Category Archives: Other problems

Problems other than specific logical fallacies–poor explanations, things that are false, and so forth.

Dinesh D'Souza, General discussion, ignorance of basic matters of logic, Inexplicable, Plain Bad Arguments, Things that are false

The whites of their eyes

1 Comment

I'm all for public debate of even the dumbest stuff–birtherism, etc., has its place somewhere in our public discourse.  But that somewhere really shouldn't be the Washington Post.  Today they publish the incoherent babbling of Dinesh D'Souza on the "anti-Colonialism" of Obama.  

The argument is that Obama is "just like his fathah."  Here's how it begins:

If you want to understand what is going on in the White House today, you have to begin with Barack Obama. No, not that Barack Obama. I mean Barack Obama Sr., the president's father. Obama gets his identity and his ideology from his father. Ironically, the man who was absent for virtually all of Obama's life is precisely the one shaping his values and actions.

How do I know this? Because Obama tells us himself. His autobiography is titled "Dreams From My Father." Notice that the title is not "Dreams of My Father." Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams. He is writing about the dreams that he got from his father.

In his book, Obama writes, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Those who know Obama well say the same thing. His grandmother Sarah Obama told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same things — he has taken everything from his father . . . this son is realizing everything the father wanted."

People who have read this book seem to have a very different impression from D'Souza.  But anyway, let's just say that Obama is realizing everything his father ever wanted.  What did his father want, you might wonder?  What does Obama want?  Well, D'Souza continues. 

Some have described the president as being a conventional liberal or even a socialist. But liberals and socialists are typically focused on poverty and social equality; Obama rarely addresses these issues, and when he does so, it is without passion. Pretty much the only time Obama raises his voice is when he is expressing antagonism toward the big, bad corporations and toward those earning more than $250,000 a year. I believe the most compelling explanation of Obama's actions is that he is, just like his father, an anti-colonialist. Anti-colonialism is the idea that the rich countries got rich by looting the poor countries, and that within the rich countries, plutocratic and corporate elites continue to exploit ordinary citizens. 

I'm most impressed by the false sense of even-handedness–Obama's no socialist.  That's critical, because Obama, in D'Souza's world, is just like his father.  What was his father like? 

Consider the article "Problems Facing Our Socialism" that Obama Sr. published in 1965 in the East Africa Journal. Writing in the aftermath of colonialism, the senior Obama advocated socialism as necessary to ensure national autonomy for his country. "The question," he wrote, "is how are we going to remove the disparities in our country, such as the concentration of economic power in Asian and European hands . . .?

"Obama Sr.'s solutions are clear. "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." He proposed that the state seize private land and turn it over to collective cooperatives. He also demanded that the state raise taxes with no upper limit.

Just in case the point is unclear, Obama Sr. insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 percent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." Absurd as it seems, the idea of 100 percent taxation has its peculiar logic. It is based on the anti-colonial assumption that the rich have become rich by exploiting and plundering the poor; therefore, whatever the rich have is undeserved and may be legitimately seized.

He was a Socialist.

To reconstruct.  According to D'Souza, Obama was just like his father, a socialist, but Obama is no socialist. 

Doesn't that mean Obama is not like his father? 

Charles Krauthammer, General discussion, George Will, ignorance of basic matters of logic, Lack of Evidence, Narrativism, Specious allegations of fallacy, Things that are false

I don’t usually practice psychiatry in my blog

6 Comments

If there is a logic to the arguments of politicians, I don’t know what it is.  A vote for a politician involves a complex web of commitments whose primary objective is action, not belief.  So when politicians violate the rules of argumentative propriety, it’s hard to complain too much.  You know their ads are going to go ad hominem, too often egregriously so, when they’re not distorting the record, or otherwise strawmanning, hollow manning, or weak manning their opponents.

Columnists in the newspaper, on the other hand, play a different kind of game.  Well some of them do.  They advance reasons for believing proposition x or proposition y.  We can, I think, hold them to a higher standard.

So for instance, today George Will  argues that Democrats are desperate in the face of the march of obviously moderate, reasonable, non masterbating Tea Party candidates.  His argument is bad.  Here’s how it goes:

P1.  The Democrats have accomplished nothing that people like;

P2.  They have plans for more stuff people don’t like;

C.  Therefore they now wrongly characterize grass roots, very reasonable, centrist small-government people as “extremists.”

