Category Archives: False Dichotomy

Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, David Brooks, False Dichotomy, General discussion, Paul Krugman

Iceman

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David Brooks, famous dichotomist, meditates on the health care proposal Hillary Clinton.  This is to say that he uses the anecdotes of a political opponent some 15 years ago to describe her as "icy" (three times in 700 some words) and nameless sources to describe her "evil look."  The column is an abomination for other reasons as well, not the least of which is the fact that Brooks accuses Clinton–Hillary Clinton I say–of being "Manichean."  Up until recently for David Brooks, being Manichean about matters of right and wrong was a virtue.  No longer:

Moreover, the debate Clinton is having with Barack Obama echoes the debate she had with Cooper 15 years ago. The issue, once again, is over whether to use government to coerce people into getting coverage. The Clintonites argue that without coercion, there will be free-riders on the system.

They’ve got a point. But there are serious health care economists on both sides of the issue. And in the heat of battle, Clinton has turned the debate between universal coverage and universal access into a sort of philosophical holy grail, with a party of righteousness and a party of error. She’s imposed Manichaean categories on a technical issue, just as she did a decade and half ago. And she’s done it even though she hasn’t answered legitimate questions about how she would enforce her universal coverage mandate.

Gee.  If Ms. Clinton has a point about mandates, then why doesn't David Brooks talk about it?  After all, that would be the foundation, so it seems (since she has a point) of Hillary Clinton's position.  Instead of a policy discussion (which, agree or disagree, you will have with Paul Krugman), Brooks treats his readers to, ironically, a little "politics of personal destruction."   

Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, Argument Analysis, Bloggers, False Dichotomy, Inexplicable, Red Herring, Straw Man

How not to respond to criticism

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Here is a journalist with 20 years experience illustrating how not to respond to criticism.  The email is so bad that one might think he was either drunk or it was written by an impostor.  Here's the story.  Greenwald wrote a post on his blog, Unclaimed Territory, about the fawning tone of CNN correspondent John King's interview of John McCain.  You can read that here (it's short), but here's a sample question:

* KING: As you know, one of the issues you have had here in South Carolina in the past is either people don't understand your social conservative record or they're not willing to concede your social conservative record. There's a mailing that hit South Carolina homes yesterday. It's a picture of you and Cindy on the front. It says "Always pro-life, 24-year record." Why do you think you still, after all this time, have to convince these people, "I have been with you from the beginning"?

I'm sure you get the idea.  Not exactly critical journalism (follow Greenwald's links for more).  Here below is John King's response.  For the sake of clarity, I'll insert comments in brackets (courtesy of Glenn Greenwald)

From: King, John C

To: GGreenwald@salon.com

Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 5:40 PM

Subject: excuse me? [a more neutral subject heading–e.g., response to your blogpost]

I don't read biased uninformed drivel so I'm a little late to the game. [this is somewhat self-contradictory: either the post was not "biased uninformed drivel" (and so not worthy of the charge) or he does read bias uniformed drivel.  In either case, that's a pretty serious compound charge–biased and uninformed.  One is sufficient for dismissal.

But a friend who understands how my business works and knows a little something about my 20 plus years in it sent me the link to your ramblings. [Now they're "ramblings"–biased uninformed drivel ramblings–that's four insults]

Since the site suggests you have law training, maybe you forgot that good lawyers to a little research before they spit out words. [The site says Greenwald is a lawyer]

Did you think to ask me or anyone who works with me whether that was the entire interview? No. (It was not; just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs.) [Notice how King responds to his own rhetorical question.  Aside from that, it's irrelevant to the criticism.  Besides, it suggests that King agrees with Greenwald about the fawning tone of the questions and suggests that CNN edited it to appear that way].

Did you reach out to ask the purpose of that specific interview? No. [More extra-textual irrelevance].

Or how it might have fit in with other questions being asked of other candidates that day? No. [He now seems to be conceding the point.  Besides, fawning questions to the other candidates would only reinforce the point that they're not real questions.  Asking fake questions to other candidates doesn't make them any less fake].

Or anything that might have put facts or context or fairness into your critique. No. [So he definitely agrees, but thinks Greenwald has been unfair–there's a context that explains it].

