How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media's Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies | Popehat

How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media's Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies | Popehat

Fortunately, this ain't rocket science. Americans can train themselves to detect and question the media's pro-censorship tropes. I've collected some of the most pervasive and familiar ones. This post is designed as a resource, and I'll add to it as people point out more examples and more tropes.

When you see the media using these tropes, ask yourself: what normative message is the author advancing, and does it have any basis in law?


Trope One: "Hate Speech"

Example: "hate speech is excluded from protection. dont [sic] just say you love the constitution . . . read it." CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo, on Twitter, February 6, 2015.
Example: "I do not know if American courts would find much of what Charlie Hebdo does to be hate speech unprotected by the Constitution, but I know—hope?—that most Americans would." Edward Schumacher-Matos, NPR, February 6, 2015.

In the United States, "hate speech" is an argumentative rhetorical category, not a legal one.

"Hate speech" means many things to many Americans. There's no widely accepted legal definition in American law. More importantly, as Professor Eugene Volokh explains conclusively, there is no "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment. Americans are free to impose social consequences on ugly speech, but the government is not free to impose official sanctions upon it. In other words, even if the phrase "hate speech" had a recognized legal definition, it would still not carry legal consequences.

This is not a close or ambiguous question of law.

When the media frames a free speech story as an inquiry into whether something is "hate speech," it's asking a question of morals or taste poorly disguised as a question of law. It's the equivalent of asking "is this speech rude?"

Trope Two: "Like shouting fire in a crowded theater"

Example: " There is no freedom to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater." Prof. Thane Rosenbaum, Daily Beast, January 30, 2014.

Nearly 100 years ago Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., voting to uphold the Espionage Act conviction of a man who wrote and circulated anti-draft pamphlets during World War I, said"[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."

That flourish — now usually shortened to "shout fire in a crowded theater" — is the media's go-to trope to support the proposition that some speech is illegal. But it's empty rhetoric. I previously explained at length how Holmes said it in the context of the Supreme Court's strong wartime pro-censorship push and subsequently retreated from it. That history illustrates its insidious nature. Holmes cynically used the phrase as a rhetorical device to justify jailing people for anti-war advocacy, an activity that is now (and was soon thereafter) unquestionably protected by the First Amendment. It's an old tool, but still useful, versatile enough to be invoked as a generic argument for censorship whenever one is needed. But it's null-content, because all it says is some speech can be banned — which, as we'll see in the next trope, is not controversial. The phrase does not advance a discussion of which speech falls outside of the protection of the First Amendment.

Trope Three: "Not all speech is protected"

Example: "Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment." Ann Coulter, Townhall, August 2, 2001.

Example: “Not all speech is protected if there is hate speech and it is intended to ridicule another religion,” he said. “I don’t believe it is a free speech matter.” Archbishop Paul Coakley, quoted on FoxNews.com, August 8, 2014.

The media routinely prefaces free speech discussions with the bland and inarguable statement "not all speech is protected." That's true. In fact it's not in serious dispute. The problem is that the media routinely invokes this trope to imply that the proposed First Amendment exception it is about to discuss is plausible or constitutional because other exceptions already exist. Not so. Though First Amendment analysis can be complicated at the margins, the core exceptions to First Amendment protection are well-known and well-established. The Supreme Court — in the course of rejecting a proposed new exception — articulated them recently:

"From 1791 to the present," however, the First Amendment has "permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas," and has never "include[d] a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations." Id., at 382-383. These "historic and traditional categories long familiar to the bar," Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N. Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U. S. 105, 127 (1991) (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment)–including obscenity, Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 483 (1957), defamation, Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U. S. 250, 254-255 (1952), fraud, Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748, 771 (1976), incitement, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444, 447-449 (1969) (per curiam), and speech integral to criminal conduct, Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U. S. 490, 498 (1949)–are "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem." Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 571-572 (1942).

The observation "not all speech is protected" adds nothing to a discussion because it offers no mechanism for determining whether the speech at issue falls into a traditional exception or not.

To see what I mean, consider the utility of equivalent rhetoric. You've been bitten by an unfamiliar snake, and you'd like to know if you need treatment.

You: Doctor, was the snake that bit me poisonous?
Doctor: Actually snakes are usually venomous. Though some are both venomous and poisonous.
You: Great. What about this snake here? I caught it in a bag for you to look at.
Doctor: There are both harmless and venomous snakes in North America.
You: Yes, thank you. Which is this?
Doctor: That snake has rings!
You: Yes. Yes it does.
Doctor: Some venomous snakes have rings.
You: Is there anyone else on duty I could see?

Trope Four: "Line between free speech and [questioned expression]"

Example: "Texas Shooting Sheds Light On Murkiness Between Free, Hate Speech." NPR.com Headline, May 5, 2015.
Example: "Texas attack refocuses attention on fine line between free speech and hate speech." LA Times Headline, May 4, 2015.

Journalists and pundits talking about free speech disputes love to frame their stories as being about "the line between free speech and X," where X is the controversial expression in question.

This trope can be invoked accurately when there is a legally meaningful line separating protected speech and the type of speech called out. For instance, "the line between free speech and true threats" isn't misleading because "true threats" are an actual category of unprotected speech and there's a line between them and protected speech.