Just for the record, I think P1 is very questionable, and a partisan operator such as Will ought to offer better evidence (he doesn’t offer any).  P2 is weak for the same reason.  Now if those premises were true, which they aren’t, maybe that conclusion would follow.  But the conclusion is false anyway–because the candidates in question stand far from the center of American politics.  That is not to say they’re wrong.  It’s just to say they are not unfairly criticized as on an extreme.  Time to take that word back extremists.  Embrace it.

Now Will moves to a more serious objective: a logical critique of Democrats in general:

Democrats, unable to run on their policies, will try to demonize the opponents with Tea Party support as unstable extremists with personality disorders. They have ridden this hobby horse before.

As I argued above, this is a vacuous critique.  But it’s hilarious, because it’s an attempt at logic criticism–and Will sucks at this.  Here’s how is argument goes for that conclusion:

In response to a questionnaire from a magazine, 1,189 psychiatrists, none of whom had ever met Goldwater, declared him unfit for office — “emotionally unstable,” “immature,” “cowardly,” “grossly psychotic,” “paranoid,” “chronic schizophrenic” and “dangerous lunatic” were some judgments from the psychiatrists who believed that extremism in pursuit of Goldwater was no vice. Shortly before the election, Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter published in Harper’s an essay (later expanded into a book with the same title), “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” that encouraged the idea that Goldwater’s kind of conservatism was a mental disorder.

On the eve of the convention that nominated Goldwater, Daniel Schorr of CBS, “reporting” from Germany, said: “It looks as though Sen. Goldwater, if nominated, will be starting his campaign here in Bavaria, center of Germany’s right wing” and “Hitler’s one-time stomping ground.”

Goldwater, said Schorr, would be vacationing near Hitler’s villa at Berchtesgaden. Schorr further noted that Goldwater had given an interview to Der Spiegel “appealing to right-wing elements in Germany” and had agreed to speak to a gathering of “right-wing Germans.” So, “there are signs that the American and German right wings are joining up.”

But as Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard has reported, although Goldwater had spoken vaguely about a European vacation (he did not take one), he had not mentioned Germany, and there were no plans to address any German group. Der Spiegel had reprinted an interview that had appeared elsewhere.

The relevance of this for 2010? There is precedent for the mainstream media being megaphones for Democratic-manufactured hysteria.

Nonsense.  Let’s reconstruct this.

P1. A bunch of psychiatrists thought Barry Goldwater was crazy in 1964.

P2. Richard Hofttadter wrote the “Paranoid Style in American Politics”

P3.  A reporter for CBS (recently deceased) is alleged to have slandered Goldwater.

C.  Therefore, the Democrats “have ridden this hobby horse before.”

Gee, he doesn’t even really try here.  It just doesn’t follow that the “Democrats” have done any of this–various unrelated people have.  But anyway, Charles Krauthammer, a non anonymous psychiatrist who shares the Post’s op-ed page with George Will, said the following of candidate Al Gore:

KRAUTHAMMER: Crying for help, you know. (LAUGHTER) I’m a psychiatrist. I don’t usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there’s a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help.

He does that all of the time and he sits in the cubicle next to Will at the Post.  And he’s not a Democrat.

And here’s the introduction to Hoftstadter’s piece in the Atlantic:
American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wind. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.
Gee, How many Republicans have doubted whether Obama is an American citizen?  A Christian non-terrorist?  Pro-American?  A gay Nazi Muslim?
But this just underscores the blind ignorance WIll must suppose his readers to live in.  How often does one hear on Fox News and other similar outlets (and Tea Party rallies) analogies between begnign Democratic policies and Nazism?  Very often (I wonder, should one ever answer a rhetorical question?  Probably not).
Michael Gerson, Specious allegations of fallacy

Well, at least he tried

Former Bush '43 Speechwriter Michael Gerson, now tenured at the Washington Post, rarely favors readers with cogent arguments.  Today is somewhat of an exception, as he at least tries to do the right kind of thing.  In particular, he tries to field an objecion to his hackish point about hating and loving "Washington." 