McCain, for better or worse, is a very accessible candidate. If you did a little research (there he goes with that word again) you would find I have had my share of contentious moments with him over the years. [So these are not contentious questions.  But King, an ad hominizer, sees others as he sees himself–attacking the person.  His having asked "contentious" questions in the past doesn't make, however, the questions of the other day any less silly].

But because of that accessibility, you don't have to go into every interview asking him about the time he cheated on his sixth grade math test. [Now he really misunderstands the nature of the criticism.  And again it's ad hominem: He suggests Greenwald wants him to ask mean, irrelevant questions about McCain's childhood.  If that is King's sense of a real journalistic question, then it's worse than Greenwald suggests].

The interview was mainly to get a couple of questions to him on his thoughts on the role of government when the economy is teetering on the edge of recession, in conjunction with similar questions being put to several of the other candidates. [Like in comedy, it's not funny if you have to explain it–unless you make the explanation funny–which this isn't.  I think.].

The portion you cited was aired by one of our programs — so by all means it is fair game for whatever "analysis" you care to apply to it using your right of free speech and your lack of any journalistic standards or fact checking or just plain basic curiosity. [It's always nice to have someone point out your rights.  I find it difficult, however, to follow King's point.  He agrees (or seems to agree) that questions he asked were soft balls, and that they were made a public document, but he charges that because Greenwald did not examine the non-public aspects of the interview (including the journalist's personal history of skepticism regarding McCain), that the analysis is wrong.  That seems really messed up, to put it bluntly.  CNN hires journalists, pays them to ask questions, and then airs the segment.  But we the viewing public are supposed to consider all of the things in the interview that were not aired before we draw any conclusions.  That just seems to undermine the whole point of airing the interview in the first place.] 

You clearly know very little about journalism. But credibility matters. It is what allows you to cover six presidential campaigns and be viewed as fair and respectful, while perhaps a little cranky, but Democrats and Republicans alike. When I am writing something that calls someone's credibility into question, I pick up the phone and give them a chance to give their side, or perspective. [Another irrelevant ad hominem coupled with an auto-pro-homine: an "I'm awesome and you're jerk."]

That way, even on days that I don't consider my best, or anywhere close, I can look myself in the mirror and know I tried to be fair and didn't call into question someone's credibility just for sport, or because I like seeing my name on a website or my face on TV. [Ah yes.  You're just saying that because–the ad hominem circumstantial.  You don't have reasons for what you say, you just say that to get noticed!]

The truly silly thing about this response is that King never challenges any one of Greenwald's points.  He concedes them in fact,  repeatedly, and from several different angles, but he alleges that Greenwald is a jerk for not knowing that no one is supposed to take King's work seriously.  This reminds me of something Krusty the Clown said when he was running for Congress: when you react like that (to his racist jokes) it means he was kidding.

 

Equivocation, False Cause, False Dichotomy, Politicians, Slippery Slope, Straw Man

Annus horribilis

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The Washington Post listed their 10 most viewed opinions of the year.  A couple were by Dan Froomkin.  The winner was, however, an article by Liz, daughter of the VP, Cheney (in the original op-ed, she was not identified as his daughter–which, if you follow the link, led to rather silly slippery slope arguments by the perpetually permalosa Post Ombudsman, Deborah Howell.  To its rare credit, the Post doesn't make any claims about the quality of the top ten.  Nor should they.  Here's just a sample of Cheney's razor sharp mind:

· We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a "situation to be solved." It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, "Enough is enough." Wishing doesn't make it so. We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or "solve" their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.

As one of my grad profs (rightly) said (to me): italicizing doesn't make it any clearer.  The rest of the paragraph just runs together any number of basic logical fallacies–straw man, equivocation, false dichotomy, false cause, and so on.  For a good year end laugh at Cheney's expense–read the rest.

Happy New Year to all.

**After writing this, I realized I had mentioned this article before, but this is all I had to say about it:

It’s hard to have a conversation about the foolishness of ever having started the war in Iraq without running into people who accuse you of not wanting to win. I suppose they (probably purposely) confuse you’re believing you’re right about an unwinnable war with your wishing reality would conform to your beliefs. You–the opposer of the Iraq war–think rather that your belief corresponds in some philosophically uninteresting way with reality–not t’other way round. Such a basic confusion is the only explanation behind Liz Cheney’s guest op-ed in the Washington Post.