Too often, though, the "line" is invoked to imply a nonexistent legal distinction. The "line between free speech and hate speech" rhetoric from the examples above is misleading and meaningless because, as noted in Trope One, "hate speech" is not a legal thing. "The line between free speech and bullying" — another recently popular line — is another example. It implies, falsely, that there is a legally meaningful category of speech called "bullying" that lies outside of First Amendment protections. In fact there isn't — there are traditional exceptions to free speech (true threats, for instance) and some of that conduct could sometimes be described as "bullying," but that's not the same thing.

"The line between free speech and X" is often the rhetorical equivalent to "the line between vegetables and rutabagas": the author doesn't have a coherent argument that rutabagas aren't vegetables, but doesn't like rutabagas and thinks you shouldn't either.

Trope Five: "Balancing free speech and [social value]"

Example: "The incident raised heated questions about race relations — and how to balance free speech with protection from discrimination and harassment." Washington Post, March 3, 2015.

The media's love of "balancing" stories is a variation on its love of "line between" stories, only more misleading.

"Balancing," when used as a colloquial description of how courts decide whether speech is protected, is almost always wrong. American courts don't weigh the value of speech against the harm it does. When speech falls into an established exception to the First Amendment, as discussed above, no balancing is necessary; it can be restricted. When it doesn't, balancing of its "value" against other interests is almost always prohibited. As the Supreme Court recently said in rejecting the government's request to create new categories of unprotected speech through balancing:

The First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits. The First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs. Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to revise that judgment simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it. The Constitution is not a document "prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 178 (1803).

Courts occasionally engage in something that faintly resembles "balancing" when they apply different levels of scrutiny to speech restrictions. For instance, the Supreme Court said that Congress could prohibit the burning of draft cards because the government had a substantial interest in the draft system and the law was narrowly addressed to that legitimate interest, and aimed only at the non-communicative element of the conduct (destroying the card) and not the communicative aspect (doing so to protest the draft). But that analysis doesn't purport to assign a value to the speech. It considers only whether the government has a sufficiently compelling interest in its goal. Moreover, there's very good reason to doubt that the Supreme Court would ever approve a speech restriction that is content-based — that is, premised on dislike of the speech — no matter how strong the government's interest. The Court has repeatedly rejected calls to do just that, and a focus on the content of disfavored speech (when it's not within an established exception) is almost certainly fatal to the proposed restriction.

Trope Six: "This isn't free speech, it's [category]"

Example: "It’s not free speech. It’s bullying and intimidation. It’s a horror show." Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon, February 17, 2015.

The First Amendment is, in a way, categorical: there are well-defined categories of speech that are not protected, as I discussed above. But media commentators often abuse categorical thinking by inventing new categories of speech outside the First Amendment. "This isn't free speech, it's hate speech." "This isn't free speech, it's discrimination."

The trope can be used correctly — "this isn't free speech, it's an unprotected death threat." But usually it's not. Usually it's invoked as shorthand for "I don't want to address First Amendment analysis so I'm just going to say in conclusory fashion that it doesn't apply at all."

Our response to the trope should always be the same — does this supported not-speech category exist, and is it one that's actually outside the First Amendment?

Trope Seven: "Fighting words"

Example: "There are two exceptions from the constitutional right to free speech – defamation and the doctrine of “fighting words” or “incitement,” said John Szmer, an associate professor of political science and a constitutional law expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte." McClatchy.com, May 4, 2015.

No discussion of controversial speech is complete without some idiot suggesting that it may be "fighting words."

In 1942 the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit "fighting words" — "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The Supreme Court has been retreating from that pronouncement ever since. If the "fighting words" doctrine survives — that's in serious doubt — it's limited to face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation. The Supreme Court has rejected every opportunity to use the doctrine to support restrictions on speech. The "which by their very utterance inflict injury" language the Supreme Court dropped in passing finds no support whatsoever in modern law — the only remaining focus is on whether the speech will provoke immediate face-to-face violence.

That's almost always irrelevant to the sort of speech at issue when the media invokes the trope.

Trope Eight: "[Professor] explained . . . ."

Example: "The exhibit of cartoons in Texas might have crossed the line, [Professor] Szmer said."

The media loves to quote a professor to support a viewpoint. This is intellectually neutral: it can be good or bad, depending on the honesty and qualifications of the professor selected.

Quoting professors about law is particularly risky, if your aim is an accurate and informative discussion of free speech law. If you call a physics professor and ask them what will happen if you drop your pencil, and why, he or she will say "it will fall, because of gravity." There is a relatively low chance that the professor will tell you "well, maybe nothing will happen" because he or she harbors the belief that the current gravitic regime is unfair and otherwise problematical. But when you call a professor of law, or political science, or journalism, and ask them a question about whether some controversial speech is protected by the First Amendment, there is an unacceptably high probability that you will get a quote expressing what the professor thinks the law ought to be. Sometimes the professor will flag a statement as an argumentative one, sometimes not. Moreover, some professors . . . . how can one put this delicately? Some law professors' views on how a court is likely to rule on an issue are untainted by exposure to actual courts.

