Category Archives: False Dichotomy

False Dichotomy

Better we didn’t shoot him?

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Jay Homnick at The American Spectator isn't buying the "apotheosis of Obama" narrative he thinks is being told about the operation to take out Osama Bin Laden.  Partly because the target didn't really matter any more. He says:

Osama has been dead for years, of course, in the operational sense. He has not been in the position to lead anything. He was lucky enough to be physically in this world so he could read his own obituary. . . . He turned out to be in a suburban hovel rather than in a feral cave, but the basic reality was just as advertised. Once he went over-the-hill in Tora Bora, he was reduced to watching the reruns of his greatest episodes.

So operationally, it wasn't a high priority to get OBL.  He'd been cut off from the operations.  Ant it seems that when he's giving directions to others, it's more like advice.  Not orders.  And so:

I hate to say this, really I do, but it looks like we have done Zawahiri and Awlaki a huge favor by taking out their dotty old pensioner. They are off the hook of paying sentimental obeisance to the old mullah emeritus, plus as a bonus they get to invoke his martyrdom as a call to arms. Otherwise they might have had to smuggle him back to headquarters someday and deal with him up close.

We've been slowly working out this notion of the false dilemma with only one lemma (the false whatever), and I think this is a good version of it.  Homnick may be right about the consequences of killing OBL, but consequentialist arguments must always be constrastive.  That is, if you make a consequentialist argument against doing X, it must not only be from the bad consequences of doing it but you must show that those consequences are worse than not doing X.

False Dichotomy, Weak Analogy

Donald Effin’ Trump

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Over at National Review Online, Dennis Prager has some important things to say about Donald Trump's choice of words.  Well, what choice of words, first:

The following comments were made in a public speech last week by a man considering running for president of the United States.

On gas prices: We have nobody in Washington that sits back and says, ‘You’re not going to raise that f***ing price.’”

On what he would say as president to China: “Listen, you mother f***ers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent.”

On Iraq: “We build a school, we build a road, they blow up the school, we build another school, we build another road, they blow them up, we build again. In the meantime we can’t get a f***ing school in Brooklyn.”

Ho hum.  The reality is that I love me some F-bomb.  I do object to Trump's sentiments, though.  But it's not the fact that Trump puts some salt on his verbiage, it's the fact that he thinks he can yell at China and say he can tax a trade partner at 25 percent.  Protectionism is great, until you pay for it with their tariffs and so on.  We're in the can with the Chinese, but I'm unsure that this is the solution. Washington doesn't set gas prices, either.  And Iraq?  Anyone who was for the war knew going in it was a 'you break it, you buy it' deal.  And Brooklyners don't need a school for f***ing.  They already know how (joke by amphiboly — like cooking school).  Regardless, Prager has other issues.  Yeah, it's with the dirty words, especially with their use in public.

But there is a world of difference between using an expletive in private and using one in a public speech. For those who do not see the difference, think of the difference between relieving oneself in private and relieving oneself in public. It usually takes a university education and a Leftist worldview not to see the enormous moral distinction between public and private cursing.

One disanalogy: nobody has to clean up a puddle when I tell a dirty joke.  Another: I'll still privately curse in front of my neighbors. One more: some cursing is artistic and is wasted unless it is shared with the world.  I can't help it: It's OK for someone to collect all the dirty language someone else has used.  Fine, fine — I do understand Prager's point, though.  It is unseemly to curse like that.  I get it, and I've even got a university education and everything (read the quote again, if you didn't get that last one).  I'm glad that Prager made sure to get in an unseemly jab at educated elites while chastising a Republican for acting indecently and uncivilly.

If we cannot count on Republicans and conservatives to maintain standards of public decency and civility, to whom shall we look?

Geez. Is this another false dilemma without the other option?

False Dichotomy, Things that are false

Bully for false dilemmas

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Thomas Sowell thinks most of the contemporary rhetoric about school bullying is nonsense.  Empty rhetoric, says he.

There is a lot of talk from many people about bullying in school. The problem is that it is all talk. There is no sign that anybody is going to do anything that is likely to reduce bullying.

The trouble, as Sowell sees it, is that teachers can't decisively respond to bullies in the classroom.  Why is that?  Because the courts are more interested in protecting the rights of the bullies.  And you see, when the courts are all over the teachers, when the government interferes with how discipline in the classroom is handled, nobody can be in charge.  And then there are bullies. 

