GNATS

Well, the room is swarming with conservatives tonight. I knew Reagan emptying mental hospitals would be a mistake...

It seems like a perfect time to have a class in our apparently just begun series on ERRORS IN REASONING!!! (echo echo echo...) Clearly, this is something that our sad little friends desperately need.

So, all day today, I've been hearing Cons saying things like:

"Why do you hate us when all we do is love our country?"
"You're supporting Saddam."
"Bass...............wants our soldiers to die.....could care less."
"hey for arguments sake....if a rape occurs in a school somewhere in the US...should we close all the Schools???"
"these socialists want to take your money your land and redistribute them"

...and that's just from TARFU!

I kid, I kid. BBTech, nellyandlynn, MosesKnows and Brutelogic helped. Now, for those of you who are advanced, you will probably recognize most of these as examples of the Excluded Middle fallacy. This type of statement is also called a Strawman, where you set up a simplistic version of your opponents argument, and then knock it down and declare victory. It goes without saying that it is much more difficult to meet your opponent at his strongest argument, which is why conservative cowards rarely do so.

The Excluded Middle is an either/or argument. Either you support Bush totally, or you love Saddam. Either you support crony kleptocratic capitalism, or you're a socialist. Either you support Bush in everything, or you hate your country. You get the idea. My normal response to this kind of dishonesty is generally a string of expletives, but I'm not as calm as most.

As a funny guy once said, "The dude who invents a device to stab people in the face over the Internet will be a very wealthy man."

JC