Many professors will give you a sober, accurate and well-informed assessment of how a court would likely approach a given free speech situation. The trick is separating those professors from ones who are out of their field or mere advocates.

Trope Nine: "This speech may be protected for now, but the law is always changing."

Example: "'The way we interpret the constitution is always changing. The supreme court can change the rules, and does do so,' he said." The Guardian, quoting Eric Posner, May 6, 2015.

When existing American law clearly protects questioned speech, the media sometimes resorts to finding someone to say "the law can change, and maybe it should."

Yes, American law can change. Constitutional interpretation can change in breathtaking ways inside a generation.

But the United States Supreme Court has been more consistently protective of free speech than of any other right, especially in the face of media sensibilities about "harmful" words. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church are universally reviled and held up as an example of the worst sort of speech; the Court found their speech protected by a margin of 8-1. The Court struck down an overbroad law prohibiting "crush videos" of animals being killed by the same margin. There is no sign of any movement towards the proposition that speech may be restricted because it is hurtful or disfavored — the sort of speech that provokes this banal media observation that law changes.

Pointers to more tropes are always welcomed, as are particularly good examples.

Beware the Debater - RobertRinger.com

Beware the Debater - RobertRinger.com

A nice list of fallacies.  Recognizing them is the first step.

To help toward that end, I have summarized below the Ten Dirty Tricks of Debating, which are the most commonly used tools of the debater’s trade.

DIRTY TRICK #1:   THE FALSE PREMISE 
Basing one’s argument on a false premise is one of the oldest tricks of clever debaters. It’s a mainstay of most political debates, wherein politicians find that they can slide a false premise by sitcom-damaged brains without much effort. Worse, supposedly opposing parties (as in, Democrats and Republicans — or, more appropriately, Demopublicans) begin most of their debates with joint false premises, thus giving viewers all the more reason to assume that such premises are correct.

DIRTY TRICK #2:   USING THE DESIRED CONCLUSION AS A PREMISE 
Using the desired conclusion as a premise — sometimes referred to as an a priori argument — is just a bold version of basing one’s arguments on a false premise. The debater who employs this tactic merely restates his own conclusion as though it were a fact. 

DIRTY TRICK #3:   PUTTING A SPIN ON A NEGATIVE
The term spin refers to the art of cleverly and smoothly twisting the truth, and it is now considered an essential tool for those who have dedicated their lives to the art of debating. The objective is to take a crystal-clear fact that negatively impacts the spinner and twist it — i.e., “spin it” — in such a way that it gives the illusion of being a positive.

DIRTY TRICK #4:   FEIGNING INDIGNATION WHEN TRAPPED
Some people are world-class actors when it comes to feigning indignation in situations where they realize they’ve been caught in a lie, misstatement, or worse. I have a simple rule when it comes to indignation: The louder and more vehement the protest, the less credence I give to the person’s indignation. As Emerson put it, “You shout so loudly I can barely hear your words.”

DIRTY TRICK #5:   TAKING THE OFFENSIVE WHEN OVERWHELMED BY THE FACTS
Taking the offensive with an aggressive, all-out attack is a strategy that goes a step beyond just feigning indignation, and is often employed when the facts appear to be undermining one’s arguments. The more overwhelming the facts against the dirty-trick debater, the more aggressive he becomes and the more effective he is in getting the other party to back off.

DIRTY TRICK #6:   MAKING INTIMIDATING ACCUSATIONS
Making intimidating accusations is another trademark of political debaters, the objective being to put the other party on the defensive. Some popular accusations, both in and out of the political arena, include: “You’re just selfish”; “You don’t care about starving children”; and, the ultimate intimidating accusation, one that quickly brings most people to their apologetic knees, “You’re a racist.”

DIRTY TRICK #7:   FOCUSING ON IRRELEVANT POINTS
Switching the focus of the conversation is a convenient way to escape being overwhelmed by the truth. Straying from the main point and changing the subject is a dead giveaway that the facts are closing in on the debater. Criminal defense attorneys employ this art when they distract the jury’s attention from any damning evidence against their clients by focusing on side issues and irrelevant topics.

DIRTY TRICK #8:   USING INVALID ANALOGIES
Oversimplified, an invalid analogy is the equivalent of comparing apples and oranges. When a debater uses an analogy, you have to follow his words carefully to make certain that A matches up with B and C matches up with D or you’ll find yourself boxed into a corner. If you allow an invalid analogy to slip by uncontested, you’re heading toward its natural consequence — an invalid conclusion.

DIRTY TRICK #9:   DEMANDING PROOF FOR A SELF-EVIDENT FACT
There is a whole school of thought that revolves around the idea that everything is relative and therefore nothing can be proved. The philosophy of relativism teaches that the premises people use to make judgments vary according to their genetic makeup, backgrounds, and environments. However, an axiom is a self-evident truth that requires no proof, and rational, honest people do not require proof for self-evident truths.
You do not have to prove that the sun comes up every morning, but there was a time when it was necessary to prove that the earth revolved around the sun. As with invalid analogies, if you allow someone to base his argument on the contention that a self-evident truth cannot be proven, an invalid conclusion is also a forgone conclusion.