Might educators abuse their power, if the courts did not step in? Of course they could. Any power exercised by human beings can be abused. But, without the ability to exercise power, there is anarchy.

And so there are two choices: anarchy consequent of judicial meddling to preserve the rights of bullies or . . .  What?

For years, there have been stories in New York and Philadelphia newspapers about black kids beating up Asian classmates. But do not expect anybody to do anything that is likely to put a stop to it.

If these were white kids beating up Hispanic kids, cries of outrage would ring out across the land from the media, the politicians, the churches and civic groups. But it is not politically correct to make a fuss when black kids beat up Asian kids.

I am going to take a shot at what Sowell's suggestion is:  racial profiling for bullying.  Alright, that's crazy.  How about not being worried about the racial politics of identifying violent individuals, regardless of the color of their skin?  That seems plausible, but is that outlawed by the courts?  No.  So that's not a different option. Okay, I don't know what the proposal is. Certainly not about how teachers should run class, now.

Sowell isn't very clear about what he sees as the alternative.  Fine, maybe we can see his alternative in the way he handles a contrast case: 

Britain was once one of the most law-abiding nations on earth. But the reluctance of the left to put some serious punishment on criminals has been carried so far there that only 7 percent of convicted criminals actually spend any time behind bars. Britain has now overtaken the United States in various crime rates.

Ah, so it is the state punishing criminals, but more severely?  How does that have anything to do with teachers in classrooms?  Or bullies?  Now it's about crime rates.  Huh.  Some false dilemmas derive from there being two options posed, but the best third option suppressed.  This false dilemma has one option posed (and rejected), and then no clear alternative offered.  Maybe should be called the 'false whatever-lemma'. 

false trichotomy, hollow man

Grown ups

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People acquainted with media narratives know that the "adults" and the "grown ups" and the "serious people" are very often the Republicans, especially when we're talking about entitlements.  Democrats and their union friends, we're often told, are childish or immature for wanting something–public benefits such as medicare and social security–at no cost.  Click here for a funny illustration of that sorry meme. 

We have something along these lines in this Steve Chapman column from the Chicago Tribune.  The "real world," of course, demands cuts and reforms just like the Republicans want:

After House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., unveiled a plan to overhaul Medicare, Democrats announced that despite its minor flaws, it was a brave and thoughtful attempt to grapple with a serious problem that has been ignored for too long.

Just kidding. They said it was the worst thing they've seen since "Sex and the City 2."

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi accused Ryan of offering "a path to poverty for America's seniors." Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Ryan's proposal would not reform Medicare but "deform it." The White House faulted Ryan for "placing a greater burden on seniors."

The chief outrage, in their minds, is his proposal to restructure Medicare for Americans currently younger than 55 while keeping the old version for older folks. Instead of guaranteeing a certain set of benefits regardless of cost, the government would pay a fixed premium so recipients could choose their own packages.

The other meme is the "brave" or "courageous" meme.  This one, unfortunately, has even been adopted by Democrats.  On the unity of the virtues theory, however, you can't be stupid and courageous, or wrong and courageous. 

Back to the point.  The "reality" meme usually requires that you show that someone else's plan is unrealistic.  You can do that by carefully demonstrating the shortcomings of their views or their presuppositions, or you can do that by misrepresenting them.  The second is faster.  Here's Chapman again:

I have news for people old enough to be thinking about retirement: Your children may love you, but not enough to be taxed into poverty. Ryan's detractors pretend we can go on enjoying the status quo indefinitely. But it's only a matter of time before we hit a fiscal wall, hard.

There are three basic choices. We can keep on just as we have in the past until the program collapses of its own weight. Or we can restrain costs by letting the federal government ration medical care. Some patients would have to wait months or years for procedures now taken for granted — and some wouldn't get them at all. Death panels, anyone?   

"Ryan's detractors" sure seem stupid, don't they?  There's a reason they don't have a name–they don't exist.  They're hollow men.  Whatever you say about the opposition to Ryan, you'll have to admit that they tried to have a discussion about health insurance reform in light of the problems of rising health care costs, an aging population, and, of course, the limitations of the private insurance model.  Whatever you say about them, you cannot say that they embraced the status quo indefinitely. 