I'd say the same thing again today.  

Happy New Year again to everyone.

Anne Applebaum, Bad Explanations, False Dichotomy, Lack of Evidence, Straw Man

La femminista

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Anne Applebaum gripes about how "feminism" cares not about issues that matter to real women.  She writes:

By contrast, the women of contemporary Saudi Arabia need a much more fundamental revolution than the one that took place among American women in the 1960s, and it's one we have trouble understanding. Unlike American blacks, American women have not had to grapple with issues as basic as the right to study or vote for a long time. Instead, we have (fortunately) fought for less fundamental rights in recent decades, and our women's groups have of late (unfortunately) had the luxury of focusing on the marginal. The National Council of Women's Organizations' most famous recent campaign was against the Augusta National Golf Club. The Web site of the National Organization for Women (I hate to pick on that group, but it's so easy) has space for issues of "non-sexist car insurance" and "network neutrality," but not the Saudi rape victim or the girl murdered last week in Canada for refusing to wear a hijab.

The reigning feminist ideology doesn't help: The philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers has written, among other things, that some American feminists, self-focused and reluctant to criticize non-Western cultures, have convinced themselves that "sexual terror" in America (a phrase from a real women's studies textbook) is more dangerous than actual terrorism. But the deeper problem is the gradual marginalization of "women's issues" in domestic politics, which has made them subordinate to security issues, or racial issues, in foreign policy as well.

American delegates to international and U.N. women's organizations are mostly identified with arguments about reproductive rights (for or against, depending on the administration), not arguments about the fundamental rights of women in Saudi Arabia or the Muslim world.

Until this changes, it will be hard to mount a campaign, in the manner of the anti-apartheid movement, to enforce sanctions or codes of conduct for people doing business there. What we need as a model, in other words, is not the 1960s feminism we all remember but a globalized version of the 19th-century feminism we've nearly forgotten. Candidates for the role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, anyone?

In the first place, no one ought to be surprised that the National Organization for Women take issue with national issues, as they are are national organization.  Pointing out the "small" or "quaint" injustices with which they occupy themselves does not mean their members are not concerned or involved as women of international organizations with the plight of women in Saudi Arabia, or better, Afghanistan.  Those, however, are international issues.  

At the heart of Applebaum's astoundingly silly analysis, is the view that somehow concern for gender issues in America precludes one from being concerned about them in Canada or elsewhere.  Even dumber than that is the idea that one get a total picture of "reigning feminist ideology" from skimming the works of one "feminist" philosopher and clicking to the web pages of two different organizations.  Before she makes those claims, she should try a little harder, perhaps use the search function.

Ad Hominem Abusive, False Dichotomy, Sebastian Mallaby, Straw Man

As if it were yesterday

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Sometimes it seems like so long ago that we marched off to war in Iraq. For some, that distance has blurred their memory of events. Writing the "grown-ups" or, as it has become known in the blogosphere, the "very serious persons," foreign policy piece, Sebastian Mallaby, professional contrarian, illustrates that very smart looking people can make some really silly arguments:

Clinton's rivals are contemplating history and deriving only a narrow lesson about Bush: Don't trust him when he confronts a Muslim country. But the larger, more durable lesson from Iraq is that wars can be caused by a lack of confrontation. The Iraq invasion happened partly because the world had lost the stomach to confront Saddam Hussein by other means. By 2002, the sanctions on Hussein's regime had been diluted, and there was pressure to weaken them further. Hussein was no longer "in his box," to use the language of the time: If you believed that a resurgent Saddam Hussein presented an intolerable threat, it was worth taking the risk of unseating him by force, sooner rather than later.

Alone among the Democratic candidates, Clinton has the honesty to insist that the case for war was reasonable at the time — even if, with the benefit of hindsight, the invasion has proved disastrous. In sticking to that politically difficult position, Clinton is saying that, despite its awful risks, war can sometimes be the least bad choice. She is not running away from military power, even in a political climate that makes running attractive.

That's not how I remember it. Nonetheless, more annoying that Mallaby's ignorant contextualizing of history ("at the time") is his pointless hypothetical ("If. . . "). The point of history is not to relive it, but to learn from it: one can learn from history because we know what happened. And you can't forget that all of the things said by Bush, et alia, about a resurgent Saddam were false–false in the sense of not being true.