DIRTY TRICK #10:   EMPLOYING INTELLECTUAL OR ESOTERIC WORDS
While esoteric language makes for good entertainment, you should never allow someone to use it against you in a debate. I’m an advocate of Occam’s Razor Principle (also known as the Principle of Parsimony), which states that the simplest and most direct explanation is generally the best explanation. Making explanations more complicated than necessary is often nothing more than a smokescreen intended to hide the facts.

#4 – The More Complex the Society, the More Government Control We Need : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

#4 – The More Complex the Society, the More Government Control We Need : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

#4 – The More Complex the Society, the More Government Control We Need
Argued a college president at a recent seminar: “Your free market, private property, limited government theories were all right under the simple conditions of a century or more ago, but surely they are unworkable in today’s complex economy. The more complex the society, the greater is the need for governmental control; that seems axiomatic.”
It is important to expose this oft-heard, plausible, and influential fallacy because it leads directly and logically to socialistic planning. This is how a member of the seminar team answered the college president:
“Let us take the simplest possible situation—just you and I. Next, let us assume that I am as wise as any President of the United States who has held office during your lifetime. With these qualifications in mind, do you honestly think I would be competent to coercively control what you shall invent, discover, or create, what the hours of your labor shall be, what wage you shall receive, what and with whom you shall associate and exchange? Is not my incompetence demonstrably apparent in this simplest of all societies?
“Now, let us shift from the simple situation to a more complex society—to all the people in this room. What would you think of my competence to coercively control their creative actions? Or, let us contemplate a really complex situation—the 188,000,000 people of this nation [Editor’s note: now, in 2014, about 318 million]. If I were to suggest that I should take over the management of their lives and their billions of exchanges, you would think me the victim of hallucinations. Is it not obvious that the more complex an economy, the more certainly will governmental control of productive effort exert a retarding influence? Obviously, the more complex our economy, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely. No mind of man nor any combination of minds can even envision, let alone intelligently control, the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one.”

Ideas: Evaluating Controversial Claims

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2013/12/evaluating-controversial-claims.html

There are at least four different ways in which an interested observer can decide whether or not to believe the claim.

1. Partisanship. If you support the policy, believe the claim. If you don't, don't. This is probably the most common approach.

2. Evaluate the arguments for yourself. This is  the most entertaining and educational approach but no more reliable than the first—and likely to give the same answer. There is always controversy about the claim among people better equipped to evaluate it than the random observer, although one side or both may try to deny it. In the case of global warming, the relevant claim is not merely that temperatures are going up, or that the reason is human activity, or that they can be expected to go up by enough to cause serious net costs, but all of those plus the additional claim that there are ways of reducing the increase that are worth their cost. To evaluate all of that you need a reasonably expert knowledge of climatology, statistics, ecology, economics, and probably two or three other fields I have not thought of. Since you don't have all that, you end up believing whichever arguments you want to believe.

3. The argument from authority. You try to figure out what the consensus of the people who are experts is or what some authoritative source of information says. An outsider trying to figure out what professionals in a field believe is at risk of overvaluing whatever position has the most support from public sources of information, such as the mass media, or has done the best job of getting its supporters onto the committees of scientific organizations that put out public statements. And even if he could figure it out for one field, that isn't sufficient. Again taking the global warming case, it is not enough to know what the consensus of the climatologists is, even if you can separate the facts from the puffery on that subject. Climatologists are not economists, so  could be correct about the expected temperature increase and wrong about the magnitude or even the sign of its consequences. Economists are not ecologists, so might show the costs they are looking at to be insignificant while missing the effects of climate change on other species. I discussed problems with this approach at greater length in an earlier post.

4. Prediction. Once such a controversy has been going for a while, partisans have a track record. If they have made confident predictions that turned out to be wrong, that is good evidence that they are either dishonest or arguing from an incorrect theory. Figuring out whether the arguments for a theory are right or wrong is much harder than finding out what that theory predicted. Sometimes all the latter takes is  a book or article by its supporters written a few years back.

The clearest case is the population hysteria of the 1960's. Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb, published in 1968, confidently predicted mass famine in the third world over the next decade, with hundred of millions of people starving to death. Not only did it not happen, the real world moved in the opposite direction, with calorie consumption per capita in the third world going up, not down. That is very strong evidence that Ehrlich can not be trusted. It is somewhat weaker evidence that the movement of which he was part, whose members generally took him and his arguments seriously, can not be trusted.

In Debate with Breitbart's Shapiro, CNN's Piers Morgan Calls the Constitutio...