The argument goes something like this.  Lately a lot of Obama types have been complaining about "Washington."  I put that in quotes because of course it's not really Washington the city or anything like that.  It's actually meant by those people to be the dirty business of making laws with a bunch of self-interested parties.  Everyone complains about that.  I remember a young George W. Bush promising to "change the tone" in Washington.  He didn't.  Nor did he ever intend to I'm sure. 

So it's really vacuous, I think, to even bother to point this out about anyone.  That doesn't stop Gerson. 

Not, presumably, for the actual place of schools and neighborhoods and monuments but for the conceptual Washington, the symbolic city. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, with typical delicacy, calls it "[expletive]-nutsville," a judgment that earthier Tea Party activists might share. Senior adviser David Axelrod has announced his spring departure. "I think he's not having fun," says a White House colleague. A recent profile claims that Axelrod's idealism was disappointed by "a ferociously stubborn, possibly irredeemable system." And Barack Obama himself constantly complains about the "politicking" and obstructionism of the capital city, where they "talk about me like a dog." Much of the White House senior staff seems to long for a purer, simpler, more wholesome kind of politics . . . in Chicago.

The tension here is obvious. Even while depicting Washington as a flawed, fractured, hopeless mess, the Obama administration has sought to increase the influence of Washington over America's economy and health-care system. In the Obama era, Washington helps run auto companies, oversees some corporate salaries, imposes an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, and seeks to rationalize the health-care system with a profusion of new boards, offices, agencies and commissions — estimates vary from 47 to 159 new bureaucratic entities.

In case however you're ready to say, "I think 'Washington' is used in two distinct senses here," Gerson is right on it:

Progressives would object that it is political Washington — the paralyzed structure of legislators and special interests — that is broken, not bureaucratic Washington, which needs more authority. But it is not easy to argue that citizens aggregated in a legislature are self-interested, corrupt and incompetent while citizens aggregated in a government agency are public-spirited, wise and effective. And it is not much of a communications strategy to feed disdain for politics while proposing an expanded role for government.

It's very refreshing to see the phrase "x would object" in this context.  A round of applause for him.  It seems like an honest attempt to engage with his interlocutor.  However, I think the progressive (or the conservative who could be caught in the same alleged rhetorical trap) would object to "Washington" being used in the second sense at all.

And it smacks of too much cleverness, I think, to suggest that one cannot avail onself of the usual tropes ("Washington sucks," for example, by which I mean, "my opponents in Washington"), without being guilty of some kind of logical or rhetorical inconsistency.  And besides, I think Obama and his team can rightly complain about some of the process ("death panels" anyone?). 

Having said that, Gerson does have a point.  No one likes a whiner–even when she or he has every right.  Well, let me rephrase.  No one likes a whiner, when they're a Democrat.

hollow man, ignorance of basic matters of logic, Plain Bad Arguments, Red Herring

Take this job and shove it

1 Comment

Sitting now on Capitol Hill is a bill, The Paycheck Fairness Act, which aims "to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide more effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, and for other purposes."  Put another way, equal work ought by law to equal equal pay.

Enter AEI Scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, writing in the New York Times op-ed page.  She points out, let's say correctly because this isn't the point, that some women earn more than men:

When these factors are taken into account the gap narrows considerably — in some studies, to the point of vanishing. A recent survey found that young, childless, single urban women earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts, mostly because more of them earn college degrees.

Sounds like great news.  Those women won't need the legal recourse proposed in the bill.  For that reason, I don't see the relevance of this point at all.  So let's call it a red herring.  I also don't see the relevance in some of her other apples-to-oranges points:

Moreover, a 2009 analysis of wage-gap studies commissioned by the Labor Department evaluated more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and concluded that the aggregate wage gap “may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”

In addition to differences in education and training, the review found that women are more likely than men to leave the workforce to take care of children or older parents. They also tend to value family-friendly workplace policies more than men, and will often accept lower salaries in exchange for more benefits. In fact, there were so many differences in pay-related choices that the researchers were unable to specify a residual effect due to discrimination.

Hurray again for these men and women, but the issue is equal pay for equal work, so this would seem likely not to apply–another red herring.  No one, I think, could honestly say she ought to get paid the same as someone else even though she's not doing equal work. 

