The effects of bad argumentation

WE DO NOT need to look very hard to see glaring examples of fallacious argumentation.

If you spend an evening with a newspaper or slumming around the evening news, you’ll invariably be confronted with arguments that might be persuasive, but, upon closer investigation, turn out to be lacking in substance or validity.

After quoting Osama Bin Laden extensively in a recent speech, President Bush asserted that the world had “paid a terrible price” because it ignored the words of Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.

As a justification for the War on Terror, how well does this argument hold up? Is it possible to draw an analogy between these three figures? Is fundamentalist Islam similar in any capacity to Naziism or Communism?

Admittedly, all of them have historically advocated or advocate broad social revolutions, but constructing them as some sort of unholy trinity is a bit of an exaggeration because it implies a nonexistent similarity between the three categories.

Unfortunately, Bush’s attempt at creating a sense of longevity between America’s enemies of the past and present falls short of its mark in only a few circles.

While we may be engaged in one of “the greatest ideological [struggles] of the 21st century,” it appears that the references to Hitler and Lenin were not employed because of their soundness, but because they resonate with Bush’s predominately uncritical audiences.

That’s right, people like you and I.

Even though arguments by analogy are slippery in university courses, many of us forget to be careful consumers of political discourse.

And, big surprise, speech writers capitalize on this fact.

Strong evidence and reasonable leaps between premises and conclusions have unfortunately taken a backseat to loaded terminology and unsubstantiated comparisons.

And why has the reasoned speech writing and responsible public debate of old given way to a new age of argumentation?

Because decorating a speech with language that is loosely defined at best creates shortcuts to emotional states that impede rational decision making.

How else can we possibly explain the phenomena that is Bush?

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