In Debate with Breitbart's Shapiro, CNN's Piers Morgan Calls the Constitution 'Your Little Book'

"You come in here, brandish your little book as if I don't know what's in there--"
"My little book? That's the Constitution of the United States. It's our founding document, Piers."
"I know what's in your Constitution."
"Do you really?"
That was the climax of a heated debate between Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro and CNN's Piers Morgan on live television this evening--one in which Morgan came off much the worse for wear.
Shapiro began by pointing out that for weeks, Morgan had bullied guests who defend the right to bear arms by "standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook."
"How dare you," said a rattled Morgan.
"I have seen you do it repeatedly," Shapiro replied.
He challenged Morgan to explain whether he wanted to ban all guns, not just "assault rifles," since the vast majority of gun deaths involve ordinary handguns. "Why don't you care about banning the handguns in Chicago?" Shapiro asked him.
Morgan, who later stated that he supported Americans' right "to defend themselves with a handgun or a pistol," pointed out that the weapons used in recent sensational mass shootings had been "assault rifles," and insisted that the debate was not one of "left and right," because his position ought to be the consensus, as in Britain. Shapiro countered that the basis of the Second Amendment was not self-defense or hunting, but the ability to resist government tyranny--a point that Morgan attempted to mock, unsuccessfully.
Shapiro's statement is worth quoting in full:

Shapiro: I think the reason that it's about left and right here is because fundamentally, the right believes that the basis for the Second amendment--and they believe in the Second Amendment--the basis for the Second Amendment is not really about self defense, and it's not about hunting. It's about resistance to government tyranny. That's what the Founders said, and that's what the right believes in this country.
Morgan: Which tyranny are you fearing, yourself?
Shapiro: I fear the possibility of a tyranny rising in the country in the next fifty to a hundred years. Let me tell you something, Piers. The fact that my grandparents and great grandparents in Europe didn't fear that is why they're now ashes in Europe. So this kind of leftist revisionist history where there's never any fear of democracy going usurpatious or tyrannical, is just that. It's fictitious.

Subsequently, Morgan accused Shapiro of wanting to "do nothing" about mass shootings, to which Shapiro replied that his position was to improve background checks and screening for mental illness and criminal histories among potential gun owners and their households. Shapiro later pointed out the hypocrisy in attacking the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment without subjecting violent video games, the American Civil Liberties Union and the First Amendment to the same scrutiny.
Morgan then presented Shapiro with a letter co-signed by Ronald Reagan in 1994, urging support for the assault weapons ban (an ineffective policy, which lapsed after ten years). He challenged Shapiro to justify "why an American needs an assault weapon."
Shapiro repeated his point on tyranny, to which Morgan said: "Do you know how absurd you sound?"
In so doing, he proved Shapiro's point:

Here's where you go into the bullying....For weeks now, you have been saying that anybody who disagrees with your position is absurd, idiotic, and doesn't care about the dead kids in Sandy Hook. And then when I say that's a bullying tactic, you turn around and say that I'm bullying you.

Later on the program, once Shapiro was safely off camera, Morgan admitted: "In an ideal world, I'd have all guns gone, as we have in Britain, but this is not my country and I respect the fact most Americans wouldn't wear that kind of argument."
An epic win for Shapiro, and for our "little book."
You can read a full transcript of the 15 minute interview here...

Paradigms and Demographics: The News: Children Behaving Badly

Paradigms and Demographics: The News: Children Behaving Badly

It's called "definition of character".

As I watch the world, read the news and watch as little of it as I can on TV, I have concluded that the lefties may be right about IQ. Lefties are always trying to publish studies that show that leftists have a higher IQ than conservatives. Well…..I’m not so sure they aren’t right. Why? Because in order to bring reality into line with what they believe requires an enormous level of mental ability and logical gymnastics that must be mentally and emotionally exhausting in order to make the insane things they say and do seem right. Conservatives only have to concern themselves with what is right and what is wrong based on what they see; as in one and one is two. Try making it three or four or fifty without sounding insane. At this only the left can excel; making insanity seem rational to the casual observer.

I watched O’Reilly this week - I can’t take too much of O’Reilly because I think he’s a phony - and he had Monica Crowley and Alan Colmes on. Colmes did the five things that are common among the leftists. He wouldn’t stop talking, he interrupted, he talked over everyone, he subtly changed the subject and spewed out logical fallacies by the minute.

Changing the subject is one of fallacies they use constantly in order to prevent a response to their already insane views. If you doubt me watch Geraldo when he is on and Bob Beckel on The Five. They won’t shut up and they won’t let others have their say without zings that have nothing to do with the subject at hand.  At least Geraldo is charming....Beckel is.....well.....Beckel. This is a common problem. They’re talking when they should be listening. They remind me of unruly children, and like all unruly children a good slap would do them a world of good.

It really is true….…“Brought up on lies, a society cannot mature or take on responsibility. It is an adolescent society, with all the characteristics of adolescence—needing a leader and his imitators, being aggressive and quick to take offence, simultaneously lying and trusting.”

That is the left. That is what we see on the news. Children behaving badly! That must be why the Main Stream Media identify so readily with the youthful losers in the Occupy Wall Street movement versus the rest of the country that readily identifies with the adults in the Tea Party Movement. 

Jesus Wants a Little Governmental Forgiveness

Jesus Wants a Little Governmental Forgiveness

via The American Spectator and The Spectacle Blog by Doug Bandow on 12/1/11

I always knew that the United Church of Christ was, shall we say, a bit lax on theology.  Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, a UCC-ordained minister, writes on faith for the Washington Post.  And she has determined that God wants the government to forgive student loans.  Based on the Lord's Prayer:

Currently, I'm advocating debt forgiveness. It is the moral thing to do and it is the right civic thing to do. This is what Jesus actually meant; real debts, real debtors, forgiving and forgiven. This is what government is actually about-of the people, by the people, for the people. We still have a chance to show young people that democracy can work for the common good.