Her argument gets worse.  In addition to instances where women make more than men (again, that's great so long as everyone is equally and fairly compensated), the passage of a bill meant to remedy inequality will put an end to debate on the matter:

Some of the bill’s supporters admit that the pay gap is largely explained by women’s choices, but they argue that those choices are skewed by sexist stereotypes and social pressures. Those are interesting and important points, worthy of continued public debate.

The problem is that while the debate proceeds, the bill assumes the answer: it would hold employers liable for the “lingering effects of past discrimination” — “pay disparities” that have been “spread and perpetuated through commerce.” Under the bill, it’s not enough for an employer to guard against intentional discrimination; it also has to police potentially discriminatory assumptions behind market-driven wage disparities that have nothing to do with sexism.

I think the bill assumes the answer to the question of equal pay for equal work.  On those other questions, I'm sure the good folks at the AEI will keep us busy. 

As I conclude here notice one thing–the use of quotes to suggest some kind of ominous future.  Those quotes from from the "findings" portion of the bill.  They're like the hopes and dreams of the bill, in other words.  They hope that making employers actually pay people equally for equal work will have this effect.  They're not alleging that employers must remedy historical wrongs.  They mean they can't continue to do wrong.  To suggest they do is to invent an entirely new and silly argument–a hollow man.   

One final point, as a general rule, dear authors, "picking out quotes" with "dick fingers" is just "wrong." 

Begging the Question, General discussion, Narrativism, Specious allegations of fallacy, Straw Man

Dear Santa Claus

9 Comments

Another foray into logic and rock 'n roll.  This time, it's one of my personal favorites, XTC's "Dear God":  Lyrics/ Video. First, a quick survey of the argument of the song and then three argumentative-logical issues.

"Dear God" is supposed to a letter addressed to God.  The contents of the letter amount to two separate arguments for atheism.  The primary argument is the argument from evil.  Here is the background commitment:  gratuitous suffering in the world is inconsistent with a just, capable and creative god.  The argument is then made by a series of examples of gratuitous suffering.  First is the problem of hunger:

But all the people that you made in your image
See them starving in the street
'Cause they don't get enough to eat from god

Second is the problem of strife (specifically religious strife):

And all the people that you made in your image
See them fighting in the street
'Cause they can't make opinions meet about god

Third is a cattle call of ills:

You're always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown
Those lost at sea and never found
And it's the same the whole world 'round
The hurt I see helps to compound
That father, son and holy ghost
Is just somebody's unholy hoax

Now, for sure, the argument from evil needs only one evil that's gratuitous, but when you get a list like that, it's supposed to improve the argument.  I think this is because we all recognize that as the evils pile up, they all seem so pointless and horrible, and as they seem to keep coming, we're supposed to see the responses to the argument from evil as being progressively less and less plausible.  In this respect, the argument from evil is less a purely logical game of finding contradictions, but more a process of seeing just how unlikely it is that God could be just if he allowed all that evil.  So the cattle call isn't, I think, just a rhetorical flourish (or powerful songwriting… again, listen to that part!), it's supposed to play an argumentative role, but in a rough version of the evidential problem of evil. 

The second argument is a subsidiary one, but is nevertheless worth mentioning. It's the argument from anthropogenesis: the observation that we have natural world explanations for all the events leading up to the founding of the religions and the development of their dogmas, so they, at least in their claims to supernatural revelation, must be false:

Did you make mankind after we made you?. . .

Dear god don't know if you noticed but…
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain't, and so do you

Effectively: c'mon, god, you know we made you and all the stories about you up.  Therefore: you don't exist. Q to the E to the D, baby!

The three logical points. #1. The argument from evil is easy to present, but very difficult to get just right.  The problems of hunger and strife are ones we bring on ourselves, a theodicy may run, and so we are, in saying that God is responsible for these things, not acknowledging our responsibilities.  God, if he were to step in to resolve these moral evils, would not be respecting our freedoms and making it possible for us to be worthy of his love. 

The natural evils on the docket (disease, babes drowning , etc.) are consequences of living in a world with natural laws.  And so we must accept that given that this world is intelligible, it must also have correlate dangers.  Another strategy for theodicy here would be to go skeptical, and say:  perhaps the letter should be written a little less dogmatically — asking for why these things happen, instead of insisting that God has no good reason.  Perhaps, it may go, God does have a reason…  Regardless, the evils in the song aren't enough to make the full case.  You need to wrestle with the rationalizations God (or his spokesperson) might give for that case to go through. 

