George Will phones it in today with a boiler-plate global warming denying column. There really isn't anything of interest in the column, though I found myself wondering why it is that the particular argument he recites have any probative relevance to the question of global warming. The occasion for his cutting and pasting was some … Continue reading Phoning it in
In honor of Lincoln's birthday, a discussion of logic. The other day on the Political Animal blog of the Washington Monthly, one of my favorite liberal blogs (it's a good blog, and it features a real philosopher), I encountered the following: THE GOP MAINSTREAM…. Given the attention of late on the Republican all-tax-cut plans on … Continue reading Generalissimus
It wasn't long ago that George Will called Obama's very catchy "you're on your own" line (from his acceptance speech) a straw man of the (discredited) Republican philosophy of government. So I was struck when I read this encomium to being on one's own (creepy lines in bold). When Medicare was created in 1965, America's … Continue reading You’re on your own
In general, one commits the straw man fallacy in a situation of criticism–when one challenges someone else's argument in anything other than its true and charitable form, one is in danger of committing the straw man fallacy. Let me give an Al Gore example. Al Gore argues that curbing carbon emissions is critical to reducing … Continue reading The hollow man
A few posts back (and for a couple of posts) I remarked on the tendency of "liberal" pundits to separate themselves from the "liberal" candidate by frequently criticizing him or her, usually for failing to look enough like the conservative candidate. Yesterday Ruth Marcus provided another excellent example of this–going after one of Obama's campaign … Continue reading Stand down
In the wake of David Brooks's critical piece on Sarah Palin, I was going to point out that perhaps I was wrong about the right wing pundit corps. Maybe they don't marshal any argument, however foolish, in support of their "guy," whoever their guy is, or however silly his policy prescriptions. That would have been … Continue reading American idle
I normally don't read the Post's election blog posts primarily because they're blog posts, but this one from Sebastian Mallaby, "Obama's Faulty Logic," caught my eye. I thought, "perhaps someone has caught Obama in a crazy non sequitur I can talk about here." Then I read it and it occured to me that Mallaby thinks … Continue reading Posts blog posts
Now perhaps that the answer is likely to be "sadly, no," George Will no longer wants to hear the question: "are you better off than you were four years ago?" In all fairness, his problem is McCain's use of this very Reaganite phrase. When Reagan used it, of course, it made sense: The nation considered … Continue reading Better off
Here's a new fallacy. It's a specific variation of the straw man. It involves attacking the titles of someone's work in place of the work itself. George Will–what would we do without him–has been working on this one for several years now. Several years ago, before the NonSequitur, I saw him on ABC's This Week … Continue reading Argumentum ad titulum
George Will compares the housing "crisis" (his scare quotes) to another one of his famous pseudo crises: The housing perhaps-not-entirely-a-crisis resembles, in one particular, the curious consensus about the global warming "crisis," concerning which, the assumption is: Although Earth's temperature has risen and fallen through many millennia, the temperature was exactly right when, in the … Continue reading Built on sand