It's a novel interpretation, never before proposed in the two millenia since Jesus walked the earth.  (Thanks to Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters for publicizing this.)  But I guess that is what good, innovative theologians do.  Come up with heretofore unrecognized (cynics might say implausible, silly, and nonsensical, but not I!) interpretations of traditional texts.
But why stop at student loans?  I've been meditating on the word and I believe God believes in a lot more forgiveness.  To start, he would have the government forgive my taxes.  I'm not getting good value for my money, could use the money better myself, and have been feeling unloved recently.  Some tax fortgiveness would be a very good thing.
Government also should forgive us our duties to fill out census forms.  Government shouldn't pry, and time is money, as we all know.  So when I repeat the imprecation to "forgive us our debts," it should apply to the census.
Also, entrepreneurs should be forgiven their legal duty to pay the minimum wage.  Economists long have recognized that setting wages discourages the hiring of the least skilled, educated, and experienced workers.  It also punishes people hiring the most vulnerable and disadvantage.  Sounds like a good opportunity for some governmental forgiveness to me!
In fact, there are a lot more regulations with which all of us should be forgiven having to comply.  Many are special interest measures intended to enrich the special interests who often gain control of expensive and expansive government.  When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray he obviously was telling us that government should forgive us following other arbitrary rules and laws.
I'm sure there are some areas that I'm forgetting.  I mean, God is a God of forgiveness.  Think of all the other areas where God obviously wanted government to forgive us!

Darwin the Lightning Rod

Dafydd at Big Lizards ponders the reaction conservatives in general (and Michael Medved in particular) have to Charles Darwin.

I didn't realize Medved's real purpose, however, until the third time in the same hour that Medved brought out that "startling" fact (in case anyone had missed all but he final ten minutes of the segment) – this time in response to a black caller who said the New York Post cartoon of the bullet-riddled corpse of Travis the Chimp, with the caption "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," clearly played to the latent racism of American society: Medved believes the nineteenth-century racism of Darwin completely discredits evolutionary theory.

How could he think that? What would Darwin's racism have to do with the validity of modern evolutionary theory? We all agree that William Shockley supported eugenics (he doesn't appear to have been a racist, but eugenics is bad enough); does that mean transistors don't really work?

I believe the problem is that Medved either doesn't understand the scientific method, or more dastardly, understands it but hopes to confuse his listeners for purely tendentious reasons. He never discusses "evolutionary theory," "biological evolution," or even just evolution; he invariably refers to that entire subject as "Darwinism," and he conflates biological evolution with "social Darwinism," generally, though somewhat inaccurately, identified with eugenics. Medved doesn't see "Darwinism" as a scientific theory but rather a cult of personality, like Scientology, the Branch Davidians, or Jim Jones' People's Temple in Guyana. Thus to Medved, the best way to "discredit" evolutionary theory is to smear Charles Darwin. There, that'll put paid to all this nonsense!

....

This particular rhetorical trick is quintessentially liberal, though sadly, it's used by all sides: It's "Fruit of the Forbidden Tree" Reductionism (FFTR). The Left uses it almost to the exclusion of all other arguments. It consists in first reducing an entire argument, school of thought, philosophy, or movement to a single "founding" individual... then personally smearing that individual, thus "discrediting" the entire movement.

What's the harm?

Linked from Hit and Run, a website which lays out bad consequences stemming from belief in various things, ranging from acupuncture to numerology to UFOs (most of the site documents deaths related to stupid or anti-scientific systems of thought.

Friend o ' Reason Penn Jillette talks up the very interesting website What's the Harm?, which lays out bad consequences stemming from belief in various things, ranging from acupuncture to numerology to UFOs (most of the site documents deaths related to stupid or anti-scientific systems of thought.

Irish Bulls

I note this article:

It's a harmless enough hobby. I collect flights of rhetoric that suddenly crash. They exert the same fascination for me that toy train wrecks do for little boys.

....

My old friend Father John O’Donnell has sent me a batch of similar sentences, all collected in one article by a connoisseur of the art, Francis Griffith. The genre turns out to have a name: Irish bulls. This herd arrived in time for last Saint Patrick's Day, and I've been laughing ever since.

An Irish bull, I learned, is not a branch of the Hereford family. It is "a verbal blunder which seems to make sense but after a moment's reflection is seen to be wildly illogical."

Entomologies

Eugene Volokh discusses mythical etymologies that get e-mailed around, despite being debunked by Snopes. These include:

Where did the word "picnic" comes from? It was typical to have a picnic on a Friday evening in Oklahoma. The word was short for "pick a nigger" to lynch.

And:

...the claims that "nitty-gritty" originally referred to debris (including dead bodies) in the holds of slave ships, or that "handicapped" stems from handicapped people supposedly begging with their caps in their hands.

Eugene has some suggestions about such folk etymologies.

So do I. I suggest the more interesting word origin stories be called "entomologies" until they've been thoroughly debugged.

The fallacy of equivocation

From Vomit the Lukewarm, an interesting fallacy applied to the subject of evolution. This is the fallacy of equivocation, also known as "doublespeak".

Equivocation is the type of ambiguity which occurs when a single word or phrase is ambiguous, and this ambiguity is not grammatical but lexical. So, when a phrase equivocates, it is not due to grammar, but to the phrase as a whole having two distinct meanings.