The problem with the argument, then, is that it is insufficiently dialectical, even if the entity addressed doesn't exist.  Not that I don't think the argument from evil kicks theism's rear, it's just that theodicy is actually a pretty formidable opponent, and a laundry list of evils isn't much of a case yet.  It's nice songwriting, but as an argument, *yawn*.

#2. The argument from anthropogenesis is often rhetorically powerful, but it's really just wind.  Any non-insane defender of theism can concede that the traditions of churches and the transmission of (and perhaps even the overwhelming majority of the contents of ) the sacred texts are products of human agency.  That doesn't mean that theism is false, it just means that humans are really keen on making stuff up and believing stuff about God.  Now, again, it, like the argument from evil, is more of a cumulative case — you keep piling up all the cases where things just don't look right.  But, again, cumulatively it just shows that there are multiple natural causes at work in the developments of the religion.  No refutation, but if anything, begging the question.

#3. Is the presentation self defeating?  I remember that when I first heard the song, I immediately asked whether it made sense to say to God: I don't believe in you.  That's weird.  Surely, if you're addressing God, you're committing, informally, to his existence.  Otherwise, the speech act of addressing is inappropriate.  I'm not the only one who's had that thought.  Visit any of the discussions about the song (either on the threads above, or here).  Here's a strong version of the challenge:   The most this song can show is that the author has doubts about god's existence, but in addressing god in the song, he actually finds that he nevertheless does believe.  That's faith, baby, faith!

That argument stinks.  First, it doesn't undercut the conclusion of the argument: God doesn't exist.  Just because the author happens to address the argument to God doesn't have any bearing on whether the argument demonstrates its conclusion.  If I addresssed a letter to Santa Claus explaining all my reasons for holding that he does not exist, that would not in any way effect the correctness of the arguments, nor would it change the truth of my conclusion. Moreover, I could  write a letter to Santa, tell him he doesn't exist and even mail it to the North Pole, and I could still believe he doesn't exist.  That's why I wrote the letter!   Second, think of the song as more like therapy.  The author has been believing in God, perhaps, for a long time.  He's prayed to Him regularly, and as a consequence, is in the habit of addressing God.  And so in coming to terms with his atheism, the author feels the need to speak to God one more time… a kind of breakup talk, but one not really addressed to God, but one really composed and performed for himself.  That's what the prayers were all along, anyhow. 

In sum: the song's a standard argument from evil, nicely performed.  But it's a thin version of it. Weak, really.  But it's at least not self refuting, so there's that.

Plain Bad Arguments, Specious allegations of fallacy

Electronic Lynch Mob

14 Comments

A law professor at the University of Chicago wrote a post about what a bad idea increasing the marginal tax rates on couples making more than 250,000 is.  His was an ad misericoridiam (not the fallacious kind by the way) argument: look at me, I'm a potential payer at this rate, I will suffer, so it's not fair for people like me to pay and so forth.  It turns out that he had not cleared with his wife (who rightfully disagreed with his analysis), so he took the post down.  More on that in a second.

Here is some of the original argument.

I, like the president before me, am a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and my wife, like the first lady before her, works at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she is a doctor who treats children with cancer. Our combined income exceeds the $250,000 threshold for the super rich (but not by that much), and the president plans on raising my taxes. After all, we can afford it, and the world we are now living in has that familiar Marxian tone of those who need take and those who can afford it pay. The problem is, we can’t afford it. Here is why.

The biggest expense for us is financing government. Last year, my wife and I paid nearly $100,000 in federal and state taxes, not even including sales and other taxes. This amount is so high because we can’t afford fancy accountants and lawyers to help us evade taxes and we are penalized by the tax code because we choose to be married and we both work outside the home. (If my wife and I divorced or were never married, the government would write us a check for tens of thousands of dollars. Talk about perverse incentives.)

Our next biggest expense, like most people, is our mortgage. Homes near our work in Chicago aren’t cheap and we do not have friends who were willing to help us finance the deal. We chose to invest in the University community and renovate and old property, but we did so at an inopportune time.

