Category Archives: Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer, False Dichotomy

Or against us

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The following strikes me as a fairly clear instance of a false dichotomy:

For those who see no moral principle underlying American foreign
policy, the Holocaust Declaration is no business of ours. But for those
who believe that America stands for something in the world — that the
nation that has liberated more peoples than any other has even the most
minimal moral vocation — there can be no more pressing cause than
preventing the nuclear annihilation of an allied democracy, the last
refuge and hope of an ancient people openly threatened with the final
Final Solution.

So, to recap: you either (1) have no moral principles; or (2) agree with Charles’ Krauthammer’s "Holocaust Declaration": here’s the Holocaust Declaration:

"It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack
upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on
the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran."

There are many reasons to regard such a policy is foolish and immoral.  That simple fact alone means Krauthammer cannot claim that even the most "minimal moral vocation" means we must adopt it.  Even granting (which we shouldn’t, by the way) that some form of deterrence (of Iran’s as of yet non-existent nuclear capability) is the only available option, there many different ways to achieve that goal than by apocalyptic threats.  Adopting those approaches does not mean that one abandons the (dubious to some) claim that America stands for something in the world.

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

What’s a non sequitur?

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A non sequitur is another general cover all term for logical fallacy.  It’s not true that every instance of failed reasoning (of premises that fail to reach their conclusion) is a non sequitur.  Sometimes the premises are false (which happens to me all of the time, by the way).  Sometimes the premises simply aren’t strong enough to support the conclusion–they’re not false, but they’re aren’t enough of them.  When the premises are absurdly weak, or when their completely irrelevant, or otherwise contorted, then you have what logicians call a "non sequitur."  To call something a non sequitur is a fairly serious charge.  To level it means you think a person guilty of deception–either on account of ignorance or dishonesty.  Now of course we do this all of the time, the name of this site, after all, is "TheNonSequitur" (someone owned the other domain).  For the very large part, people we accuse of "non sequiturs" (for what that means for us precisely see here) fall into the latter category.  They ought to know better.  Many of them have had the best educations money can buy.  Most of them have somehow been granted positions of prominence in national or even international publications.  

So after all of that throat clearing, let’s get to today’s point.  Charles Krauthammer, the man who thinks "slippery slope" is a bonafide form of reasoning, accuses someone (I’m not sure who) of one of "the great non sequiturs of modern American politics."  Funny isn’t it.  Because of course that accusation turns out itself to be a non sequitur.  Here it is:

How did Obama pull that off? By riding one of the great non sequiturs of modern American politics.

It
goes like this. Because Obama transcends race, it is therefore assumed
that he will transcend everything else — divisions of region, class,
party, generation and ideology.

The premise here is true — Obama
does transcend race; he has not run as a candidate of minority
grievance; his vision of America is unmistakably post-racial — but the
conclusion does not necessarily follow. It is merely suggested in
Obama’s rhetorically brilliant celebration of American unity: "young
and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian — who are
tired of a politics that divides us." Hence "the choice in this
election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about
rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus
white. It’s about the past versus the future."

The effect of such
sweeping invocations of unity is electric, particularly because race is
the deepest and most tragic of all American divisions, and this
invocation is being delivered by a man who takes us powerfully beyond
it. The implication is that he is therefore uniquely qualified to
transcend all our other divisions.

It is not an idle suggestion.
It could be true. The problem is that Obama’s own history suggests
that, in his case at least, it is not. Indeed, his Senate record belies
the implication.

I love the passive "it is assumed" as it suggests such grave intellectual irresponsibility–especially because of the issue of Obama’s race that precedes it.  As even the partially informed voter can tell you, no one makes that argument.  And Krauthammer doesn’t even bother to pin it on anyone.  That’s what you call a "straw man."  This happens when you either (1) pick the weakest form of an argument, knock it down, and claim to have knocked down the stronger version; or (2) you make up out of whole cloth (I always wanted to use that phrase) an absurdly weak argument for some position x, proceed to knock it down, and claim to have defeated any argument for position x.  Krauthammer here is guilty of the second variety (unless he wants to scour the globe for the person who holds the "racial" view).