From Vomit the Lukewarm:

It is often overlooked that most accounts of the origin of the species do not assert the evolution of material living beings. They assert the selection of things, which is quite different. "Selection" denotes extraneous activity; but evolution denotes immanent activity- i.e. a sort of "blossoming" or unfolding of the potencies within matter. More of a place needs to be made for evolution in the account of specific origins, since these origins are accounts of what living things do- and to be alive is to have immanent activity.

The reason this is fallacious is that VTL is using the word "evolution" in one particular sense, and ignoring other senses in which it is defined.
A quick visit to onelook.com turns up several references for the word "evolution":

Etymology: Latin evolution-, evolutio unrolling, from evolvere

1 : one of a set of prescribed movements
• 2 a : a process of change in a certain direction : UNFOLDING
• 2 b : the action or an instance of forming and giving something off : EMISSION
• 
  2 c (1) : a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state : GROWTH
• 2 c (2) : a process of gradual and relatively peaceful social, political, and economic advance
• 2 d : something evolved
• 3 : the process of working out or developing
• 4 a : the historical development of a biological group (as a race or species) : PHYLOGENY
• 4 b : a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations
• 5 : the extraction of a mathematical root
• 6 : a process in which the whole universe is a progression of interrelated phenomena

To argue against the use of "evolution" in the sense of [2(a)], possibly [3], while scientists are using it in another sense ([4(b)], possibly [4(a)] as well) is to commit the equivocation fallacy. (And some wag could claim we're both wrong because we're not referring to sense [5] in our discussions.)
Words often acquire new meanings, especially as they get pressed into service in new fields of inquiry. We would correctly reject an argument that organic chemistry is somehow fallacious because it ignores the first meaning of "organic" – "of or arising from a bodily organ". (And I've had this argument with people before. They didn't want to accept the definition used by chemistry – an organic chemical is one which contains carbon. Period. They insisted on the "original" definition.) Anyone who insisted on using the first meaning of "virus" ("poison") when discussing the flu or AIDS would have a hard time getting published in the journals.
"Organic", "virus", and many other words have acquired new and specialized meanings in the sciences. So has "evolution".

Had me going for a minute...

I didn't learn about informal logical fallacies until I had a speech class. Well, actually I did, but ... well ... informally.

It's interesting to see the uses to which these fallacies are put. Sometimes they'll be introduced into an argument, and sometimes people will accuse others of using them in order to score points for their side of an argument.

Sometimes, I'll see someone claim an informal fallacy is being used, when in fact it's not – it merely looks like one. (Most amusingly, sometimes the person seems to have gone to a web page and looked up a whole bunch of fallacies, and applied the labels to any statements that bear any slight resemblance to the examples cited on that page.)

[This is a variant on the "fallacy fallacy" – an argument is fallacious, therefore its conclusion is false. It's a "variant" because the user in this case doesn't even make the effort to make sure that the argument actually is fallacious. (updated Feb. 16 2005)

On the other hand, this argument is invalid, because of a formal fallacy:

The reason informal fallacies are called "informal" is that they are fallacies (or not) because of the content of the statement, not the form. Formal fallacies, on the other hand, are those which depend on the form of an argument, independent of its content. For example, here's a valid formal argument:

1) If A then B 2) A 3) therefore B.

It doesn't matter what A and B are. If statements 1 and 2 are true, statement 3 can't possibly be false. Statement 3 follows from statements 1 and 2, and the rules of formal logic.

1) If A then B 2) B 3) therefore A.

Statement 3 may be true, it may not. There's no way to tell from statements 1 and 2. The argument is invalid.

A concrete example: let A stand for "Johnny set the house on fire", and B stand for "The house is on fire".

The first (valid) argument is then, "If Johnny set the house on fire, the house is on fire.", "Johnny set the house on fire", therefore, "The house is on fire".

The second (invalid) argument is "If Johnny set the house on fire, the house is on fire.", "The house is on fire", therefore "Johnny set the house on fire".

The conclusion does not follow. Someone else could have set the fire. There could have been a short in the wiring. The point is, with an invalid form, true premises can lead to a false conclusion.

Informal fallacies are even harder to deal with. You have to do more than just look at the form of an argument.

Now, the statement that led to this lecture:

Overlooking the difference between selection and evolution might be the cause of some serious confusions. Selection gives rise to the idea of "random mutation", which seems to me an appeal to ignorance, i.e. "we don't know why mutation happens"*. When it is assumed a priori that the mutation is random, we can only expect a ritard in the search for the natural, internal causes of specific change.

OK, we have a problem. An "appeal to ignorance" (argumentum ad ignorantiam) is an argument in the form of "there is no evidence to prove A is true, therefore A must be false". Alternatively, "there is no evidence to prove A is false, therefore A must be true."

There is a difference this and the statement above about random mutations.

An appeal to ignorance would be:

1) There is no evidence that mutations have specific causes. 2) Therefore mutations have no specific causes.

The actual argument is:

1) We know of no evidence that mutations have specific causes. 2) Therefore, we know of no known causes for mutations.

