I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this week, Logically Critical. They guy is really funny. His whole premise is that there are many things out there that everyone buys into that are not logical. The podcast I just listened to was about Logical Fallacies. This is when someone makes a conclusion from arguments that do not follow. In other words, the conclusion may or may not be true, the problem is that the facts or reasons they state do not have anything to do with the result. He was giving examples of Ad Hominum and Straw Man arguments when he reached a section on False Choice. In his example, he states that when a waiter comes up to you and asks if you want soup or salad, that is a false choice. What if you want both or neither? What if you want something else? He was talking about how it is often a mistake to believe that there are only 2 choices, good or evil, yes or no, etc.
I've thought of this often when you look at political arguments. Often times conservatives and liberals, democrats and republicans line up on opposite sides of a problem and blast away at each other. "We can't stop using oil to save the enviroment, it will wreck the economy." "Do you want all your freedoms, or do you want to stop the terrorists?"
Our most polarizing arguments usually are false choice arguments. Take the abortion stances, either you take away a woman's right to choose, or you kill babies. Both bad choices. Why not make it so only people that really want to get pregnant, will get pregnant. Then you get to make the choice of whether or not to conceive without any abortions. The same is true with teaching evolution. Many creationists see evolution as an attack on their religion. Why? Either god created the earth exactly and literally as it says in the bible or god is a lie? How about god created the earth and the people in them through evolution and gradual geological forces? School prayer, public displays of religious material? No problem. Don't mandate prayer or restrict it. If anyone wants to pray, they can, and if you don't like it, don't pray. Same with the nativity scene in the city hall. Don't sweat it. Or lobby your local government to put up a star of david or a notice celebrating ramadan or something.
This false choice thing, unfortunately, is deeply embedded in our government. Two parties, two choices. What if we don't like either choice? Unfortunately, in America, we don't get another choice. I used to think that multiple party coalition governments, Italy and Israel in particular, were stupid because the government is always being dissolved over the latest crisis. That is wasteful, to be in a state of perpetual electioneering. However, if you think about it, our country is full of people that are really voting based pretty much on single issues. There the anti-abortion and pro church people, then there's the small government, or pro environment people, but there are also lobbies based on certain industries or government workers or unions. There are people that seem to only think about inheritance taxes or taxes in general, and there are those that are passionate about health care or national defense. If you had to pick amongst many parties that all had narrow special interests, there wouldn't be a clear 50/50 split in American politics and there would not be such polarization.
Let's face it, the major parties don't serve anyone very well. You probably have a hard time finding many people out there that will tell you that they are staunchly one of the two parties and that they agree with everything that party stands for. I guess I would qualify that as saying they stand for everything that party stands for and actually follows through with.
LATER: Right after I finished writing this and posting it, I got a call from my wife. She had just read that Bloomberg was going to run as an independent. How's that for timing?
No comments:
Post a Comment