In all fairness, someone at the Post ought to stop him from doing this–he seems incapable on his own.  Really.  After all, he seems like an educated person, he’s got to know that you can’t go about making stuff up.  It’s not so hard really.  When he says "argument x is a huge non sequitur" he ought to ask himself "who makes it?"  If the answer is "no one," then it’s not really anyone’s non sequitur (certainly not the greatest in American politics!).

Accident, Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

The Lobby Lobby

One hears a lot of complaints about lobbyists from the likes of McCain, Clinton and Obama this election season.  But did you know that lobbying was protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States?  I didn't.  Well, Charles Krauthammer will set me straight.  My intrusions are in bold.

Everyone knows the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. How many remember that, in addition, the First Amendment protects a fifth freedom — to lobby? [No way–I don't believe  you]

Of course it doesn't use the word lobby [Phew–I thought I forgot my rights!]. It calls it the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Lobbyists are people hired to do that for you, so that you can actually stay home with the kids and remain gainfully employed rather than spend your life in the corridors of Washington.  [I wonder where I can get one of these lobbyists]

To hear the candidates in this presidential campaign, you'd think lobbying is just one notch below waterboarding [we thought waterboarding was ok with you Charles], a black art practiced by the great malefactors of wealth to keep the middle class in a vise and loose upon the nation every manner of scourge: oil dependency, greenhouse gases, unpayable mortgages and those tiny entrees you get at French restaurants. [He's being serious–this isn't a caricature or a straw man]

Lobbying is constitutionally protected, but that doesn't mean we have to like it all [that's a relief, because I was about to embrace every single instance of "lobbying" fully in the spirit of the law rather than sophistical equivocations meant to cloud the issue.]  Let's agree to frown upon bad lobbying, such as getting a tax break for a particular industry. Let's agree to welcome good lobbying — the actual redress of a legitimate grievance — such as protecting your home from being turned to dust to make way for some urban development project.

And with this last claim we're back to square one.  When people scream about "lobbying" this election season, they mean the kind of lobbying of special interests purchasing favors and access–bad lobbying.  Just because you call it "lobbying" does not ipso fatso mean its protected by the constitution.  That would be to insist on the relevance of a general rule where it obviously doesn't apply.  But I guess Krauthammer has a right to do that.  It's a free country.

 

Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Kinsley

Dueling pundits

Here's Charles Krauthammer:

In fact, in May 2006 Cordesman had written that "no one can argue that the prospects for stability in Iraq are good." Now, however, there is simply no denying the remarkable improvements in Iraq since the surge began a year ago.

Unless you're a Democrat. As Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) put it, "Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq." Their Senate leader, Harry Reid, declares the war already lost. Their presidential candidates (eight of them at the time) unanimously oppose the surge. Then the evidence begins trickling in.

I was going to say something like: Wow, you'd have to be insane to disagree with Charles Krauthammer!  Well, ok, primarily because he so frequently calls those who disagree with him insane.  You see, Bush's opponents have so succumbed to Bush Derangement Syndrome that they can't admit the obvious truth.  Krauthammer concludes:

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region, and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over al-Qaeda. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now-achievable victory?

Nice complex question! But we know that that's a distraction from the real question.  Krauthammer has shifted focus from the discussion of whether the surge is working, to what psychological diagnosis characterizes those who disagree with the fact that the surge has worked.  I was going to say that I swear.  Then I read Michael Kinsley (on the same page in the Washington Post!):

It is now widely considered beyond dispute that Bush has won his gamble. The surge was a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They're all down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled.

Skepticism seems like sour grapes. If you opposed the surge, you have two choices. One is to admit that you were wrong, wrong wrong. The other is to sound as if you resent all the good news and remain eager for disaster. Too many opponents of the war have chosen option two.

That's right.  All the talk about sour grapes, and the "you're only saying that because" covers up the fact that by all of the metrics offered by the surge supporters, the surge has been a failure.  Or at least, it's an open question as to whether the surge has worked.   Kinsley continues:

But we needn't quarrel about all this, or deny the reality of the good news, to say that at the very least, the surge has not worked yet. The test is simple, and built into the concept of a surge: Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started? And the answer is no.

