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How to Fail at Arguing #6: As others do to us

28 Jul

A 15 story mosque and Islamic community center has been approved within blocks of the site of 9/11. Naturally many New Yorkers and others are outraged because this is the site of a national tragedy and those who attacked civilians there did so in the name of Islam. Planting a mosque at the site seems incredibly insensitive and offensive to the memory of those who died on 9/11. The leader of the mosque project has said 9/11 was America’s fault and at least somewhat justified, refuses to call Hammas (not to be confused with hommus) a terrorist group, and the project is being funded from Islamic groups in Islamic countries. There’s a lot of reasons people are concerned.

That’s the story, here’s the argument I keep hearing:

We’ll let mosques be built anywhere when every Muslim country lets churches and synagogues be built freely.

Image from article on Politico.com

Whatever the right thing is, it is not to lower our standards, as a country that champions religious liberty, to those of countries to not allow religious liberty.

By justifying your actions by those of another, you’ve walked away from your own principles. If the above argument is all you have, you’re saying you want to belong to an anti-freedom country, though you condemn them.

This failure in arguing happens frequently, thanks in part to the short length of political terms (though it isn’t limited to politics).

That Democrats manipulated Republican primary elections is not, in itself, reason for the Republicans who champion ethics and character to manipulate elections. That liberals expand government is not justification for “conservatives,” who champion smaller government to expand government.

If you violate the principles you claim as your own, you lack character. Your choices are not justified by comparing them to those who don’t claim to hold the same principles you do.

There are legitimate reasons for wanting this Mosque moved to another location. But the more conversations and airwaves are filled with poor arguments like this, the less likely real dialog is possible.

Edit: Added new image and fixed some typos. (8/18/2010 – Second Jon)

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How to Fail at Arguing #5

20 Jul

On my way home tonight I heard Randi Rhodes of Air America. In her very loud rant, she kept repeating two lines for the duration of my 10 minute drive.

First, she was responding to charges that the Democrats under Pelosi and Obama have grown the size of government. She listed the dozens of government departments that were created under the 8 years of Bush, totaling hundreds! I agree Randi, Bush shouldn’t have grown government so much. And conservatives said so at the time.

How to fail: Take the 2nd grade “I am rubber you are glue” approach.

When someone says your party is growing government bigger, respond with, “Your party grew the government bigger!” Randi’s response didn’t deal with whether a bigger government is good idea or a bad idea. Presumably Randi is in favor of the bigger government that her party is bringing, so her response is meaningless. All someone has to say is, “I don’t like that Bush grew the government by so much either,” and her argument is totally deflated.

Here’s how the argument could have gone:

Obama is growing the government! That’s bad!

Bush grew the government by huge amounts!

Right. That’s one of the ways Bush wasn’t very conservative. I agree that Bush expanding the government so much was a problem. I said so at the time.

Then the conversation could have gone somewhere productive, like talking about what the government should or should not do.

I think this usually happens when someone knows the negative claim against their position is true. Instead of explaining or justifying where they’re coming from, they simply deflect and say, “You too, you too!”

Another example I heard recently was in response to concerns that Obama could use the oil spill for a government power-grabs, to enforce huge new government programs. The response?

What – like Bush’s illegal wars against countries not even related to 9/11?

The original concern is still valid, but what’s worse is the double-standard. It’s good when Obama takes sweeping action in response to a crisis, but bad if Bush does it? How can there be any logic with such inconsistency? To respond by insulting when Bush did it is to say that it is a bad idea. If a power-grab during a crisis is a bad idea, it’s a bad idea.

Don’t say something is a bad idea when one person does it, but when another person does it, it’s pure righteousness.

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How to Fail at Arguing #4

15 Jul

Often heard in political, theological, and other arguments is the line “That just doesn’t make sense.”

This insults the person making the argument – how foolish they must be to believe in something that doesn’t make sense. But this isn’t just an insult, not just an ad hominem attack.

It insults idea itself. Some ideas don’t make sense – but this is not shown by calling an idea stupid – it’s done by working through the argument with logic.

Usually an idea does make sense – at least from a certain perspective. If any thinking person has ever believed the argument, it made sense to them.

For example, anyone who says the idea of believing in God doesn’t make sense is judging some of the smartest minds in the history of the world. If brilliant minds believe it, it must make sense to them.