If you believed that they were true, indeed, then you believed that Saddam posed a threat. But you had a false belief. And more than that. Bush's false belief about Saddam was rather less justified than Joe Citizen's: Bush and his war making party had access to facts that made the case for war against Saddam even less justified than it otherwise appeared. Mallaby writes all of this on the manifestly silly premise that any opposition to Bush's policies–foreign or domestic–can only be explained by the silly ad hominem of Bush derangement syndrome.

I suppose it's "deranged" and "immature" to have been right.

False Dichotomy, General discussion, Michael Gerson

Magisterium

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Without knowing it, Michael Gerson makes some points about believing.

>According to a recent television ad run by the Louisiana Democratic Party, the leading Republican candidate for governor, Bobby Jindal, has “insulted thousands of Louisiana Protestants” by describing their beliefs as “scandalous, depraved, selfish and heretical.” Jindal, the attack goes on, “doubts the morals and questions the beliefs of Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Pentecostals and other Protestant religions.”

>The ad is theologically ignorant — Methodism and the others are not “religions,” they are denominations. The main problem, however, is that the ad stretches the truth so phyllo-thin it can only be called a smear.

Gerson is nit-picking with the “denominations” point, for Jindal thinks the other Christian denominations are wrong, as wrong as anything non Christian, if not more. But here’s why the truth is “phyllo-thin”:

>And Jindal’s chosen tradition is a muscular Roman Catholicism. In an article published in the 1990s, he argued, “The same Catholic Church which infallibly determined the canon of the Bible must be trusted to interpret her handiwork; the alternative is to trust individual Christians, burdened with, as Calvin termed it, their ‘utterly depraved’ minds, to overcome their tendency to rationalize, their selfish desires, and other effects of original sin.” And elsewhere: “The choice is between Catholicism’s authoritative Magisterium and subjective interpretation which leads to anarchy and heresy.”

It seems to me that what Jindal says is actually worse than the ad makes it sound. Not to Gerson’s ears, however:

>This is the whole basis for the Democratic attack — that Jindal holds an orthodox view of his own faith and rejects the Protestant Reformation. He has asserted, in short, that Roman Catholicism is correct — and that other religious traditions, by implication, are prone to error. This is presumably the main reason to convert to Catholicism: because it most closely approximates the truth. And speaking for a moment as a Protestant: How does it insult us that Roman Catholics believe in . . . Roman Catholicism? We had gathered that much.

Way too much fudging going on in this paragraph for my taste. Jindal has asserted that views (religious or not) are heretical and false (not “prone to error” as if they might stray but might not). Besides, heresy is more than an innocuous epistemological designation–it’s more than just ordinary wrongness. It’s outright moral condemnation for people who ought to know better and will or should pay the price for their moral epistemological failing. Speaking of Roman Catholicism, nobody said it most closely “approximates” anything: Jindal said that the alternatives involved “anarchy and heresy.” From all of this, Gerson concludes that Jindal is just being Catholic, as one would expect.

That’s probably not the case (even with the current Pope’s recent pronouncement). But that’s another matter that doesn’t concern us. For us the more interesting question is the way Gerson handles the question of “believing.” Jindal is a Catholic, as a Catholic he will, in Gerson’s world, think everyone else is wrong; the same will be true of Gerson presumably (but maybe not, that’s not the point).

Here’s how Gerson reads this:

>On the receiving end of those expectations, Jindal has given these issues considerable thought. “This would be a poorer society,” he told me, “if pluralism meant the least common denominator, if we couldn’t hold a passionate, well-articulated belief system. If you enforce a liberalism devoid of content, you end up with the very violations of freedom you were trying to prevent in the first place.”

There’s considerable ground, I’d say, between Jindal’s claim that Protestants are dumb-ass heretics and the wishy-washy caricature of “liberalism” he considers the alternative. Beyond that, perhaps people find it strange that Jindal finds it necessary to pass judgment on other people’s religious orthodoxy in light of his fairly new and obviously partial understanding the “magisterium.” And indeed, in light of the role of the magisterium, it is strange indeed that Jindal would find himself qualified to pronounce heresy in the first place.