One more thing along these lines.  Notice that Chapman considers three options for reforming medicare: (1) do nothing; (2) death panels; (3) Ryan's plan.  That's a false trichotomy.  It's like a false dichotomy, only you add two unworkable choices rather than just one.  Since (1) and (2) are ridiculous, ergo, ipso fatso, (3) is our only realistic option. 

A courageous adult conversation about the realities of health care systems in the industrialized world, however, would consider many other empirically tested options.  Would it be immature to want that?

False Dichotomy, hollow man, Straw Man, weak man

Something had to be done

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Richard Cohen, (allegedly) liberal columnist for the Washington Post, writes a column in favor of the Libyan military intervention.  Unfortunately, he's spent enough time around his right-wing counterparts at that paper to believe that making a rhetorical case against his alleged opponents and their alleged views is sufficient for making an affirmative case for his position.

This is oh so tiresome.  To be clear, however, sometimes making a negative case is sufficient, especially when your view is the presumptive one.  For instance, I'm going to continue believing that the Holocaust happened until the denier positively prove that it didn't.  Debunking the denier in this case is sufficient. 

In the case of military intervention, however, especially lately–thinking of Iraq and Afghanistan–the burden of proof is much much higher.  War of this sort has recently proven very costly for little known benefit.  There exist, in other words, very good reasons in the dialectical atmosphere for not going to war.  If, then, you're going to make a case both for military intervention and against all of those good reasons.  It's not enough, in other words, to make a case against a bunch of real or imagined weak views.

Someone ought to tell Richard Cohen this.  He writes:

We heard some of those same sentiments expressed by opponents of U.S. intervention in Libya. I do not liken the situation there to the imminence of the Holocaust, only the startling willingness of good people to mask their cold indifference with appeals to fiscal prudence or something similar. Commentator after commentator, person after person, told me that the United States had no business interfering in Libya — that it needed an exit strategy or permission from Congress, and that if the United States could not intervene everywhere (Newt Gingrich mentioned Zimbabwe, manufacturing a civil war just for the occasion), then we could not intervene anywhere. This, somehow, gets stated as if were a logical principle — do nothing unless you can do everything.

With the possible exclusion of Newt Gingrich, those unnamed people don't count here–even if they were real.  He continues:

Still, a better question is: How much will it cost to save lives? That, after all, is what this operation is all about — the prospect that Moammar Gaddafi was going to settle the score in the most horrific way imaginable. Based on his record and the clear indication that he is crazy, a bloodbath was in prospect. What should the world have done? Nothing? Squeeze Gaddafi with sanctions, seize his Swiss accounts and padlock his son’s London townhouse? None of these measures would have had immediate impact. Sanctions are a slow-working poison. A bullet was needed.

This shocking indifference to the consequences of doing nothing, or doing something so slowly it was effectively nothing, was suddenly in the air — the so-called realist argument. Sadly, the message was coming from the surprisingly cold heart of liberalism. The Nation magazine, the reliable voice of the American left, put it this way: “Given our massive budget deficits and bloated Pentagon spending, never has there been a better time for America to end its role as global policeman in favor of diplomatic and economic multilateralism.” In other words, we gave at the office.

Arguments — good arguments — can be made in opposition to the Libyan intervention. Maybe it will make things worse. Maybe we’ll get bogged down and have to stay for years. Maybe the rebels are the really bad guys.

On the other hand, lives were clearly at stake and something had to be done. The world could not simply shove its hands in its pockets and stand by as some madman had his way with people in his grip — in spirit, a reprise of the Evian conference. The Libyan intervention established a precedent: There is such a thing as the international community and, as inchoate as it may be, it will insist on certain minimum standards even for dictators: Your people are not yours to kill.   

In light of Cohen's support of the Iraq war ("only a fool or possibly a Frenchman. . . "), he really ought to think twice before writing this sort of crap.  The Nation said a lot more than "we gave at the office."  In fact, in the article he cites (or click here), they make another telling point:

Furthermore, as we should have learned from the Iraq War, the use of military force can have all kinds of unintended consequences. We may be going to war to prevent civilian casualties, but even the most prudent use of air power is incapable of doing that. The likelihood of US or coalition forces killing civilians will only increase if Qaddafi’s troops solidify their hold on Tripoli and other cities; urban warfare is notoriously messy. The UN resolution forbids foreign occupation, so what will we do if Qaddafi hangs on and the conflict settles into a grinding civil war, with all its attendant chaos and bloodshed? Mission creep seems to be an inevitable feature of this kind of intervention.