We pay about $15,000 in property taxes, about half of which goes to fund public education in Chicago. Since we care the education of our three children, this means we also have to pay to send them to private school. My wife has school loans of nearly $250,000 and I do too, although becoming a lawyer is significantly cheaper. We try to invest in our retirement by putting some money in the stock market, something that these days sounds like a patriotic act. Our account isn’t worth much, and is worth a lot less than it used to be.

Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby so we can both work outside the home. At the end of all this, we have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive.  

For a complete refutation of this argument, click here.  Read the whole thing (and the comments).  I'm not interested in this argument. 

What interests me is a subsequent post, where the good professor explains why he took down the post.  Here it is:

The posts that generated an unintended blogocane have been deleted. I stand by the posts, the facts in them, and the points they were making. The reason I took the very unusual step of deleting them is because my wife, who did not approve of my original post and disagrees vehemently with my opinion, did not consent to the publication of personal details about our family. In retrospect, it was a highly effective but incredibly stupid thing to do. The electronic lynch mob that has attacked and harassed me — you should see the emails sent to me personally! — has made my family feel threatened and insecure. We recently had a very early preemie, and this was a quite inopportune time to bring this on my family. For the record, I still think the planned tax increases will negatively impact my family and my country, but that is basically all I should have said. To my wife, my three children, and to anyone who was offended by my remarks, please accept my apologies. To those with pitchforks trying to attack me instead of my message, I feel sorry for you. You have caused untold damage to me personally. I may be wrong, even stupid, but I don’t think I deserved that.

This is worse than the original.  The good professor ought to know that he made himself and his very sorry financial planning skills, understanding of tax law, sense of empathy, and so on, the argument.  To respond to such an argument–which one has a duty an obligation to do if one disagrees (and besides he published it)–one has to go ad hominem.  This going ad hominem is not going ad hominem of the fallacious kind, because the initial position is an ad hominem too.

Let me put this another way.  If I claim that event x will negatively impact me personally, and it turns out that instead the negative impact is due to my own poor decision making, that is completely relevant to whether it will negatively impact me.  I cannot believe this guy cannot appreciate that point.  If you don't want to get attacked personally, don't make ad misericordiam arguments.

specious comparisons, Weak Analogy

Some arguments by analogy are like slave uprisings

Pat Buchanan thinks the Republican Establishment doesn't respect the Tea Party or their candidates.  Apparently, Republican Party Leaders had their preferred candidates (you know, ones that might win the general election), and they supported them in the primaries.  And then these Tea Partiers come along, and well… win those primaries.  Now it looks like the Dems may not get trounced quite so badly in November. Republican Establishment folks get mad, because they're trying to win elections, but a large segment of the party won't cooperate. 

Now, this is evidence to me that there should just be two parties.  Luckily, they've already got two names picked out.  But this isn't about me or where the evidence takes us.  This is about the Tea Party and its, uh, spokespeople.  Or something.  Here's what Buchanan thinks this is about: exploitation.  That's right, he thinks the Republican Establishment looks to conservatives and just tells them what to do, and they expect conservatives to just do it.  And so, in Buchanan's mind, Tea Partiers are like slaves. 

To the Republican establishment, tea party people are field hands. Their labors are to be recognized and rewarded, but they are to stay off the porch and not presume to sit at the master's table.

Oh, "field hands."  Alright.  So what follows?  Well, Buchanan doesn't seem to be sure.  He's sure that the Republican Establishment isn't fit to govern, as they are all "neoconservatives," which means "evil," these days.  So is there going to be a Tea Party's version of Nat Turner?  (Highly likely: Nat Turner=Sarah Palin. Look out.)  Maybe they're waiting for the Emancipation Proclamation (though, I'd bet they'd have taken that, too, as a breach of the Constitution).  Maybe they'll realize that they aren't really slaves, and they'll leave the plantation and start a commune where they're all equal, and everyone has a say, and everyone gets what they need.  Tea Partiers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Ad hominem tu quoque, Appeal to the People, Bad Explanations, General discussion, Plain Bad Arguments, Things that are false

I’m rubber, you’re glue…

9 Comments

David Limbaugh (yes, brother of that Limbaugh) has a message for all those liberal-types and namby-pamby conservatives who aren't down with the Tea Party: the more you act like or say that Tea Party Conservatives are extremists, that just shows what an extremist you are. 

