosexual rally was sin. But it never happened. The rally never happened.

PRAGER: No, I understand.

HAGEE: It was scheduled that Monday.

PRAGER: No, I’m only trying to understand that in the case of New Orleans, you do feel that God’s hand was in it because of a sinful city?

HAGEE: That it was a city that was planning a sinful conduct, yes.

PRAGER: Ok, so that is the only I think, frankly, it’s the only one they can get you on because people don’t like to hear that sort of thing. But even so, I think that, I’ve always given religious people leeway, religious leaders on saying that we ourselves have sinned, and God has his own judgments. I mean the prophets used to do that, so that’s you know, that’s up to anybody to interpret the way they want. I mean, when the left says that we sin against the environment and we end up getting x or y, nobody says that that’s illegitimate.

HAGEE: Well, I know that in our society, that is what I call politically correct, no one likes to hear that there is a God who has the power to correct man for his behavior that does not fall within the parameters of the word of God. That’s why secular humanists hate the bible because it gives a definite standard of right and wrong. There’s light and darkness, there’s wheat and pears, there’s sheep and goats. You can’t be all things to all people. You either do live by the word of God or you don’t live by the word of God. And there’s nothing in between. And…and our secular permissive society, that’s just a hateful idea.

PRAGER: Alright, I’m going to let you go, but…and I’m going to take calls that are coming in on this.

So, everything is a result of God's permissive will (God knowingly lets it happen), yet no man on earth knows the mind of God.  Seems every man on earth knows plenty: what happens is what God meant to happen.  It seems if you're going to claim you can't know the mind of God, you're going to have to claim that you can't know the mind of God–and when it comes to claims about the mind of God, you'll sit respectfully silent.  There's sheep, after all, and there's goats.  To some secular humanists this logically permissive rhetoric is just hateful.

**UPDATE (7PM)**

No doubt reeling from The Non Sequitur's penetrating analysis, Pastor Hagee has retracted his comments about Hurricane Katrina.  Good for him.  But it certainly took him a while.

“As a believing Christian, I see the hand of God in everything that happens here on earth, both the blessings and the curses,” Hagee said in a statement issued through his public relations firm. “But ultimately neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise. No matter what the cause of the storm, my heart goes out to all who suffered in this terrible tragedy. There but for the grace of God go any one of us.

We'll be looking to see if he retracts his other mind of God comments.

George Will, Ignoratio Elenchi, Straw Man

Shopworn Panaceas

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A frequent question among our chattering classes is whether our children is learning.  The answer seems to be no, they isn't.  What would explain that?  George Will has the answer:

Moynihan also knew that schools cannot compensate for the disintegration of families and hence communities — the primary transmitters of social capital. No reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children today born out of wedlock, which means, among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males. 

If you think the solution–the only solution, the panacea, as it were–is a rise in teacher salaries then George Will is going to prove you wrong:

Chester Finn, a former Moynihan aide, notes in his splendid new memoir ("Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik") that during the Depression-era job scarcity, high schools were used to keep students out of the job market, shunting many into nonacademic classes. By 1961, those classes had risen to 43 percent of all those taken by students. After 1962, when New York City signed the nation's first collective bargaining contract with teachers, teachers began changing from members of a respected profession into just another muscular faction fighting for more government money. Between 1975 and 1980 there were a thousand strikes involving a million teachers whose salaries rose as students' scores on standardized tests declined.

In 1964, SAT scores among college-bound students peaked. In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) codified confidence in the correlation between financial inputs and cognitive outputs in education. But in 1966, the Coleman report, the result of the largest social science project in history, reached a conclusion so "seismic" — Moynihan's description — that the government almost refused to publish it.

We've already established that teachers' salaries have nothing to do with output, haven't we?  But lo, continuing from above:

Released quietly on the Fourth of July weekend, the report concluded that the qualities of the families from which children come to school matter much more than money as predictors of schools' effectiveness. The crucial common denominator of problems of race and class — fractured families — would have to be faced.

But it wasn't. Instead, shopworn panaceas — larger teacher salaries, smaller class sizes — were pursued as colleges were reduced to offering remediation to freshmen.

