Category Archives: Fallacies of ambiguity

Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem tu quoque, False Dichotomy, General discussion, Inexplicable, Straw Man

He who denied it supplied it

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I have a kind of a general rule here I stick by most of the time: the people worthy of criticism are people who can plausibly be said to have some effect on the opinions of a non-ideological set of people.  However right wing George Will is, many people (except Kramer) find him "intelligent"; so his arguments and factual assertions to them are well grounded and worth considering.  In a similar fashion, many conservative or moderate readers, will think Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen represent decisive liberal voices.  So, when those two jokers come out in favor of the latest Mid-East policy disaster, then people who oppose it must be really crazy.  

I generally avoid (not always however!) ridiculously ideological venues such as the Wall Street Journal or the National Revue, I mean "Review."  I'm sure they have some role in the debate, but they get picked apart by other more competent people than me, and their arguments are mostly directed at inflaming the passions of the converted.

Just for fun, however, let's examine the following bit of ridiculousness from Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal.  A propos of Obama's "socialism" he writes:

Don't expect "Capitalism" to make the White House theater.

The movie is largely a paean to plaintiffs lawyers and unions, who alas depend on evil capitalism for their incomes. Still, it's been noted that "Capitalism" slams Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd for being one of the unseemliest friends of Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide Financial, the famous subprime toxic waste site.

In fact, Mr. Moore holds up to ridicule a Who's Who of notable Democrats for selling out to the bankers: Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin. At this point in Mr. Moore's narrative, all hope is lost, sinking beneath satanic capitalism.

But something happened, the movie says, that no one saw coming. "Change is what's happening." We are introduced to the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama (whose post-election supervisory link to the unseemly Geithner and Summers goes unremarked).

Of all the issues raised in the two-year campaign, Mr. Moore picks one, the famous charge that will not die: "Obama is a socialist."

Unlike the president, Mr. Moore doesn't duck. "The more they called Obama a socialist," he says, "the more he rose in the polls."

Michael Moore is a progressive saint. If he believes Barack Obama is a socialist camouflaged inside a Brioni suit, so must many of his fellow progressives.

This matters because the president's confused ideological identity has become an impediment to passing his agenda.

He says his health-care bill is not a Trojan horse for a Canadian-style single-payer system, but then feels forced to appear on five Sunday talk shows to prove otherwise; or he plants white-coated docs like plastic flamingos on the White House lawn.

On the first September anniversary of the end of Wall Street as we know it, Mr. Obama stood in the Federal Hall on Wall Street to say, "I've always been a strong believer in the power of the free market." Only a therapist could explain why some people say, "I've always been . . ."

You get a little of the ad hominem tu quoque in their at the opening (with a bit of false dichotomy–either capitalism or socialism are the only apparent choices), and some strange Michael Moore says "socialist" so ergo ipso fatso it must be true that many Obama supporters think he is (therefore Obama must be. . .).  The real silliness of this argument, however, consists in the claim that answering straw men attacks on your position means they are true.

That's a kind of double sophistry: you call someone a name, and then claim you're justified if the person bothers to tell you that you're calling her a name.  Why would she respond if it weren't true?

Equivocation, General discussion, Michael Gerson

Can’t get no satisfaction

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Equivocation occurs when you fudge on the meaning of a key term.  Say, for instance, you want to say that there is no war in Afghanistan because "wars" must be declared, therefore, etc.  If you wanted to apply similarly twisted logic to the health care crisis, you might argue as Michael Gerson has done:

And so Barack Obama's address to Congress on health care, at a minimum, must answer the question: What is the crisis? When individuals can't get needed health care, it is certainly a crisis for them. This, Obama might argue, creates moral responsibilities for the rest of us to help. But this would argue for a more incremental approach, adding coverage for the working poor instead of remaking the American health system for everyone.