I'm surely not the only one who notices the persistent efforts of the leftist establishment and certain establishment Republicans to portray mainstream conservatives, especially those inhabiting the tea party movement, as radicals and extremists. The more they push this theme the more they marginalize themselves.

You see, according to Limbaugh, Tea-Partiers can't be extremists, because they believe in everything that is right and good.  And so, those who hold that the people who believe in all things right and good are extremists must themselves be the real extremists:

They reveal a great deal about themselves when they call "extremists" patriotic Americans who believe in the American ideal, lower taxes and fiscal responsibility, originalism, the rule of law, blind justice, equal protection under the law, strong national defense, limiting government to its assigned constitutional functions, the Second Amendment, the nondiscriminatory application of freedom of speech and expression, the free exercise clause, a reasonable — not unduly expansive — interpretation of the establishment and commerce clauses, protection for the unborn, judicial restraint, federalism, the separation of powers, the free market, racial colorblindness, the existence of good and evil in the world, equality of opportunity rather than of outcomes, law and order, immigration control and border protection, motherhood and apple pie.

First of all, anyone who says he believes in apple pie has got to be an extremist, if only because he takes it that in having to avow belief in apple pie, there are people out there who don't.  Who doesn't believe in apple pie?  Anyone?  So who's he up against?   Well, sure, it's a rhetorical flourish… but what on Limbaugh's list isn't?  It's not that anyone in the debate doesn't believe that lower taxes and fiscal responsibility would be great… just if we didn't have to prop up banks that would otherwise drag the country down the drain or find some way to stimulate the economy in a way that doesn't take advantage of the fact that so many are suffering.  Who's against the rule of law, blind justice, freedom of expression and speech, free exercise of religion?  Who doesn't believe in real goods, real evils? Anybody?  Really, it's all a long list of stuff nobody really rejects, well, except Originalism and the stuff about the unborn.  But reasonable people disagree about those things.  Ah, but here's the rub: Tea Partiers have a quick tendency to use terms like 'fascism' or 'tyranny' or 'socialism' or 'communism' to describe those who disagree with them on the details.  That's what makes them extremists — they refuse to acknowledge that those with whom they disagree have good intentions, reasons, a love for their country, and a vision of justice.

Now, here's the problem: if Limbaugh can't see liberals (or even moderate conservatives) as committed to blind justice, free exercise, and fiscal responsibility, too, regardless of how they come down on originalism and abortion, then isn't that the real face of extremism?

Dana Milbank, ignorance of basic matters of logic

Can and should

8 Comments

We really deserve a better national discourse than the one we have.  Right now, for instance, there is a lot of discussion about the Cordoba House, an Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan, known by many (unfortunately) as the "Ground Zero Mosque."  No one seriously disputes–or rather no one can seriously challenge–the Islamic Community's constitutional right to build wherever they want.  This doesn't mean people won't try this ridiculous line of argument (see this discussion from Scott the other day) or worse.  The real adult discussion must be elsewhere.

On this score, people spend a lot of time drawing a distinction which, it also turns out, no one seriously disputes.  Just because one can build an Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan, they say, does not entail that one should.  However, just because one can make such an obvious distinction does not entail that the distinction has any bearing on this particular issue.  Normally, when one makes a distinction between can and should what ought to follow is a series of reasons why not.  I'm still waiting.  For good ones anyway.  Someone help me.

To be honest, I have a fairly settled opinion on this matter–I don't personally see the problem.  But I'm concerned that I'm missing some argumentative nuance, so I really wonder what the argument against the Cordoba House is.

Let's exclude all of the arguments which assert stuff that's false (Muslims build F-U mosques at the site of their victories, Sharia Sharia Sharia, etc.).  That stuff is ludicrous.  What is left? 

What about the sacred space of Ground Zero?  Well, (1) it's not located at Ground Zero; (2) It was a Burlington Coat Factory; (3) the area also hosts strip joints, bars, and wagering facilities; (4) Ground Zero itself will be a commercial building; (5) non-terrorist Muslims died in the 9/11 attacks (and in the subsequent terrorist conflict).

