E.J.Dionne

The surface

The right wing editorial squad does the kind of thing whose absence we academic types constantly lament–they stake out positions and they defend them with arguments. However often these arguments rely on invented facts and specious logical connections (such as this one–can you find any?), at least they try. In major newspapers, almost no one on the left or center even tries to match that bloodthirsty zeal for rational or pseudo-rational discourse.

While his colleagues on the right line up reasons for supporting Bush’s policies (or more often simply rejecting the opposition to them), E.J.Dionne writes a second order review of the style–not mind you the content–of Jim Webb’s opposition speech:

>Like him or not, Ronald (“Tear Down This Wall”) Reagan spoke in a clean, clear prose that almost always left listeners with a sense that he stood for something.

>It may thus be no accident that Jim Webb, Virginia’s new Democratic senator, was once a Reaganite.

This is how he begins another second-order political column. Rather than supporting or criticizing the content of Webb’s presentation, Dionne talks about the talking. This is why Dionne doesn’t belong on the same page as George Will and Charles Krauthammer. And this is why we almost never talk about these “liberal” types. They just don’t make arguments. If you want liberal arguments, you have to go to the blogs. Why not start here.

Op-Eds and other opinions, Straw Man, Thomas Friedman

Correspondents theory

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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.

More reprehensible than Cheney’s junior high rhetoric is Tom Friedman’s failure to come to grips with the reality of his poor judgment. The people who opposed the Iraq war as a disastrous experiment in nation-building or nation-obliterating had good reasons for their opposition. And they were right. The latter counting most of all. About their view this is what Friedman says in a recent NPR interview:

>FRIEDMAN: Look, I understand people who opposed the war. Some opposed it for military reasons, because they’re against war, some opposed it because they hate George Bush, some opposed it because they didn’t believe Arabs are capable of democracy. I wasn’t in that group. I really believed that finding a different kind of politics in collaboration with people in that region was a really important project.

>ASHBROOK: And do you really believe –

>FRIEDMAN: I’m really sorry. Next time — Next time Ishwar [caller], I promise, I really promise, I’ll be a better liberal. I’ll not in any way support any effort to bring democracy to a country ruled by an oil-backed tyranny. I promise I will never do that again. I promise I’ll be a better liberal. I will view the prospect of Arabs forging a democracy as utterly impossible. They’re incapable of democracy. I agree with you on that now.

>ASHBROOK: You’re going to sarcasm. We can feel you’ve taken your licks on this.

Hasn’t cost him him any of his media credibility however.

Formal Fallacies, Politicians

The new literalism

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And you thought the old literalism was bad (courtesy of Crooks and Liars):

>Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it [habeas corpus] away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

>Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn’t say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

On that reading of the Constitution, they’re are no rights that are not positively expressed: You might have thought you had a right to free speech, for instance:

>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

But on Gonzales’s interpretation, you don’t have a right to these things. Congress just can’t “abridge” them.

Dinesh D'Souza, George Will

It’s not so hard, it it?

If one wants to laugh (or cry) than one can read Dinesh D’Souza‘s op-ed in the LA Times (home of another logic and fact-challenged op-ed writer, Jonah Goldberg). Compare the op-ed’s falsified version of history (Clinton wasn’t tough enough on terrorists) to his book’s making common cause with the terrorists.

In sunnier matters, today George Will writes one of his bio-pieces: usually a flattering series of quotes about a person he likes. They’re often harmless, practically always about some conservative, and they usually contain some Rush Limbaugh style dig at “liberalism” (a view Will thinks synonymous with communism). Not today. As a matter of fact, today’s subject is Barney Frank, Massachusetts uberliberal. What stands out today is the fact that Will takes seriously the idea that Frank has an argument for his view. He doesn’t by any means endorse Frank’s view, but he allows for the possibility that Frank has reasons for the criticisms he levels at income distribution:

>Frank may be the most liberal member of Congress. His thinking is what today’s liberalism looks like when organized by a first-class mind. He thinks he discerns cultural contradictions of conservatism: Some conservative policies — free trade and tax and other policies that (he thinks) widen income inequalities — undermine support for other conservative policies. When capitalism’s “creative destruction,” intensified by globalization, churns the labor market and deepens the insecurities of millions of families, conservatives should not be surprised by the collapse of public support for free trade and an immigration policy adequate to the economy’s needs.

Will doesn’t assess the merits of this position other than to grant that it’s an argument worth considering on its merits. If this shows anything, it shows that it’s not that hard to exercise a little charity. Not hard at all.

Ad Hominem, Op-Eds and other opinions

Criticizing an icon

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“It’s hard” Deborah Lipstadt writes in today’s Post, “to criticize an icon.” Not really. It’s only hard if you confuse the icon with the icon’s argument, as she has in an abysmal op-ed that adds nothing of substance to the controversy surrounding Jimmy Carter’s recent book about peace in the Middle East, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. The reason this review adds nothing of substance lies in its insistence on ignoring the kinds of things that make claims such as Carter’s wrong, such as errors of fact and errors of reasoning. On the former Ms.Lipstadt writes, “Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book.”