The overwhelming majority of Americans, by the definition of denied care, do not face a health-care crisis. Most polls show that about 80 percent are "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with their health plans. Those in the greatest need are often the most satisfied — 90 percent of insured Americans who suffered serious illnesses are satisfied with their health care. According to a study published by the Cato Institute, a very small percentage — even of the uninsured — are "dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied" with the health care they get in other ways. On health care, the American public brims with satisfaction — though most are concerned about rising costs.

So perhaps this is the crisis: rising costs that will eventually overwhelm state and federal budgets and consume more and more of individual paychecks. But this is precisely the area where current Democratic approaches are least credible. Obama abandoned his pledge to reduce the government's health costs long ago; now he aims only at budget neutrality. But every pending health-reform bill in Congress would increase both short- and long-term deficits, failing even on Obama's modified terms. Americans get the joke. While Obama has made cost control a centerpiece of his public message, only about 20 percent of Americans, in one poll, believe Obama will keep his promise not to increase the deficit with health reform.

This is very very confused.  According to Gerson, a "crisis" means when people are "dissatisfied" with their health care.  People may indeed be satisfied with their health care on an individual level–they like the nurses and doctors who take care of them–but that is rather different from whether the system, the way health care is paid for, packaged, and delivered is in crisis or not.  That's not a question of perception at the individual level.  Most people seem to understand that and support health care system reform.

Indeed, had Gerson read the article he cites as evidence for his position, he would have noticed the following:

The reason for the apparent paradox is that even though most people are satisfied with their insurance, they harbor deep concerns about losing their coverage or their ability to afford it and medical care if costs continue rising. 

I have to wonder whether this shift in focus in the debate is not intentional.  Every adult knows what the issue at hand is.  It's not whether people like their doctors, or whether they like their current insurance coverage (when they have it).  

We have been talking about this issue for almost one hundred years in this country.  Other countries have figured out that you can get more, pay less, not euthanize your grandmother, and continue to maintain access to clinics that do not allow poor people.

Begging the Question, Lack of Evidence, Op-Eds and other opinions, Plain Bad Arguments

Deny or disparage

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This op-ed by John Mackey, CEO of whole foods, has caused somewhat of a stir.  A bunch of people decided to boycott his store (and use his website to do so).  I prefer the raw capitalism of buying from the actual grower–but I guess that makes me some kind of communist.  Anyway, this morning I ran across a couple of tepid defenses of Mackey's op-ed.  Here, Mary Schmich in the Chicago Tribune, and here the newly rejuvenated Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post.

Mackey lays out a series of proposals that address access to health insurance (but don't guarantee it); the only one aimed at reducing costs (aside from being healthy) is tort reform.  I think tort reform is a dubious strategy for a libertarian–if you have any rights at all, you have a right to sue people for contract breech or for failure to perform up to a certain standard.  There is empirical research of a kind on that point, however, which would at least address the question as to whether tort reform would have any effect on medical costs.  Once that question is resolved, however, one would have to balance one's right to sue an incompetent doctor against the communist benefits of lowering health care costs across the board.  

In addition to offering these and other points, he runs some counter arguments against "socialism."  Since no one is offering socialism, or even socialized medicine (if you don't know that, step away from the microphone at the town hall, go to the local library [for free!] and read some newspapers) I can hardly applaud his courage.  

He runs a version of the "rights" argument as well.  I don't know where people pick up these arguments, but it's really silly.  For some reason people have framed this discussion as one about rights–namely about the rights they're losing in having greater access to health care.  Perhaps this explains why people show up at town hall meetings with guns.  As Wyatt Cenac on the Daily Show indicated yesterday, that makes about as much sense as showing up drunk (which is another thing you have a right to do).

Here, in any case, is Mackey's right's argument:

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

The idea that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (again–not a ruling legal document!) enumerate all of our "intrinsic" rights is silly.  It's silly because, as people should never tire of pointing out, the Constitution, on a careful reading (slightly more careful than Mackey's) says:

Amendment 9 – Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

There you have it folks.  A careful reading of the Constitution shows that you may have more rights than the Constitution says.