Then he goes on to argue for that.  He arrives at the always more pressing question at the end: 

And consider how modest the administration's standard of success has become. Can there be any doubt that they would go for a reduction to 100,000 troops — and claim victory — if they had any confidence at all that the gains they brag about would hold at that level of support? The proper comparison isn't to the situation a year ago. It's to the situation before we got there. Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its "debaathification" campaign so that Saddam Hussein's former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and that "only" 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium.

You might have several words to describe this situation, but "success" would not be one of them.

And it would be important not to forget that.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Charles Krauthammer, Things that are false

Water is free

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New insights on capitalism from Charles Krauthammer:

There's no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns— boat, shoe, clock — by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.

None of those things are actually free commodities.  Water of any kind costs money to purify, bottle, and distribute; advertising placement on the internets is a highly desirable product that the Google is able to secure.  They're not selling the noun qua noun–if you want the noun, look it up in the dictionary. Everyone has seen those TV commercials anyway–this schtick is not original.  But where might Charles be going with this?

And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

Millions of votes, he should say.  So Krauthammer starts with something you can sell and buy, says its free, and now moves to something that's free, and says you can buy it.     

This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a "salvational fervor" and "idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."

Now I see.  You heard it here–and in many other more insightful, original, and accurate sites than this one–we have a new political meme: Obama is some kind of cultish snake oil salesman.  That's convenient in that it provides Krauthammer and everyone else with  ready-made explanation for Obama's success: it's a cult.

The weird thing about this particular ad hominem is that it grants that someone is success, nay a remarkable success, at what he does, but then they turn that success against him–claiming the only explanation is deceit.  No one can be that successful unless they have generated a kind of cultish following. 

I think this particular fallacy may deserve its own name.  Any suggestions?  

 

Charles Krauthammer, General discussion, Things that are false

Wrong

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Sometimes, more often than I like actually, I’m wrong about stuff (feel free everyone to point that out–I’ll deny and defend myself, but that’s what makes me wrong, so don’t lose heart). Others are like me–they can be wrong to, even about stuff they’re supposed to be experts in. And sometimes when they’re wrong, they make a big mess that the others have to clean up.

As Glenn Greenwald has tirelessly pointed out, no one who was wrong about the Iraq war (we’d be greeted as liberators!) has ever paid a price in diminished authority. Finally, Charles Krauthammer makes the same point, though in the context of shaming George Tenet, Medal of Freedom winner and intelligence bungler, who has recently turned on Bush. Krauthammer writes:

>The decision to go to war was made by a war cabinet consisting of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative. Nor could the most important non-American supporter of the war to this day — Tony Blair, father of new Labor.

>The most powerful case for the war was made at the 2004 Republican convention by John McCain in a speech that was resolutely “realist.” On the Democratic side, every presidential candidate running today who was in the Senate when the motion to authorize the use of force came up — Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd– voted yes.

>Outside of government, the case for war was made not just by the neoconservative Weekly Standard but — to select almost randomly — the traditionally conservative National Review, the liberal New Republic and the center-right Economist. Of course, most neoconservatives supported the war, the case for which was also being made by journalists and scholars from every point on the political spectrum — from the leftist Christopher Hitchens to the liberal Tom Friedman to the centrist Fareed Zakaria to the center-right Michael Kelly to the Tory Andrew Sullivan. And the most influential tome on behalf of war was written not by any conservative, let alone neoconservative, but by Kenneth Pollack, Clinton’s top Near East official on the National Security Council. The title: “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.”

>Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works.

That’s right Charles. And you were all wrong. All of you.

Charles Krauthammer, Things that are false

Pacification

“. . . Allobrogum, qui nuper pacificati erant. . . .” (The Allobroges, who had only recently been pacified. . . ” That was Caesar (B.G. I.6). Now Charles Krauthammer, speaking of progress in Iraq:

>The situation in Baghdad is more mixed. Yesterday’s bridge and Green Zone attacks show the insurgents’ ability to bomb sensitive sites. On the other hand, pacification is proceeding. “Nowhere is safe for Westerners to linger,” ABC’s Terry McCarthy reported on April 3. “But over the past week we visited five different neighborhoods where the locals told us life is slowly coming back to normal.” He reported from Jadriyah, Karrada, Zayouna, Zawra Park and the notorious Haifa Street, previously known as “sniper alley.” He found that “children have come out to play again. Shoppers are back in markets,” and he concluded that “nobody knows if this small safe zone will expand or get swallowed up again by violence. For the time being though, people here are happy to enjoy a life that looks almost normal.”