David Brooks, False Dichotomy, Straw Man

Segregation forever

For almost three years now we’ve noted David Brooks’s tendency to divide the world into two’s. Frequently this division is the first step on the way to a false dichotomy:

>do you want to surrender to terrorists or fight them like a man with the military, you choose;

sometimes, however, it’s just a random an arbitrary division:

>there are two kinds of people, some like cheddar, others Velvetta.

It’s false, but not the kind that’s fallacious.

Now we know why Brooks does this:

>For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors lived in small bands. Surviving meant being able to distinguish between us — the people who will protect you — and them — the people who will kill you. Even today, people have a powerful drive to distinguish between us and them.

>As dozens of social-science experiments have made clear, if you separate people into different groups — no matter how arbitrary the basis of the distinction — they will quickly begin discriminating against others they deem unlike themselves. People say they want to live in diverse integrated communities, but what they really want to do is live in homogenous ones, filled with people like themselves.

>If that’s the case, maybe integration is not in the cards. Maybe the world will be as it’s always been, a collection of insular compartments whose fractious tendencies are only kept in check by constant maintenance.

Human nature. But there’s hope:

>Maybe the health of a society is not measured by how integrated each institution within it is, but by how freely people can move between institutions. In a sick society, people are bound by one totalistic identity. In a healthy society, a person can live in a black neighborhood, send her kids to Catholic school, go to work in a lawyer’s office and meet every Wednesday with a feminist book club. Multiply your homogenous communities and be fulfilled.

>This isn’t the integrated world many of us hoped for. But maybe it’s the only one available.

Now the only way this analysis works is if Brooks understands the question of integration on the blender model: everyone in every way all of the time is blended through and through. Every one is the same. Everything is in everything.

I can’t think of anyone who ever seriously thought that was the goal of integration. Integration, in the relevant sense nowadays (what with the Supreme Court and all), means equal access to the goods of society (housing, public schools, etc. ) regardless of for example race, gender or sexual orientation.

Moving freely between institutions and communities (say, without legal or social blockades) is precisely what integration is. And that’s hardly the same as George Wallace’s “Segregation now. . . .segregation forever.”

Contradictions, David Brooks, False Dichotomy

Sanitation technician

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Today David Brooks tries to erase any subtlety from the immigration question. The real conflict is between educated globe-trotting elites and local Nascar types. In case you thought that’s the usual silly dichotomy, you’d be right. This time, however, he finds a way to contradict himself and patronize both groups of the dichotomy.

>The conventional view is that an angry band of conservative activists driven by nativism and economic insecurity is killing immigration reform. But this view is wrong in almost every respect.

Three paragraphs of general assertions lead to the following conclusion:

>What’s shaping the immigration debate is something altogether deeper and more interesting. And if you want to understand what it is, start with education. Between 1960 and 1980, the share of Americans enrolled in higher education exploded. The U.S. became the first nation in history with a mass educated class. The members of this class differed from each other in a thousand ways, but they tended to share a cosmopolitan approach to the world. They celebrated cultural diversity and saw ethnocentrism as a sign of backwardness.

No attempt is made to support that claim with any research. Broad, unsupported generalizations–even in the context of a 750 word column–don’t deserve anyone’s serious consideration. If you can’t even point to the right kind of source for that evidence, you probably shouldn’t write it in a newspaper.

Here’s the dichotomy. First, the smart, elite types:

>Liberal members of the educated class celebrated the cultural individualism of the 1960s. Conservative members celebrated the economic individualism of the 1980s. But they all celebrated individualism. They all valued diversity and embraced a sense of national identity that rested on openness and global integration.

Now the yokels:

>This cultural offensive created a silent backlash among people who were not so enamored of rampant individualism, and who were worried that all this diversity would destroy the ancient ties of community and social solidarity. Members of this class came to feel that America’s identity and culture were under threat from people who didn’t understand what made America united and distinct.

But they’re not driven by nativism–they only feel that the ancient ties of solidarity and community of their native culture is under threat from outsiders.