One more obvious point.  I think no one could seriously argue that the Constitution contains all intrinsic rights, such that their not being mentioned (see above, 9th Amendment) is evidence of their not existing.  That would be circular!

Begging the Question, Equivocation, Op-Eds and other opinions, Straw Man

If only my friend Euthyphro were here

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I wandered into this contribution on the Huffington Post.  It argues, in a comically bad fashion, that health care is not a "right."  It also argues that the government is bad.  In any case, you know your critical faculties will not be too challenged when you read:

Historically, the huge rise in health care costs began in the 1960s, when Medicare and other programs threw billions of dollars into the industry. Fiscally, Medicare is approaching monumental insolvency, with liabilities in the range of twenty-trillion dollars. To create another bureaucratic labyrinth now — which advocates are proud to say will cost only a trillion dollars over ten years — all but guarantees higher prices, and a greater crisis in the next decade.

Will the advocates of a "bureaucratic labyrinth," different from the bureaucratic labyrinth of the cable TV company or your own private health insurer, please raise their hands.  So no one does.  The fact that this guy had to weasel that one in there gives you the measure of the rest of the piece.

The major problem is yet to come:

The reason is that advocates of government medicine are upholding health care as a moral right. The moral goal of a "right" to health care is blinding people to the cause and effect relationship between government actions and rising prices.

But the very idea that health care — or any good provided by others — is a "right" is a contradiction. The rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence were to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Each of these is a right to act, not a right to things. "To secure these rights governments are instituted," which means to secure the rights of each person to exercise his or her liberty in pursuit of his or her own happiness.

I would say in the first place that there is no evidence that the causal assertion here has any purchase on reality. 

Second, as the asinine invocation of the Declaration of Independence makes clear, the author of this piece doesn't care for a serious discussion of rights.  He's content to assert that the rights enshrined in that particular document are exhaustive.  I think that kind of begs the question.  It assumes, in other words, what is in need of proof.  But I also think his conception of what other people mean by rights suffers from a kind of equivocation.  Maybe they don't mean "rights" in the same way he does.  If they mean something else, which they most certainly do, then he's guilty of an equivocation.  

Does this mean that health care is a right?  No of course not.  Does it mean that it is not, not on this argument.  We deserve a better discussion about health care than the one we are currently getting.  This goes for everyone, of course, but in particular it goes for the opposition.

Begging the Question, Hasty Generalization

Clapham Omnibus

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is the worst thing I've read in a while on health care.  Cataloging its sheer dumbness would be a labor of many days, so I'll just pick one representative argument (commenters are free to provide their own, or, as the case may be, defend the brilliance of the author's insight).  But first some context.  The point  is that there is no right to health care.  It supports these with a series of independent arguments.  Here is one of them:

When the supposed right to health care is widely recognized, as in the United Kingdom, it tends to reduce moral imagination. Whenever I deny the existence of a right to health care to a Briton who asserts it, he replies, “So you think it is all right for people to be left to die in the street?”

When I then ask my interlocutor whether he can think of any reason why people should not be left to die in the street, other than that they have a right to health care, he is generally reduced to silence. He cannot think of one.

I can think of a lot of things wrong with this argument.  In the first place, perhaps Dalrymple (that's the author's name) ought to ask different people from the men on the Clapham omnibus.  Secondly, it's weird that the people he asks always give the same answer and are stumped by the same objection.  Third, Dalrymple's question is adequately answered by the person, who takes it as self-evident that no one should be left to die in the street when someone can do something about it. 

Rights, for the average guy on the Clapham omnibus, are like that.  Ask the average American on the 151 Sheridan whether she has the right to private property, and she will say "yes."  Ask her why it shouldn't be the case that no one should take away her goods for no reason at all and she will stare at you and repeat that she has a right to private property.

The recognition of baseline inalienable rights (so we can say for the sake of argument) does not mean one lacks moral imagination.  If that were the case, the existence of moral imagination would nullify the existence of inalienable rights, since, after all, they lack imagination.

*Thanks to a long time reader and friend of theNonSequitur.com for this tip.