But it’s easy to criticize this review. Here are two examples.

Lipstadt criticizes Carter for not discussing the Holocaust in his book about Israel and Palestine. But the President who actually attempted to do something about peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the President who signed the legislation creating the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., does not need to establish his credibility on Holocaust related questions. Besides, his failure to mention the Holocaust in a book about the current state of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians doesn’t constitute some kind of gross oversight–it represents rather a focus on questions relevant to the treatment of the Palestinians, who were not Nazis in a past life. Whatever current idiocy issues forth from the mouth of Iran’s Prime Minister Ahmadinejad or Hamas or Saddam or whoever is a separate matter from the Nazi Holocaust.

Second, Lipstadt damns Israel with faint praise:

>Carter’s minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as “one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation” in the world. When the interviewer asked “Worse than Rwanda?” Carter said that he did not want to discuss the “ancient history” of Rwanda.

Well, Rwanda was horrible. So probably no. And that’s a dumb thing to say about Rwanda. But it’s dumbness however colossal doesn’t do anything to excuse Israel. She only makes it worse when she mentions Darfur:

>To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let’s say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians’ situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?

No, let’s say it’s not equivalent–it’s only half as bad. It’s failure not to be as bad as Darfur doesn’t get Israel off the hook, and it doesn’t meant that Carter is wrong to claim that the policies of the state of Israel violate human rights.

It would be pointless here to go into Lipstadt’s accusations of anti-semitism willing or not against Jimmy Carter for his criticisms of the media. I’ll let Eric Alterman do that for me.

And if you read that, you’ll notice that Alterman doesn’t like the book either–but it least he talks about the book: “to tell you the truth, it’s not much of a book. I looked for a segment I could excerpt on my website and couldn’t find anything that was really worthy. It’s simplistic and homiletic and gives only part of the story most of the time. Jimmy Carter is in some ways a great man, and in almost all ways a good man, but he’s not much of a historian.”

**minor edits for clarity–3:08pm.

Op-Eds and other opinions, Plain Bad Arguments

There are good arguments on both sides

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The cop-out position frequently observed in student writing goes something like this: “there are good arguments on both sides, so in the end, who is to say. . .”. But the only time in the history of philosophy where there were good arguments on both sides was the medieval debate about the eternity of the world. The Philosopher and many of his followers held by reason that it was eternal; Scripture teaches that it was created in time. Who is to judge?

Back here on earth, Fred Hiatt sees good arguments on both sides of a more mundane issue: who uses the troops as political props? He writes:

>The truth is, every side in the war debate uses the troops for political gain. When Bush tearfully presents the Medal of Honor to the family of a slain war hero the morning after announcing his latest strategy for Iraq, then flies off to Fort Benning, he is using the troops as props. Democrats didn’t make the absence of body armor a key campaign issue until they had done a lot of poll-testing.

Hiatt puts three activities in the same category: (1) a tearful Medal of Honor award ceremony; (2) speeches before captive audiences; (3) arguments in favor of body-armor for the troops who are really being shot at. Of these only the last has direct application to the reality of the welfare of the troops. And poll-tested or not, no soldier ought to be sent into battle with inadequate body-armor (when better is available). So, arguments about the welfare of the troops don’t belong in the same category as arguments in front of the troops (but not about them). In the first two cases they are props; in the third they are the subject of the debate. In all fairness, of course, no one would suggest that the awarding of the Medal of Honor was not genuine. It’s just a different matter from the current and future welfare of those in harm’s way. When things such as these don’t belong to the same category, you can’t compare them and claim that there are good arguments on both sides and so. . .

>[a]s to the germaneness of the president’s tears or Barbara Boxer’s outrage, Americans can form their own judgments. . .

Op-Eds and other opinions, Plain Bad Arguments

Timed opposition

In today’s Washington Post, Michael O’Hanlon writes:

>However mediocre its prospects, each main element of the president’s plan has some logic behind it. On the military surge itself, critics of the administration’s Iraq policy have consistently argued that the United States never deployed enough soldiers and Marines to Iraq. Now Bush has essentially conceded his critics’ points. To be sure, adding 21,500 American troops (and having them conduct classic counterinsurgency operations) is not a huge change and may be too late.

And he inexplicably concludes from this:

>But it would still be counterintuitive for the president’s critics to prevent him from carrying out the very policy they have collectively recommended.

The president’s critics have offered alternative policies–years ago when such policies had an application. These policy recommendations were time-specific; they were relative to the conditions prior to the previous attempts at “surging” troops. O’Hanlon cannot cite the recommendation abstractly or atemporally as evidence the president’s policy has some logic behind it. People in the past have recommended more troops. But conditions were different. By reacting now, the president has demonstrated his failure to listen to his critics. Not the opposite.