If you can’t understand how an idea could make sense to others, the first problem is with you, not the idea.

If you can’t understand how an idea makes sense to someone else, how can you ever think you could argue against that idea?

It pays to seek to understand before seeking to be understood.

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How to Fail at Arguing #3

14 Jul

Dole vs. Clinton

In 1996, senator and military veteran Bob Dole ran against Bill Clinton, who fled the country to avoid the draft at the time Dole was serving. We elected Clinton after being told that military experience was irrelevant, and it wasn’t a big deal that Clinton dodged the draft.

Eight years later, veteran John Kerry was running against George W. Bush, who served in the reserves and never saw combat. The same people who discounted military experience and defended draft-dodging in ’96 were now saying military experience mattered, and that Bush serving in the military wasn’t good enough.

This brings us to How to Fail at Arguing #3:

Reverse positions as it suits you.

It’s a quick way to lose credibility and make everything you say irrelevant.

W. Bush vs. Obama

Do you remember this picture of Bush and McCain with a cake during the Katrina days? How dare he eat a piece of cake during a disaster?! What about Bush playing golf, as villainized by Michael Moore in a documentary as shown in this clip (it seems an insult to the word “documentary,” but that’s what it was called):

And now, only two years later, Obama is excused for spending all sorts of time throwing parties and playing golf – in fact more golf already than Bush played during his 8 years in office – all while saying he “wont’ rest” until the Gulf of Mexico disaster is resolved.

If you criticized Bush for golfing but you don’t criticize Obama for the same thing, you fail at arguing.

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How to Fail at Arguing #2

09 Jul

My copy of A New Kind of Christian is full of notes in the columns of all the times Brian McLaren fails at making his argument. Here’s the first one that caught my eye when I read the book:

Claim unquestionable authority for your argument.

God’s Unquestionable Authority

This isn’t often in the form of “God told me to tell you this,” but often God’s unchallengeable authority is bestowed on one’s self of, as in McLaren’s case, a fictional character invented to be McLaren’s mouthpiece but with divine authority.

Neo said, “My pastor at Saint Tim’s tells me that I have the spiritual gift of putting into words thins people already know but didn’t know they know – or didn’t want to know. On several occasions I’ve offered to return the gift to the Lord…. It’s not always a pleasant job. People often don’t thank you for it.” – A New Kind of Christian, Chapter 1. (That’s not an added ellipsis “…”, it’s how McLaren wrote it in the book.)

For the rest of the book, Neo’s words are absolute truth. To deny Neo’s words is to deny God’s gift.

Certainly there are arguments where Divine authority can be claimed, at least in a conversation between Bible-believers – when you’re making an argument from scripture. Then again, most of the time when this happens, we’re assigning our interpretation and eisegesis God’s authority, which is another way to fail at arguing.

Experts’ Unquestionable Authority

Outside of religious circles, how can you claim unquestionable authority? One way is to exalt “experts” to godhood. ‘

We’re told global warming is true because experts say it is. We’re told children are raised better by schools than parents because experts say so. Often experts are invoked with unquestionable authority because the conclusion drawn from these experts contradicts common sense.

If you can’t convince someone without pulling out the sledge hammer of unquestionable authority, you’ve got a lousy argument indeed.

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How to Fail at Arguing #1

08 Jul

My ears perk up when I hear people fail at arguing. It happens all the time by many people, though I notice it most from self-described left-wing “progressives.” I see this as being an ongoing series on this blog with examples as I see or hear them.

How many times can he fail in one conversation?

Here’s a clip of a recent attempt at a conversation on Facebook. The article linked was the one I wrote about earlier about NASA’s new mission.

How to fail in argument as Tice did here:

Simultaneously express agreement, skepticism, and disagreement about the same thing.
Avoid talking about the issue at hand altogether.
Call the other person names.
Insult the source instead of the facts being reported, or the factworthiness of the report.
And a bonus combo of the above: Agree with a source, then attack the source and say that anyone who agrees with them is stupid.

Yes, he just called himself stupid. Gold star. That’s how to fail at arguing, first edition.

Have you seen someone recently fail at arguing? Leave me a comment or drop a note.

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Second Jon

Posts Tagged ‘argue’

How to Fail at Arguing #6: As others do to us