As the Worm Turns

I like bad arguments. I like them the same way “American Idol” fans like the contestants who can’t sing. The way NASCAR fans secretly like crashes. You’re not supposed to, but you do.

If you’re looking for bad arguments, the internet is the place to be. And on the internet, Human Events and Townhall.com are two places where bad arguments are born. Veritable bad-argument factory farms, as it were. I imagine little wire cages, stuffed full of genetically- and hormonally-altered columnists forced to lay columns at a prodigious and inhuman rate.

But it’s common knowledge that conservative columnists don’t feel pain like human beings do, so it’s fully morally justified — even for utilitarians.

(Am I showing personal bias by picking on conservative websites? Shouldn’t I also point out bad arguments on Daily Kos? Yes, of course I should. But conservative websites have bad arguments in favor of dumb things, which amuses me. Liberal websites have bad arguments in favor of good things, like gay marriage and environmental prtection. This just makes me sad. Plus it’s my pretend blog, not yours.)

Three bad arguments after the jump:

Slippery Slopes: Your All-Purpose Fallacy

First we have La Shawn Barber, who is kind enough to place her logical fallacy in the title of her column: Interracial Marriage: Slippery Slope? Normally I can’t read everything on the interweb looking for bad arguments. Barber saved me lots of time by pointing out her mistake right at the beginning. From now on I’d like everyone to list the informal fallacies they use, perhaps placing them in a sidebar. It will make me much more efficient.

So what’s Barber’s slippery slope? It’s the hoary old chestnut:

1. Loving v. Virginia found anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.
2. Gay activists want to use Loving v. Virginia to argue for gay marriage.
3. We are only a few activist judges away from pure chaos:

[I]f we extend marriage to same-sex couples, on what grounds can we deny the same to three people? Or 10? Or close relatives? Or adults and children? It makes a mockery of marriage.

Barber apparently forgets that absurd arguments need to get more absurd as time goes on. I know it’s hard to top comparing homosexuality with bestiality, but that’s no reason to not even try. I figure that Barber (a) has never heard of Rick Santorum, (b) thinks bestiality is OK, or (c) thinks she came up with the argument all by her self. Obviously (b) is the funniest but I think it’s also the least likely. But either of (a) or (c) gives us reason to doubt Barber’s competence as a national (albeit digital) columnist. If she were wrong and funny I’d give her a pass. Much like…

Mike S. Adams Returns!

I like Mike S. Adams, I really do. He’s very funny, but certainly not in the ways he intends. He presents quite the non sequiter: he’s both a Ph.D. but his arguments would get a failing grade in a freshmen Critical Thinking course. He adds such tasty irony to an otherwise bland universe. I really appreciate his willingness to think absurd things for my amusement.

But he has much more to contribute to society. You see, he’s a sheepdog, and he’s here to protect us from the big, bad wolves:

Sheepdogs, unlike sheep, are fully prepared to kill other human beings. But, unlike the wolves, they do so in order to protect those whom they love – most of whom are unable to fend for themselves. Their willingness to kill is a function of their love for their fellow citizens.

He loves his fellow citizens, and he’s willing to kill because of it. He’s not only willing, he’s prepared:

There are many people who find it odd that I shoot firearms on an almost daily basis with other sheepdogs… And, needless to say, they would certainly not understand why I kill literally hundreds of live animals per year (usually small varmints) in order to perfect my skills in hitting targets that actually move.

So far, so good. Mike Adams is ready and willing. He can protect himself as well as those around him. He has both the mental toughness and the physical skills to do what needs to be done. It is a dangerous world, after all; if anything, recent events have certainly strengthened that impression. But for Mike S. Adams, the world isn’t just dangerous. It’s unhinged:

[…] I warned her of the existence of the Islamic wolves who would some day release an atomic device in our country in the name of Islam. Nor do I know whether she told them about the domestic wolves I also warned her about. These are the folks whose withdrawal from addictive drugs in the wake of the chaos following a nuclear explosion would lead them to prey upon the sheep not prepared with gun safes that look a lot like mine. [emphasis added]

This makes my jaw drop. Mike S. Adams shoots varmints to protect us all from rampaging mobs of withdrawing drug addicts as society collapses — like a house of cards! — because of an Islamic nuclear weapon.

Just say that again, quietly, to yourself. Mike S. Adams shoots varmints to protect us from hordes of drug addicts in a post-apocalyptic landscape. One dirty bomb leads to the collapse of the illegal drug market (because markets are very fragile), and after riots caused by detoxing addicts, Mike S. Adams and his varmint-shooting skills will be all that stand in between life and death in a barren, lawless landscape.

Mike S. Adams is an American Mad Max. He’s the Road Warrior. He’s Beyond Thunderdome.

He’s also wrong. Adams is a professor. He should spend more time reading the literature. There will be no drug riots after the Islamists set off their WMDs. Everyone knows that the Islamofascists will use their control over Afghanistan poppies to turn all of us Westerners into opium-addicted slaves.

Terry Easton Tells Me What I Think

I read conservative columnists because that’s how I find out what I think.

You see, I am a communist. I know this because Christopher Horner tells me so, and I know this because Terry Easton tells me so.

Never mind the fact that I read The Economist. Never mind the fact that I’m a classical liberal with deep love for human freedom and fond feelings for the free market. Never mind the disgust and revulsion I feel toward state totalitarianism of any kind. Never mind any of the things I think, say or do.

I am a communist because I believe in the scientific case for global warming. And only collectivist red-on-the-inside, green-on-the-outside watermelon enviro-commie-wackos believe in global warming. It’s a conspiracy, you know — bought-and-paid-for science with an eye toward profiteering and social engineering. And the proof? Because Terry Easton really wants it to be true!

I have neither the time nor energy to deal with the absolute absurdity of Terry Easton’s ridiculousness ravings. Read them here and you’ll get a perfect example of pure philosophical bullshit. But I do love me some unintentional irony, and Easton provides a tiny example when he slams taxes and “artificial markets in ‘emissions trading’” as examples of “collectivist tactics”.

After all, the tried-and-false techniques of command-and-control environmentalism are, for all effective purposes, dead. There may be a few old environmental dinosaurs lumbering around, but — much like the cute and very sincere anti-globalization hippies still hanging around, protesting the WTO and G8 — they have little chance to really affect policy. We’ve learned too much to let them screw things up.

Emissions trading and carbon taxes are themselves market-based techniques to solve environmental problems. Rather than dictating from above, we let the market — and the assumption of rational, self-interested actors — solve the problem. This is a win for the conservative side, right? Especially since, at the very least, emissions trading is well-supported amongst the business community, right?

But it’s not enough for Easton when traditionally conservative methods are applied to traditionally liberal problems. Apparently Easton only wants to acknowledge traditional conservative problems and dismiss as hyperbole and lies everything else — and, like most cranks and relativists, the only argument he can give is derision, condescension and rhetorical sophistry.

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Reason, Rationality, Post-modern, Relativism, Science, Cranks, bad arguments, Townhall.com, Human Events, Mike S. Adams, Environmentalism, Global Warming