At least Caesar had a flair for Irony, the second casualty of war.

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

Wasn’t me

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Before the 2003 Iraq war–the one that’s still going on now–some argued (Here’s Molly Ivins–may she rest in peace–from 2003) that removing Saddam might lead to ethnic bloodletting on a massive scale (1991 Dick Cheney among them). How things change when the foot’s on the other shoe:

>Of all the accounts of the current situation, this is by far the most stupid. And the most pernicious. Did Britain “give” India the Hindu-Muslim war of 1947-48 that killed a million souls and ethnically cleansed 12 million more? The Jewish-Arab wars in Palestine? The tribal wars of post-colonial Uganda?

>We gave them a civil war? Why? Because we failed to prevent it? Do the police in America have on their hands the blood of the 16,000 murders they failed to prevent last year?

That’s not the accusation. The claim is we knew or should have known a civil war was the likely consequence of our willful ignorance of the realities of Iraqi political and ethnic realities and our Rumsfeldian strategy for giving them a free society–where people are free to live life and make mistakes. Knowing that such violence and bloodshed and chaos and destablization of the whole region was the likely consequence of our action, and doing it anyone, makes us morally responsible. Do we pull every trigger and cut off every head and blow up every Mosque? Nope. But that hardly means we’re not responsible for that happening.

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

The difference if makes

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There is much good discussion below on the topic of faith. Go visit it here.

It’s been a while since I posted and I thought I’d ask if anyone thinks the following two comments are different.

this:

>As John Edwards put it most starkly and egregiously in 2004: If John Kerry becomes president, Christopher Reeve will walk again.

And 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.

How many ways are these different?

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

Necessary but not sufficient

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Borat seems to have irked the association of rightward commentators. Both David Brooks and Jonah Goldberg have complained about it (at least Goldberg thought it was funny). Now Krauthammer joins in (and he even cites the acute observation of David Brooks). What gets Krauthammer’s goat is the implicational insult to the rabid evangelical supporter of the nation of Israel (nota bene: by “nation of Israel” we do not mean “Jews”). He writes:

>Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of the film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” revealed his purpose for doing that in a rare out-of-character interview he granted Rolling Stone in part to counter charges that he was promoting anti-Semitism. On the face of it, this would be odd, given that Cohen is himself a Sabbath-observing Jew. His defense is that he is using Borat’s anti-Semitism as a “tool” to expose it in others. And that his Arizona bar stunt revealed if not anti-Semitism, then “indifference” to anti-Semitism. And that, he maintains, was the path to the Holocaust.

But there are two serious problems with Krauthammer’s argument.

First, as I read this claim, I think Cohen is probably suggesting that American indifference to other’s unashamed and virulent racism is a necessary but not a sufficient cause of organized and systematic genocide like the Holocaust. There would have been no Holocaust, perhaps, had so many Germans and Poles and Italians and French and many others not been indifferent. That point seems obvious. He’s hardly claiming, as Krauthammer seems to suggest, that they were the necessary and sufficient cause–that the indifferent brought it about. The indifferent don’t bring anything about. They fail to stop or help others from bringing about. The positive anti-semitism of others is another matter.

The second problem is that Krauthammer is fundamentally confused about who Cohen is criticizing. So from the Arizona bar stunt, Krauthammer reads a criticism of Christian Evangelicals. What they would be doing in a bar is beyond me. But more to the point, it’s not clear that Cohen even criticizes them specifically (if he does, please tell me).

But even if he did, somehow Krauthammer will have to explain that many Christian Evangelicals defend the nation of Israel in order (1) to help bring about the end times; and (2) the unconverted Jews (at the end times) will have no share in paradise. They are merely the means to the salvation of Christians.