Academics, Equivocation, hollow man, Straw Man, weak man

Profits good

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I'm sure Stephen L. Carter is a smart guy, but his opinion piece in the Washington Post today is unquestionably silly.  Here's how it begins:

A specter is haunting America: the specter of profit. We have become fearful that somewhere, somehow, an evil corporation has found a way to make lots of money.

Ok–who can see the problem?  Is it profits simpliciter (I used the Latin phrase since we're talking about a Yale law professor's thoughts here)?  High profits?  Or, perhaps, are we talking about disproportionately high profits earned when people don't make disproportionately large amounts of money?  I'm confused.  But let's continue.

Flash back three years. In 2006, Exxon Mobil announced the highest profit in the history of American corporate enterprise. Politicians and pundits stumbled over each other to call for an investigation and for some sort of confiscatory tax on the money the company earned. Profit, it seemed, was an evil, but large profit was even worse.

Again, I wonder, was it the simple fact of their making a profit, or was it there making a certain kind of profit.  Those, I think, are different propositions.  And indeed, when one considers the amount of public treasure (US military) spent on making Exxon's private wealth secure, one wonders whether it's fair for Exxon to reap rewards incommensurate with their contribution to the res publica, the public thing (Latin again).

Today, the debate on the overhaul of the health-care system sparks a shiver of deja vu. The leitmotif of the conversation about the coming shape of health insurance is that the villain is the system of private insurance. "For-profit" firms come under constant attack from activists and members of Congress.

Thus, a recent news release from the AFL-CIO began with this evidently alarming fact: "Profits at 10 of the country's largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007." Even had the figures been correct — they weren't — we are seeing the same circus. Profit is the enemy. America could be made pure, if only profit could be purged.

This attitude was wrong in 2006. It is wrong now. High profits are excellent news. When corporate earnings reach record levels, we should be celebrating. The only way a firm can make money is to sell people what they want at a price they are willing to pay. If a firm makes lots of money, lots of people are getting what they want.

Again–profits, high profits, disproportionate profits, and now profits illegitimately gained.  The problem with the high profits of the insurance companies is that they depend on their not paying claims–on their denying people the insurance that they have paid for (or charging a lot for very little).  Further, it's wrong to talk of "price their willing to pay" when it comes to insurance–one typically has little to no choice in the amount one has to pay or to whom one pays it.

This argument is already so bad that it's not worth continuing to criticize it–the rest goes on to argue that profit is good (including price gouging during natural disasters!).  But no one, save for a few college socialists (and really not even them) denies that profit simpliciter is a positive thing.  They just hold that profits of certain types and quantities are not necessarily a good thing–case in point, health insurance.  The confusion at the beginning makes this argument a case of equivocation, but the fact that the argument sets up a non-existent opponent makes it a very nice case of a hollow man (with a bit of weak man and classic straw man).  In other words, awesome take down, professor Carter, of an argument no one has seriously made.

Begging the Question, General discussion, Michael Gerson

Impartiality

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When you don't have an argument, you can always just beg the question:

As a young senator involved in judicial nomination debates, Obama showed no deference to presidential choices. Instead, he developed a theory that Supreme Court justices should favor socially unfavored groups. He opposed John Roberts for using his skills "on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak." He criticized Samuel Alito for siding with "the powerful against the powerless." Obama made these distinguished judges sound monstrous because they stood for the impartial application of the law.

That's Michael Gerson.  The jeune Obama has obviously alleged that the judges were "partial" to the interests of the powerful.  Obama is not, in fact, referring to Roberts's behavior as a judge.  But that's another point.  If one reads the whole passage (and not just the heavily elided selection featured on right-wing blogs), Obama addresses Gerson's "impartial application of the law" objection:

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. Moreover, he seems to have the comportment and the temperament that makes for a good judge. He is humble, he is personally decent, and he appears to be respectful of different points of view. It is absolutely clear to me that Judge Roberts truly loves the law. He couldn't have achieved his excellent record as an advocate before the Supreme Court without that passion for the law, and it became apparent to me in our conversation that he does, in fact, deeply respect the basic precepts that go into deciding 95 percent of the cases that come before the Federal court — adherence to precedence, a certain modesty in reading statutes and constitutional text, a respect for procedural regularity, and an impartiality in presiding over the adversarial system. All of these characteristics make me want to vote for Judge Roberts. 