These are at least worthwhile practical considerations–completely ignored by Cohen in his rush to do something.  Cohen here combines all of the worst traits of the overheated pundit–he makes a negative case when he needs an affirmative one, he invents opponents and gives them stupid arguments, and, when confronted with a live argument, he misrepresents its strength.  

And of course, there's the false dichotomy–something's having to be done doesn't entail you've exhausted your non-military options.  Don't people ever learn?

False Dichotomy, specious comparisons, Things that are false, Weak Analogy

Now that gets me heated

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Christopher Orlet, over at the American Spectator, has a few things to say about what gets him riled up these days.  There aren't many, but two that stand out are:

About the only thing that gets me heated these days is my Bubblespa footbath. (I recommend the model with toe touch control.) That and being told by politicians, professors and anchorwomen how to behave.

No, this is not an ad for footbaths.  At least, I don't think it is. Instead, Orlet is using his  footbath as a way of showing that he's normally calm  —  footbath-excitement is usually tepid.  But being told how to argue breaks that calm.  Even the calm that can be achieved by a footbath.  You see, it's a rhetorical device.  You cast yourself as the minding-your-own-business everyman who loves footbaths, and then you portray yourself as just not being able to stand some imposition on what kind of rhetoric you can use.  How disruptive of our calm lives to be reminded of the importance of civility. 

Again, I'm no great champion of civility.  It is possible to argue well and be mean.  In fact, some matters require that we are mean, especially when the issue is significant and our interlocutors are vicious and in need of shaming.  But there are moral reasons why we must have our defaults set on civility first.  The most important reason is to avoid making the exchange of ideas toxic to the point where even those with good ideas don't want to enter the fray.  In discourse theory we call the outcome of those circumstances "error amplifications" and "hidden profiles" — increased group confidence in erroneous commitments and social pressures against correcting them.  Since we want truth, we've got to make the discussion welcoming.  That's just how it goes, and so the duties of civility must be exercised.

Would Orlet be moved by these sorts of reasons for civiity?  Well, if you sweetened the pot a little:

But men are stubborn animals. We may pretend to be more sensitive … , if it means we might get lucky more often

I see.

Well, what does Orlet think would happen were he to enforce this rule on liberals, too?

Just this morning, I heard someone on NPR say, "We need to really tackle these issues." I was immediately overwhelmed with the desire to sprint down the aisle and clothesline the director of marketing. Unfortunately, she stiff-armed me and rolled on to paydirt, by which I mean the ladies room.

Hm. This is just weird, now.  Golly.  Editors, anyone?

Let's ignore that, for the moment, and see where Orlet sees the requirements of civility leading us:

Since Tucson, editors have been having a "conversation" about banning more words from their newspapers, which pretty soon are going to read like The Poky Little Puppy, containing all 26 politically correct words and no more. . . . [N]ow they have to adopt the language of a tea party. And not The Tea Party either, but a real, doily and lace tea party.

So civil dialogue is like children's literature and tea-party frou-frou.  False analogy, leading to false dilemma.  But given the way that Orlet argues, the alternative might be an improvement.  The Poky Little Puppy isn't on the make with the people he's arguing with, and I don't think you call going to the bathroom 'rolling to paydirt' at a tea party (or in most any company). Maybe some, just a little, civility (that is, civilizing) would be good for Orlet.  But don't tell that to him just yet.  Let him enjoy the footbath.

False Dichotomy, Jonah Goldberg, Specious allegations of fallacy, Straw Man

Now, that’s a strawman!

Jonah Goldberg has a piece defending Lindsey Graham's recent proposal for a Constitutional Amendment (one that would revise the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause so that children born of illegal aliens are not citizens).  More importantly, Goldberg is out to defend our responsibility to revise and interpret the Constitution as the cases demand.  Now, this should come as a surprise to all the conservatives who take themselves to be strict "Constitutionists" — this sounds all too much like the old 'living document' take on the Constitution conservatives hate so much.  Goldberg anticipates this:

...this "living document" argument is a straw man. Of course justices must read the document in the context of an ever-changing world. What else could they do? Ask plaintiffs to wear period garb, talk in 18th-century lingo and only bring cases involving paper money and runaway slaves?

