Cheap ploys and straw men

Too often in political discourse, the cheap ploy takes the place of the carefully reasoned argument. One good example of this is the tendency for one or another debater to exaggerate an opponent’s position in order to ridicule it. It’s much easier to demolish an extremist argument than a moderate one, and so the tactic of caricaturing one’s opponent’s arguments as extreme versions of themselves becomes a tempting gambit — especially if one’s own positions are difficult to defend.

My good friend Ogre provides a ready example of this slothful practice:

Since the left/Democrats/media (one and the same) keep giving their solutions and ideas, let’s implement them. It would be a 3-step approach.

1. Immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq. Complete and total withdrawal. After all, those people can fend for themselves, right? If Saddam’s people free him and he takes power again, that’s fine—it’s none of our business, right?

2. Free all prisoners at Gitmo. They keep complaining about Gitmo prisoners, right? So we should do as they suggest—just completely free all enemy combatants, all dangerous people who are bent on destroying America—let them go free.

3. Cancel the Patriot Act and restore the “wall” between all the departments in the government—no sharing of information between the CIA and FBI or anyone else. That’s what the left wants, right?

That’s the current, stated agenda of the left (media, Democrat Party, etc) in this country.

Ogre’s arguments, of course, are nearly textbook examples of the well-known "straw man" fallacy.

Description of Straw Man

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:

1. Person A has position X. 2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X). 3. Person B attacks position Y. 4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

Gary Curtis points out in the Fallacy Files:

As the “straw man” metaphor suggests, the counterfeit position attacked in a Straw Man argument is typically weaker than the opponent’s actual position, just as a straw man is easier to defeat than a flesh-and-blood one. Of course, this is no accident, but is part of what makes the fallacy tempting to commit, especially to a desperate debater who is losing an argument.

...Straw Man arguments often attack a political party or movement at its extremes, where it is weakest. For example, it is a straw man to portray the anti-abortion position as the claim that all abortions, with no exceptions, are wrong. It is also a straw man to attack abortion rights as the position that no abortions should ever be restricted, bar none. Such straw men are often part of the process of “demonization”, and we might well call the subfallacy of the straw man which attacks an extreme position instead of the more moderate position held by the opponent, the “Straw Demon”.

The first question to ask in a critical examination of Ogre’s claims is: Are the positions he presents as being those of ‘the Left’ accurate representations of the arguments being made? Evaluating the accuracy of Ogre’s claims is made more difficult by his deliberate tactic of failing to cite any actual individuals who allegedly hold these views. We could ask Ogre to elaborate… but, as we have already seen, Ogre chooses to evade questions about his views, preferring to employ personal attacks, clownish antics, and outright lies in his attempts to derail any serious discussion examination of his viewpoint.

So, in the absence of any likelihood that Ogre will provide concrete examples of the positions he alleges are held by (conveniently unnamed) folks on ‘the Left’, we are left with only the ability to look at prominent examples of views that appear to be similar to those that Ogre presents. Take, for instance, the first component of Ogre’s claimed “stated agenda of the left”: “Immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq. Complete and total withdrawal.”

Without doubt, Ogre has in mind the resolution proposed on November 17, 2005 by Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania. Compare the text of the resolution to Ogre’s claim:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That:

SECTION 1. The deployment of United States forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and the forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date.

SEC. 2. A quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines shall be deployed in the region.

SEC. 3. The United States of America shall pursue security and stability in Iraq through diplomacy.

It’s quite easy to see that Ogre’s claim is an exaggeration of Murtha’s resolution — a classic straw man argument. Murtha calls neither for “immediate” nor “complete and total” withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Ogre is, of course, not alone in his use of the straw man fallacy. The Republican Party in Congress tried the same thing with a phony resolution which was referred to falsely as the “Murtha resolution”. Several well-known Republican media mouthpieces helped spread the lie.

Ogre’s other two claims are equally unsupported by the record, as even cursory research into the issues will reveal. While such fallacies are committed by those of all political stripes, Ogre’s straw man arguments are all too representative of the tactics of the radical right in America today. Logic is, alas, a subject too seldom taught in American schools. One can only wish that more logic and fewer fallacies were in evidence as this country debates its present and future course.