False Dichotomy, George Will, Straw Man

Liberalism is dumb

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Yesterday, George Will made his case for “conservatism.” This mainly involves making the case against Mayor Quimby, the corrupt and degenerate mayor of the fictional town of Springfield on the Simpsons. For in making the case for conservatism, Will presumes there is only one alternative–his. There may indeed be two major parties, but hardly anyone at this point can claim that they divide along the lines Will suggests–one is for freedom, the other for equality. The one that ought to be for freedom–the conservative one–openly advocates the rollback of plain-language constitutional guarantees; while the one that’s for equality over freedom, often comes out for freedom over equality. If we had more patience with this, we’d say what Will means is the freedom of individuals (which includes corporations, but not unions of workers) to make money without government restraint; but not the freedom of individuals to seek redress through the courts. Someone else can make that case. We’d just like to point out the silly straw man, and consequent false dichotomy. Someone really ought to make the case for “conservatism” in a way that does not presuppose some dumb-ass liberal view. Liberalism after all has its John Rawls.

Here’s the straw man:

>Liberals tend, however, to infer unequal opportunities from the fact of unequal outcomes. Hence liberalism’s goal of achieving greater equality of condition leads to a larger scope for interventionist government to circumscribe the market’s role in allocating wealth and opportunity. Liberalism increasingly seeks to deliver equality in the form of equal dependence of more and more people for more and more things on government.

>Hence liberals’ hostility to school choice programs that challenge public education’s semimonopoly. Hence hostility to private accounts funded by a portion of each individual’s Social Security taxes. Hence their fear of health savings accounts (individuals who buy high-deductible health insurance become eligible for tax-preferred savings accounts from which they pay their routine medical expenses — just as car owners do not buy insurance to cover oil changes). Hence liberals’ advocacy of government responsibility for — and, inevitably, rationing of — health care, which is 16 percent of the economy and rising.

>Steadily enlarging dependence on government accords with liberalism’s ethic of common provision, and with the liberal party’s interest in pleasing its most powerful faction — public employees and their unions. Conservatism’s rejoinder should be that the argument about whether there ought to be a welfare state is over. Today’s proper debate is about the modalities by which entitlements are delivered. Modalities matter, because some encourage and others discourage attributes and attitudes — a future orientation, self-reliance, individual responsibility for healthy living — that are essential for dignified living in an economically vibrant society that a welfare state, ravenous for revenue in an aging society, requires.

Right. Now the false dichotomy:

>This reasoning is congruent with conservatism’s argument that excessively benevolent government is not a benefactor, and that capitalism does not merely make people better off, it makes them better. Liberalism once argued that large corporate entities of industrial capitalism degraded individuals by breeding dependence, passivity and servility. Conservatism challenges liberalism’s blindness about the comparable dangers from the biggest social entity, government.

Liberals pro-government. Government bad. Conservatives anti-government. Anti-government good. Conservatism good.

David Brooks, False Dichotomy, Straw Man

Brooks on Gore II

David Brooks’ review of Al Gore’s latest book merits another post (at least). Gore argues that the participatory nature of our democracy has been undermined by the one-way media. While that may not be an original idea, Gore has a lot of experience with its consequences. Brooks has no patience, however, for argument (something we have long suspected). He writes:

>But Gore’s imperviousness to reality is not the most striking feature of the book. It’s the chilliness and sterility of his worldview. Gore is laying out a comprehensive theory of social development, but it allows almost no role for family, friendship, neighborhood or just face-to-face contact. He sees society the way you might see it from a speaking podium — as a public mass exercise with little allowance for intimacy or private life. He envisions a sort of Vulcan Utopia, in which dispassionate individuals exchange facts and arrive at logical conclusions.

It really would suck if people “exchang[ed] facts and arriv[ed] at logical conclusions.” The mysterious thing here is that not only is Gore lamenting the absence of civil discourse–which is, dear Mr.Brooks, a kind of civic engagement–but he can hardly be taken to be claiming that it’s the only thing people do.

What lurks behind Brooks dimwitted review is the classic Brooksian dichotomy: things can only be one way (my way) or the totally absurd other way (whatever your way is). Gore cannot be right about logic, because then we would all be Vulcans–like Dr.Spock (the one on TV). Maybe Al Gore is saying that we need logic at least, or perhaps, also.

Some, maybe like Kant or Aristotle or Aquinas, would agree with Gore.

More on this tomorrow. It’s too horrible for one or two days.