Couldn't it be, however, that smaller class sizes and higher teacher salaries are goods to be pursued regardless of their effectiveness at fixing a social problem they're not supposed to be fixing?  Who could dispute that teachers ought to be well compensated for the very important work they do (I'll exclude myself from that work–what I do is not really work)?  What parent would not want her or his child in a smaller rather than a larger class?

More importantly, where is the social scientist who would claim that paying teachers more will remedy the various social problems produced–get this–as a result of income inequality?  Indeed, while we're at the correlation game, why don't we correlate family incomes and stability with the absence of well compensated, union labor?  Since Mr.Will is so interested in quantitative social science, perhaps he might find the results so alarming he'd refuse to read them until the Fourth of July, at night.

So to sum up.  Teachers' salaries may have nothing to do with educational outputs.  But that's not why teachers should have higher salaries in the first place.  Second, the social problems kids bring to school stem in no insignificant way from economic inequalities faced by their parents.  These may come together at school, no one expects the school to solve anything but what the school can solve.   But teachers and schools ought not to be punished just because they can't solve that which they aren't suited to solve.

David Brooks, specious comparisons, Things that are false

Let’s go medieval

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David Brooks seeks escape from the campaign in the wonder of the Middle Ages.  He writes:

Over the past 15 months, I’ve been writing pretty regularly about the presidential campaign, which has meant thinking a lot about attack ads, tracking polls and which campaign is renouncing which over-the-line comment from a surrogate that particular day.

But on my desk for much of this period I have kept a short essay, which I stare at longingly from time to time. It’s an essay about how people in the Middle Ages viewed the night sky, and it’s about a mentality so totally removed from the campaign mentality that it’s like a refreshing dip in a cool and cleansing pool.

The essay, which appeared in Books & Culture, is called “C. S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem,” by Michael Ward, a chaplain at Peterhouse College at Cambridge. It points out that while we moderns see space as a black, cold, mostly empty vastness, with planets and stars propelled by gravitational and other forces, Europeans in the Middle Ages saw a more intimate and magical place. The heavens, to them, were a ceiling of moving spheres, rippling with signs and symbols, and moved by the love of God. The medieval universe, Lewis wrote, “was tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival not a machine.”

If the connection between the Middle Ages and the present campaign Brooks has done such a rotten job of thinking about appears tenuous, you're not alone.  But what is even more baffling is his comparison of the view of relatively well educated "Moderns" with uneducated medieval people.

As many historians have written, Europeans in the Middle Ages lived with an almost childlike emotional intensity. There were stark contrasts between daytime and darkness, between summer heat and winter cold, between misery and exuberance, and good and evil. Certain distinctions were less recognized, namely between the sacred and the profane.Material things were consecrated with spiritual powers. God was thought to live in the stones of the cathedrals, and miracles inhered in the bones of the saints.

The world seemed spiritually alive, and the power of spirit could overshadow politics. As Johan Huizinga wrote in “The Autumn of the Middle Ages,” “The most revealing map of Europe in these centuries would be a map, not of political or commercial capitals, but of the constellation of sanctuaries, the points of material contact with the unseen world.”

For educated Europeans in the Middle Ages, such views were as silly as young earth creationism (a view which many educated people believe today). 

If you want a world filled with magic and ignorance, in other words, read Bob Herbert's column (in the same paper) about the state of the American educational system–or just continue reading David Brooks's columns.

specious comparisons, William Kristol

Movement of the People

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Here are more things that don't really go together:

I might add that both Democratic campaigns missed an opportunity last week. They seem not to have noticed that the date of the first Seder, April 19, was also the 233rd anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. So, a few days before Pennsylvanians vote, the candidates could have commemorated not just the Exodus from Egypt but also “the shot heard round the world,” thus identifying themselves all at once with political liberation, religious freedom and — yes! — the right to bear arms.

The story of Exodus involves, at the very least, a movement of a large mass of people from one place to another, better one.  The story might fit the Pilgrims, what with their desire to live religiously pure lives in someone else's country, but that didn't have a whole lot to do with religious freedom–or at least the freedom of religions other than their own.