People, for
the most part, are not familiar with the rules of logic. It's one
of those subjects that people shy away from, feeling that it's too
complex to understand. What people don't realize is that they employ
logic every day.

Logic is often
applied to human problems in an attempt to determine truth; and
since truth is the foundation of liberty, free men must apply the
rules of logic rigorously. Americans, until the counter-revolution
of the sixties, had long been champions of this ideal.

Over the last
hundred years, a problem has developed in America. Government has
slowly turned away from the idea of using truth as a standard, and
has replaced truth with the fallacies. The fallacies may be thought
of as an organized system of anti-logic; they are an evil mirror-image
of the truth.

Our government
has seized upon the fallacies because logic, unlike truth, is mutable.
That's why Christians use logic and faith together. Christians believe
that God exists, that right is better than wrong, and that truth
is a virtue. To say that there is a conflict between fixed Christian
ideals, and the hidden and self-serving goals of government would
be an understatement.

In order to
maintain support for an increasingly irrational agenda, the government
makes extensive use of the fallacies. To understand the government,
look at the Fallacies. It then becomes easy to see how they operate:

THE FALLACIES

Fallacies
of Distraction

False Dilemma:
Only two choices are given, when in fact there are more options:

(A) Invade
Iraq, or

(B) Continue
sanctions.

Complex Question:
Two unrelated points are co-joined as a single proposition:

We must invade
Iraq to restore democracy, and safeguard the oil supply.

Appeals
to Motives in Place of Support

Appeal to
Force: The reader is persuaded to agree by force: If you are
a good American, you will support the war. If you don't, you are
a traitor.

Appeal to
Pity: The reader is persuaded to agree by sympathy: In these
hard economic times, we must raise taxes so that no child is left
behind.

Changing
the Subject

Attacking the
Person: The person's circumstances are noted:

Saddam uses
Viagra and lives in a palace and steals incubators.

Anonymous Authority:
The authority in question is not named:

Officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, claim
that the British Ricin suspects are connected with Al Qaeda.

Inductive
Fallacies

False Analogy:
The two objects or events being compared are relevantly dissimilar:
We must occupy Iraq to establish democracy, just
as we did with Japan.

Fallacy of
Exclusion: Evidence that would change the outcome of an inductive
argument is excluded from consideration: Iraq has an arsenal of
weaponry that must be destroyed. (Most of it is of American origin)

Causal
Fallacies

Post Hoc: Because
one thing follows another, it is held to cause the other:

The
attack on the World Trade Center caused the invasion of Afghanistan.

Insignificant: One
thing is held to cause another, and it does, but it is insignificant
compared to other causes: The collapsing American economy is caused
by low consumer confidence. (Rather than over-taxation, and over-regulation)

Missing
the Point

Begging the
Question: The truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises:

American values are universal, therefore Arab society will eventually
welcome American hegemony.

Straw Man:
The author attacks an argument different from (and weaker than)
the opposition's best argument: U.S. military interventions are
not a violation of the sovereign status of individual nations, rather
they are a safeguard of human rights within those nations.

Fallacies
of Ambiguity

Equivocation:
The same term is used with two different meanings:

Affirmative
Action is the intentional inclusion of members of a group,
or alternately, the intentional exclusion of members of a
group.

Amphiboly:
The structure of a sentence allows two different interpretations.

Presidential
Quote: Our goal is not to expand the Government, but to create an
agile organization. (We will expand the government, but that's not
the goal.)

By the way,
this is the origin of the expression telling a fib.

Category
Errors

Composition:
Because the attributes of the parts of a whole have a certain
property, it is argued that the whole has that property: The American
government will benefit from war, thus the American people will
benefit from war.

Division: Because
the whole has a certain property, it is argued that the parts have
that property. Government spending is 40% of gross domestic product,
so it claims to create 40% of the wealth. (In fact, the government
creates no wealth, it destroys wealth).

Non Sequitur

Denying the
Antecedent: Any argument of the form: If A then B, Not A, thus
Not B:

If
we invade Iraq, democracy will be established. If we don't invade
Iraq: the people will be enslaved forever.

Inconsistency:
Asserting that contrary or contradictory statements are both
true. America is a peace loving country, and we are also the world's
Policeman.

Syllogistic
Errors

Fallacy of
Drawing an Affirmative Conclusion From a Negative Premise:

All Patriots
are American, and some Americans are not Patriots, therefore some
Americans are dangerous.

Existential
Fallacy: A particular conclusion is drawn from universal premises:

All
men desire truth, and some men are dangerous, so
some truth is dangerous.

Fallacies
of Explanation

Subverted Support,
The phenomenon being explained doesn't exist:

Arabs
want to destroy America because they hate democracy.

Limited Depth,
The theory that explains, does not appeal to underlying causes:

The
government is expanding so that it may better serve the needs
of the people.

Fallacies
of Definition

Circular Definition:
The definition includes the term being defined as part of the
definition: America is a democracy, because the American people
believe in democracy.

Failure to
Elucidate: The definition is harder to understand than the term
being defined:

The U.S.A.
Patriot Act stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to intercept and Obstruct Terrorism

For the full
set of fallacies visit: http://datanation.com/fallacies/div.htm

Modern media
tries to make the case that some government agencies may be dishonest,
but the government itself is trustworthy. This, of course, is hogwash.
Or rather, it is a Category Error, Fallacy of Composition. (I think
hogwash sounds better.)

The danger
associated with government use of the fallacies is that lying comes
at a personal cost to the people who engage in these activities.
Like soldiers who develop bloodlust, lying government and media
personnel eventually lapse into moral bankruptcy. And moral bankruptcy,
as British writer Theodore Dalrywmple has noted, signals the onset
of fascism. As evidence, consider the following dark unspoken proposition
now coming out of Washington:

Old people:
Do you want your social security check and your medicine? Young
people: Do you want jobs in the new centrally planned economy? Then
shut up. We've got some killing to do, and the sooner we get it
over with, the better. After we take what we need, there might be
something left over for you.

The purpose
of this unspoken offer is not merely to buy silence; it is intended
to make people feel as if they are morally complicit to a crime.
Once you take the money, you are bought and paid for. Our government,
which destroyed free enterprise with graft, now enforces the silence
of its citizenry with lies and unspoken threats.

The solution
to all this, of course, is to tell the truth, and to expect the
same of others.

Learn to recognize
the fallacies, and get into the habit of spotting them every time
you read the news. They are easy to see, if you make the effort.
And if you really want to fight, develop a strong moral code based
on both logic and faith, and live by it.

January
30, 2003

Ron
Liebermann [send him mail] is
a contractor and manufacturer of Mylar balloons in Louisville, Ky.