The problem I face — a problem that has been voiced by some of my other colleagues, both those who are voting for Mr. Roberts and those who are voting against Mr. Roberts — is that while adherence to legal precedent and rules of statutory or constitutional construction will dispose of 95 percent of the cases that come before a court, so that both a Scalia and a Ginsburg will arrive at the same place most of the time on those 95 percent of the cases — what matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult. In those cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy.

In those 5 percent of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point. The language of the statute will not be perfectly clear. Legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision. In those circumstances, your decisions about whether affirmative action is an appropriate response to the history of discrimination in this country or whether a general right of privacy encompasses a more specific right of women to control their reproductive decisions or whether the commerce clause empowers Congress to speak on those issues of broad national concern that may be only tangentially related to what is easily defined as interstate commerce, whether a person who is disabled has the right to be accommodated so they can work alongside those who are nondisabled — in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart.

I talked to Judge Roberts about this. Judge Roberts confessed that, unlike maybe professional politicians, it is not easy for him to talk about his values and his deeper feelings. That is not how he is trained. He did say he doesn't like bullies and has always viewed the law as a way of evening out the playing field between the strong and the weak.

I was impressed with that statement because I view the law in much the same way. The problem I had is that when I examined Judge Roberts' record and history of public service, it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak. In his work in the White House and the Solicitor General's Office, he seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process. In these same positions, he seemed dismissive of the concerns that it is harder to make it in this world and in this economy when you are a woman rather than a man.

As I tell my Critical Thinking class, it's just not that hard.  I just don't understand why Gerson can't do what every phil 101 student must do in order to earn a C.

Equivocation, Stanley Fish

In what sense?

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"In what sense" has got to be one of the most basic philosophical questions.  It aims, at the very least, to get clear about what we're talking about.  Because, as it turns out, words and concepts and such have different senses.  Justice, for instance, seems to mean different things.  And it would be important to avoid obvious equivocations.  So, for instance, if I am talking about a normative notion of justice, and you come back at me with empirical observations about the criminal justice system, I will be confused.  This seems to be a really straightforward point.  But alas.  Here's Stanley Fish, The New York Times' idea of an intellectual:

I don’t think that’s the way it happens or could happen. Let’s say (to give a humble example from literary studies) that there is a dispute about the authorship of a poem. A party to the dispute might perform comparative analyses of the writings of rival candidates, examine letters and personal libraries, research the records of printers and publishers, look at the history of reception, etc. Everyone who engages in the dispute will do his or her work in relation to well-established notions of what counts as evidence for authorship and accepted criteria for determining whether or not the evidence marshaled is persuasive.

But suppose, you think (in the manner of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault) that the idea of the individual author is a myth that emerges alongside the valorization of property and property rights so central to Enlightenment thought? Suppose you believe that the so-called author is not the source of the words to which he signs his name, but is instead merely a site transversed by meanings neither he nor any other so-called “individual” originates? (“Writing,” says Barthes, “is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin.”)

I am not affirming this view, which has religious (“not me, but my master in me”) and secular (it is the age or zeitgeist that speaks) versions. I am just observing that there are many who hold it, and that for those who do the evidence provided by printers’ records or letters or library holdings will not be evidence at all; for they do not believe in the existence of the entity — the conclusively identified individual author — it aspires to be evidence of. If no one wrote the poem in the sense assumed by the effort to fix authorship, that effort is without a point and the adducing of evidence in the absence of something to be proved will seem quixotic and even perverse.