Goldberg's a little confused about straw men, as straw-manning depends on how you portray your opposition, not how obvious your views are.  But his point is reasonable enough — if the options are, on the one hand, seeing the world and the Constitution's relevance through the lenses of 18th Century Yankees and, on the other hand, looking at the world with the judgment of 21st Century Yankees, we should take the 21st Century perspective… given that we're out to deal with 21st Century problems.  So Jonah Goldberg has made a nice point and also has highlighted a straw man argument.  Oh, but then he steps right back into the straw man mode, himself:

When discussing the Constitution on college campuses, students and even professors will object that without a "living constitution," blacks would still be slaves and women wouldn't be allowed to vote. Nonsense. Those indispensable changes to the Constitution came not from judges reading new rights into the document but from Americans lawfully amending it.

Even professors?  Really?  Even professors?  Goldberg owes us at least one name for this charge.  But he provides no documentation, no names, no nothing, just vague allegations of intellectual incompetence.  Nobody said that living document interpretation of the Constitution was the solution to those things — we had Constitutional Amendments to solve those problems.  Only utter morons would say those were cases of living document work.  But how about, say, Brown v. Board, or pretty much every privacy rights case?  Or, maybe Gregg v. Georgia, with the notion of an evolving standards of decency in punishment?  Those are all cases of reading the document of the Constitution in a way that keeps its core commitments but also extends them to the cases that the framers did not anticipate.  Ignoring these cases (and actual discussions of them on academic campuses) not only distorts what the "living document" interpretation is, but it makes it impossible to make sense of what Goldberg's own views on the Constitution are.  For someone out to prevent straw manning about Constitutional interpretation, Jonah Goldberg is an expert at constructing and knocking the stuffing out of them.

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?

Charles Krauthammer, False Dichotomy, Straw Man

Enhanced justification techniques

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Charles Krauthammer joins the torture discussion.  Torture is evil, he remarks, but then he poses two extensive exceptions.  The first is the "24" scenario:

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility. 

Let's call this the pornographic scenario, as it is, um, very very unlikely to work out so cinematically.  Besides, how do you know the terrorist–I mean the suicidal super criminal–will not have included the revealing of that information in the whole evil plot?  It writes itself, I mean, really: suicide terrorist plans to get tortured to reveal more false information in order to deflect from the real original plot which wasn't real because the second one was, but it wasn't that because he was a deep cover agent pretending to be tortured in order to uncover the real terrorist mole torturer, etc. 

The second justification relies on the first:

he second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. (One of the "torture memos" noted that the CIA had warned that terrorist "chatter" had reached pre-9/11 levels.) We know we must act but have no idea where or how — and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.

It's the same thing–only more of a miniseries than a movie.  Both of these justifications, if you can call them that, amount to claiming that torture is only wrong if you don't need to do it "to save lives."  But I think this mischaracterizes the objections to torture rather seriously in that it presumes the objection to torture is analogous to the pacifist objection to war.  He says as much:

Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen. 

Whether that is a straw man or a false dichotomy I do not know at the moment.  I'm inclined to say straw dichotomy, as he pretends the only opposition to his "real world" scenario is principled pacifism.  It isn't. Here however is the real silly part of this piece:

Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding. (To call some of the other "enhanced interrogation" techniques — face slap, sleep interruption, a caterpillar in a small space — torture is to empty the word of any meaning.)

"Sleep interruption" is a fancy word for "sleep deprivation."  Not to call these "torture," but rather some other well chosen bureaucratic euphemism, empties words of meaning.  Or maybe I'm wrong–it's just an "enhanced signification technique" and Krauthammer's arguments aren't silly and fallacious, they're "enhanced justification techniques" which you can only use when you need to make a fallacious argument whose principle aim is to justify the unjustifiable, in order, of course, to save lives.

UPDATE: for a more thorough take on this piece of enhanced logical technique, read the Post's own Dan Froomkin's point by point analysis.