Take a look at the confrontation between a Mr. Alford and Senator Boxer regarding cap and tax; notice that Boxer does not address the evidence at all, but merely presents statements by black groups and claims that her point is made by a "diversity of opinion."
Beyond the racial obnoxiousness of the confrontation, Senatrix Boxer has pulled a neat trick by doing this that should be obvious to anyone familiar with logic; by appealing to "diversity of opinion," she has taken the debate out of the realm of evidence and placed it firmly into the realm of politics. Ad hominem followed by a diversionary tactic; you don't even need to know what a syllogism is to see where that one went wrong.
Given the fact that it was about 50 degrees out when I woke up this morning (even in Minnesota that's unusual), and it's only in the sixties now, Boxer's move makes a lot of sense. The last thing global warming alarmists want these days is for people to look at the evidence. Even so, it's a great reason to teach logic in schools, so that Boxer's intended victims can at least see what's coming.
H/T Muckraker and others, of course.
The Problem with Modern Economics Education
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I’ve been recently doing a deep dive into the Austrian School with one of
my classes. We’ve talked in-depth about one of the central problems of
Keynesian ...
3 hours ago
2 comments:
It's also bandwagoning (if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?) and appeal to authority, made even worse by the fact that nobody ordinarily considers "what black people organized into interest groups think" to be much of its own authority until the moment it suited Barbara Boxer to make it one. An interesting data point, maybe, and worthy of consideration depending on your point of view, but an authority?
[hah] "Senatrix". I may steal that one.
wv: powersly. I may also use this word to define Obama's many underhanded power grabs.
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