My sense is that critical thinking and informal logic classes stress the evaluation of arguments, not arguers. This is fine as a starting point, but as a long run strategy, it ignores the fact that we have very often to evaluate arguers. Someone who makes good ones, like someone who can throw good pitchers, is … Continue reading Arguers arguing
Here is serial straw manner George F.Will on Elizabeth Warren, candidate for Senate in Massachussetts: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest … Continue reading Iron man versus straw man
Sometime soon we'll have a post up about the "Hack Thirty" at Salon.com. We were surprised that some made the list (B-list hacks) and that some didn't (Charles Krauthammer? Seriously). For that reason we wondered about the methodology and the meaning, in the end, of the term "hack." One person who didn't make the list … Continue reading The Thirty
I wish I had a flattering one-idea explanation for the outcome of Tuesday's election, where Republicans took a majority in the house, and made gains in, but did not take, the Senate (weren't they supposed to do that?). But I know such an explanation would likely be inadequate. One idea, I think, couldn't explain the entire complex thing. Not … Continue reading Someone to agree with me
Dear Readers–been off for a bit, usual excuses. Writing for the New York Times, Peter Baker alleges that "Obama fills in the GOP's blanks." Ok, that's the title of the article, but I didn't find anything in the article that made that same decisiive point. It's an interesting one, because it alleges Obama is a … Continue reading Fill in the blanks
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 … Continue reading I don’t usually practice psychiatry in my blog
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 … Continue reading Take this job and shove it
The other day I talked about this weak and hollow man rich column by Charles Krauthammer. But there was way more about that column that an attentive undergraduate could have criticized. Here's another tidbit. He wrote: And now the mosque near Ground Zero. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition … Continue reading Pile on
Maggie Gallagher, president of NOM, writes: Despite the media hoopla, this is not the first case in which a federal judge has imagined and ruled that our Constitution requires same-sex marriage. A federal judge in Nebraska ruled for gay marriage in 2005 and was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit … Continue reading Straight face
Here's David Brooks in 2009: You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I go running several times a week. My favorite route, because it’s so flat, is from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol and back. I was there last Saturday and found myself plodding through tens of thousands of anti-government “tea … Continue reading You can fool some of the people all of the time