What about the feelings of the survivors and their families?  Gee, (1) they're mistaken about who is responsible for the 9/11 attacks; (2) they don't have sole title to have hurt feelings–see above, Muslims were killed too; (3) nothing about the proposed center celebrates the terrorist attacks, on the contrary, it pays homage to the memory of those who died.

Nothing, as far as I can tell (if you can, however, you're welcome to say so in the comments).  Now just as an illustration of how debased we have become on this point.  Dana Milbank, newish permanent columnist on the Washington Post's Opinion Page, finds something to gripe about:

He claims he wishes to improve the standing of Muslims in the United States, to build understanding between religions, and to enhance the reputation of America in the Muslim world. But in the weeks since he — unintentionally, he says — set off an international conflagration over his plans to build an Islamic center near the scene of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in New York, he has set back all three of his goals.

Still, there is another cause that has flourished during the controversy — that of Feisal Abdul Rauf. Here he is on the Larry King show; there he is writing an op-ed in the New York Times; that's him, again, on ABC's This Week. On Monday morning, he addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (I listened in via conference call), offering many thoughts on what appears to be his favorite topic.   

It just gets worse.  Milbank apparently takes issue with Rauf because he has attempted to defend his decision to locate the Cordoba House in lower Manhattan.  He can only defend himself by defending himself.  Seriously.  Marvel at the snide insinuation that Rauf has been self-aggrandizingly provocative.  Let's put Milbank's moronic point in a much less charitable way:

you're only defending yourself and your decisions because you've been attacked.

If someone knows another way to defend oneself then I'm all ears.  But this is the mind of the contrarian.  There are to my mind (again, if there are, tell me) no arguments against Rauf's Cordoba House.  None.  But that's not going to stop Milbank from thinking outside of the box.

See also.

General discussion, Plain Bad Arguments, Religion, Things that are false

Not the First Amendment I Know

8 Comments

Over at the American Spectator, George Neumayr is arguing that the First Amendment does not protect the building of the "Ground Zero Mosque" or the burning of Korans. 

The truth is that the First Amendment protects neither the Ground Zero mosque nor Jones's burning of copies of the Koran. How do we know this? Because under the real First Amendment, the one written by the Founding Fathers, local communities within states were perfectly free to pass laws prohibiting the construction of particular religious buildings or pass laws that banned book burnings.

In fact, on his interpretation, the First Amendment should protect us against the "tyranny of the minorities" when it comes to religious matters.  His case is that because the various states had preferred state churches when they adopted the Constitution, there's no way that the First Amendment could prevent explicit state preferences for religion:

Six of the thirteen states that signed the Constitution ran established churches. It is a historical fact that the First Amendment was written not to suppress those state churches but to protect them. Those six states would have never signed the Constitution otherwise.

This is an interesting and promising point, one that deserves some consideration.  The rule restricts, as stated, Congress, not other legislative bodies or the executive branch.  But for a very long time, the restrictions on Congress here were taken to be exemplary for how the rest of all governing bodies and governmental executives were to conduct themselves in the US.  Taking it otherwise now contradicts stare decisis about the Constitution.  Moreover, it runs counter to what the 'free exercise' clause is supposed to protect.  In fact, a state must show compelling interest in restricting any religious expression.  So what kind of interest does the state have here?

The notion that the First Amendment requires individual states to treat all religious believers equally was invented out of thin air by judicial activists. . . . The rejection of the real Constitution for the phony "living" one explains today's tyranny of the minority. That tyranny has assumed ironically divergent forms in recent days. In New York City, a majority stands aghast as a group of Muslims tries to build a mosque within blocks of the World Trade Center ruins. In Florida, the majority stands appalled but idle before the pastor of a tiny church who launches an "International Burn-a-Koran Day." Both incidents are, in varying degrees, acts of gross and pointless incivility that do  not truly enjoy constitutional protections, but all public officials can mumble in the face of them is the cliché du jour that Americans have a "right to be wrong."

Wow. To say that actions that are gross and uncivil do not deserve First Amendment protection is just about tantamount to saying that you don't understand the First Amendment, isn't it?  Seriously, most of the stuff in The American Spectator would fail that test, wouldn't it?   Moreover, I will never be able to wrap my head around the idea that Constitutions are written to prevent tyrranies of minorities in a democracy.   Again, saying those sorts of things should be an easy tell that someone doesn't understand what they're talking about.