The example might seem to be to the side of the (supposed) tension between faith and reason, but it is, I believe, generalizable. Evidence, understood as something that can be pointed to, is never an independent feature of the world. Rather, evidence comes into view (or doesn’t) in the light of assumptions – there are authors or there aren’t — that produce the field of inquiry in the context of which (and only in the context of which) something can appear as evidence.

Holy Crap.  The "valorization" of property has an empirical component ("your property is valorized at less than it was valorized at before") and a normative component ("your property ought to be valorized at more than it was before") and a conceptual component (your property is valorizable), among other components.  The question for the literary studies people is whether some person x wrote some poem y.  This is an empirically verifiable fact–just ask Foucault's estate.  The question for Foucault, I take it, is whether such knowledge will tell us anything about anything (well, in particular, about the "meaning" of the poem.  They're different questions which Stanley Fish has hopelessly confused.

And he has confused these two different sorts of claim in order further to confuse the difference between the methods of faith and the methods of science.  They're not, to reorient the analogy where it should (!) be, talking about the same thing.  And to make this all a tomayto-tomahto question of evidence just ignores one pretty basic philosophical question.

General discussion, Hasty Generalization, Richard Cohen, Straw Man, Suppressed Evidence

White whine

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White men can't catch a break these days.  First, the white guy lost the Presidential election, now the winner gets to appoint someone to the Supreme Court.  Though Obama has so far said nothing, this hasn't stopped speculation of the weirdest variety:

 

That's a stock image of an average white guy in a tie (from istockphoto.com), not, as one might have imagined, some shunned potential Supreme Court nominee.  Now Richard Cohen–liberal columnist in the Washington Post–expresses his deep concern over the fate of white men under the impossible burden of affirmative action.  He writes:

As the time approaches for President Obama to choose a successor to Justice David Souter, the term "litmus test" will be heard throughout the land. The White House will deny applying any such thing, but the nominee will undoubtedly be chosen according to where she stands on abortion, unions and other issues beloved by liberals. This is fine with me, but what I want to know is where she stands on Frank Ricci. He's a firefighter.  

What follows is a detailed description of Ricci's case (recently argued before the Supreme Court)–how he's been discriminated against on account of his being white, and so forth.  That may be, and by Cohen's very sorry description of the case, it looks absurd.  But as a general rule absurd arguments do not make it all the way to the Supreme Court, so one might wonder.  But that's not the point anyway.  Cohen seems to take this particularly absurd case as representative for how affirmative action needs to end, since, of course, racism is over and so forth (because "For most Americans, race has become supremely irrelevant. Everyone knows this. Every poll shows this.").

It's worse than this, however, because affirmative action (as demonstrated by Cohen's extreme example) is profoundly unfair in principle (like trying to "square a circle."):

Liberalism, a movement in which I hold a conditional membership, would be wise to get wise to what has happened. Blatant affirmative action always entailed a disturbing and ex post facto changing of the rules — oops, you're white. Sorry, not what we wanted. As a consequence, it was not racists who were punished but all whites. There is no need to cling to such a remedy anymore. There is, though, every need to retain and strengthen anti-discrimination laws, especially in areas such as fire departments, where racial discrimination was once endemic. Sufficient progress has been made to revert to treating individuals as individuals. After all, it is not some amorphous entity called "whites" who will suffer: It is un-lieutenant Ricci.

Bill Clinton tried to square the circle of affirmative action in his "Mend It, Don't End It" speech of 1995. It was a moving and eloquent address in which he recounted his region's history, reminding us of the depth and ferocity of racism in the South and elsewhere. Trouble is, the New Haven case proves that affirmative action was not mended at all. It remains noble in its ends and atrocious in its means, and it now provides Obama the chance to use his own family's history — indeed his own history — to show why it ought to conclude.

Affirmative action was never meant to "punish" racists by excluding them from employment.  This underscores Cohen's failure to grasp both the concept of affirmative and the facts of the case he discusses (his only reference is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by two conservative think-tankers).  One can found more background on the relevant legal questions here.  Without the necessary and obvious context, Cohen's ranting sounds a bit like this.