It's not a statement that because we can't prove A is true, A is therefore false. It's a statement that because we don't know that A is true, we can't claim A is true.

And indeed, from the fallacy taxonomy,

Another type of reasoning is called "auto-epistemic" ("self-knowing") because it involves reasoning from premisses about what one knows and what one would know if something were true. The form of such reasoning is:

If p were true, then I would know that p. I don't know that p. Therefore, p is false.

For instance, one might reason:

If I were adopted, then I would know about it by now. I don't know that I'm adopted. Therefore, I wasn't adopted.

Similarly, when extensive investigation has been undertaken, it is often reasonable to infer that something is false based upon a lack of positive evidence for it. For instance, if a drug has been subjected to lengthy testing for harmful effects and none has been discovered, it is then reasonable to conclude that it is safe.

And likewise, if mutations have been studied for a long time by people trying to find non-randomnesses and none have been discovered, then it's reasonable to conclude that they are, in fact, random.

Reasonable argument

From Tech Central Station: Arnold Kling looks at two types of argument that might be brought against any proposition, which he calls type C and type M.

For example, suppose I were to say, "We should abolish the minimum wage. That would increase employment and enable more people to climb out of poverty." There are two types of arguments you might make in response. I call these Type C and Type M. A hypothetical example of a Type C argument would be, "Well, Arnold, studies actually show that the minimum wage does not cost jobs. If you read the work of Krueger and Card, you would see that the minimum wage probably reduces poverty." A hypothetical example of a Type M argument would be, "People who want to get rid of the minimum wage are just trying to help the corporate plutocrats."

What is the difference between these two types of argument?

Type C arguments are about the consequences of policies. Type M arguments are about the alleged motives of individuals who advocate policies.

A practical difference between these two types of argument is that type C arguments involve data, evidence, and counter-evidence. Sooner or later, at least in principle, it's possible to show that one side or the other is wrong, and that the person on the wrong side of the argument will change his mind. A type M argument, denigrating the motives of the person stating a proposition, attacks the right of a person to even state the case.

Kling gives examples of type M arguments dealing with tax cuts, school vouchers, and the war in Iraq.

C.S. Lewis came up with a name for type M arguments: Bulverism.

Bulverism is a kind of ad hominem argument, which in turn is a kind of material fallacy of relevance. In Bulverism, you attack the motives of a person offering an argument, and argue that those motives render the argument false or illegitimate. (For example: "Republicans favor tax cuts because they're greedy and want to cause suffering among the poor.") Bulverism is closely related to the complex question, in which an unstated proposition is assumed as the foundation for another statement or question, such as: "Why are you so greedy and so mean to poor people?" In this example, the overt question, asking about the reasons for the person's motives, assumes the motives exist. If these motives have been established in the first place, that's a reasonable question. If they haven't, it's not.

Bulverism is a fallacy of relevance because the motives of someone arguing for some policy have no necessary bearing on the effects of that policy. It's quite possible that someone with base motives (such as a desire for worldly fame) may do something that has a good result (such as endowing a hospital in his name). On the other hand, the paving material for the road to hell is notorious.

One consequence is to lower the level of political discourse in general. You have a lot of influence with those who sympathize with your views. When they see you adopt type M arguments, they do the same. Conversely, many of your opponents are stooping to your level. I see type M arguments raised by many of your enemies on the Right. As horse manure draws flies, your columns generate opposition that is vindictive and uninformed. Another consequence is to lower the prestige and impact of economists. We are trained to make type C arguments. Instead, you are teaching by example that making speculative assessments of one's opponent's motives is more important than thinking through the consequences of policy options. If everyone were to use such speculative assessments as the basis for forming their opinions, then there would be no room for economics in public policy discussions.

Bulverism in Christendom

Many people accuse Christians of Bulverism – adopting a position on an entirely self-serving basis, not because the position has any intrinsic merit. Deacon at Powerline remarks on the unflagging support Christians offer Jews and Israel, and comments on this fallacy:

As a Jew living in liberal parts, I'm frequently asked whether I'm concerned about the "Christian right." I typically respond with a baffled expression, followed by a quick recap of the history of unprecedented toleration of Jews by religious fundamentalists in this country, and a reminder of the tremendous support that Evangelicals have given to Israel. With respect to the latter point, the more savvy of my inquisitors often reply that Evagelicals only support Israel because they are taught that the Jews must re-settle in the Holy Land in order for the Messiah to return. However, I believe this support has more to do with common bliblical values, as the JPost story suggests. I'm also mindful of the response of one American Jewish leader: for now, we're delighted to have their support; when the Messiah returns, we'll consider our options.

Biblical literalists would have a strong incentive to support Jews because of God's statement to Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you." (Quoting from memory.)

To those who chalk up Christian support of Israel to base motives on the part of Christians, I have only two things to say. Firstly, if someone does good by you, do you routinely reject that good if it's not done for "the right reason"? (If you are treated at a hospital that's named after someone, do you first make sure that person didn't give lots of money for the sole purpose of getting his name on a hospital?)

Secondly, if you're a Jew worried that you only have the support of Christians until the Second Coming occurs, I thought you guys didn't believe the First Coming had taken place yet. And frankly, once it does, will Jews still need the support of Christians?