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

The difference if makes

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

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

this:

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

And this:

>Christopher Reeve just passed away. And America just lost a great champion for this cause. Somebody who is a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through the tragedy. Well, if we can do the work that we can do in this country — the work we will do when John Kerry is president — people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.

How many ways are these different?

General discussion

The banana nightmare again

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The comments on the previous post were to interesting. What sparked my question about the meaning of “faith” and its distinction from belief was the following (again from the Washington Post religion discussion).

>Too Soon For Genuine Believer-Atheist Dialogue?

>When I became an atheist during my first year of college (thanks to my leftover high school obsession with Ayn Rand, and subsequent introduction to Sartre and Camus), I talked about the utter absurdity of believing in a divinity to anyone who cared to listen, and to a number of others (including my Catholic mother) who did not.

>I was as zealous in my atheism as a new convert in her chosen faith.

>Atheism is a belief system like any other—a religion of sorts in its own right. Dialogue between different believers is possible only when each person (or group) is not only ready to leave their unbridled enthusiasm for personal convictions aside, at least for a time and for the purposes of conversation, but also when each party concludes that a dialogue has value.

>Dialogue between atheists and believers is no different than dialogue between members of two different faith traditions. If both parties come to the table, as scholar Sandra Schneiders suggests, “as onto a field of battle,” with one’s “tradition as shield against heresy or paganism or, worse yet, as a sword with which to vanquish the other,” then open, productive conversation is impossible. If each party enters “undefended,” however—not altogether without their belief system, but with the conviction that conversation is not to destroy or even best the other’s thinking and rather to find common ground and exchange what is of consequence—then true, productive dialogue has a solid foundation.

>In the initial fervor of my atheism, I entered all conversation about faith with swords blazing—in much the same (and unfortunate) style of The O’Reilly Factor,where people come to the table not for dialogue, but for war. It was a good while before the fires of my atheism died down enough for me to a) be willing to truly listen to another side of the conversation, and b) desire the dialogue itself because it might be important to engage it.

>The perception that atheism is enjoying a kind of “vogue” at the moment comes only from the fact that Sam Harris’s The End of Faith and most recently Letter to a Christian Nation, coupled with Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, each have enjoyed a healthy stay on the bestseller list. But good atheist reads have long been widely available and are wildly popular in the classroom—anything by Sartre or Ayn Rand will do—and many a college student boasts a well-worn copy of some classic atheistic text or other (The Fountainhead is my personal favorite).

>Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation implies a desire for dialogue in its very format. A letter is an address, an attempt to grasp the attention of another party. In this case it appears as a plea for Christians to attend a worldview distinct from their own. Whether or not Mr. Harris has garnered the attention of this intended audience, and in a way that’s productive, not condescending, is another question. Most people I know who are purchasing Harris’s books (and Dawkins’ for that matter) are devout atheists themselves, excited to finally see their belief system get some popular press.

>Whether we, as a country, are not only ready but desirous of this sort of “inter-religious” conversation, as true dialogue and not as a standoff between two irreconcilable parties, remains to be seen.

Let’s assume this was posted as a comment to the previous discussion–comments anyone? Again, Happy New Year.

Op-Eds and other opinions, Plain Bad Arguments

Let it ride

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Those of you who find religion interesting might find the following piece by Cal Thomas worth a look.

>The Atheist Wager

>I wonder about the question. Why is it “in vogue” to disbelieve in a Creator of the universe, who loves us and wants to have a relationship with us and not “in vogue” to believe?

>Anyway, of course I have conversations with atheists everyday, though I do not always know of their unbelief unless they tell me. We can talk about everything, or nothing. I know some atheists who are pro-life (though they have an inadequate base for being so). That’s because if God is not the Author of life, then we are evolutionary accidents who may treat each other as we please.

>In conversing with an atheist, it is important to understand that such a person will never be brought to faith by information alone, because the same information is available to everyone. If information were sufficient to make a believer out of an atheist, then all would believe.

>It takes more faith not to believe in God than to believe in Him. It is also intellectually lazy. You have to believe the vastness of the universe “happened” without a Designer and that unique things like fingerprints and snowflakes occurred by pure chance.

>An atheist wagers his or her present and eternal future that he or she is right. If the atheist is right and there is no God, there are no consequences. But if the atheist is wrong and there is a God and a Heaven for those who come to Him on His terms, and a Hell for those who reject Him, then that has the most important consequences.

>I do not have the power to persuade anyone that God is, but I can demonstrate the difference He has made in my life and relationships – including with atheists – and pray that the One who brought me to belief will do so with them.

We’re not going to comment, as many have already on the original site.

Happy New to our readers.

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