Logic and Argument

There's a word that you learn if you take a "Logic and Argument" class: tautology. It essentially describes a situation that is true by definition and needlessly repetitive. For example, all blue toys are blue. The statement is true, it is obvious, and it doesn't bear stating because you've restricted your set of objects under consideration by the very attribute you wish to consider. Your conclusion ("they're all blue") conveys no information because you already removed from consideration anything that might dispute it ("all blue toys are...").

I wrote a short story on this topic some time back, in which a religious cult defended the truth of its crazy beliefs by saying that no serious scholar of the cult lore disputed the beliefs of the cult... but over the course of the story it becomes clear that their definition of "serious scholar" is one who affirms those beliefs and precludes any doubters.

And that's what is happening today on Fox News. I heard someone make a statement that "No one except far left liberals seriously disagrees with the Bush Administration." However, if you pay close attention, you'll note that they DEFINE as "far left liberal" anyone who questions the Bush Administration in anything.

Case in point, last week's brief news splash about Ray McGovern, a 27 year veteran CIA analyst (retired from the Agency) asking questions of Donald Rumsfeld which a lot of people would like to hear answered. As a former CIA analyst, he's in a position to know the extent to which the CIA was and was not involved in some of the intelligence decisions which have been made regarding Iraq, and he chose to ask about some of those, and like clockwork the Fox spin machine ground into high gear and began painting him as an ultra-liberal.

The fact is, many Right Wing pundits spend a good portion of their time defining as "far left wing" anyone who disagrees with them and the Administration. This makes any such assertion about the character of those who criticize the President a tautology.

In effect, what they've done is take the statement "Everyone who disagrees with the Administration disagrees with the Administration" (a clear tautology), then defined the term "ultra liberal" as "someone who disagrees with the Administration", and ended up with "Everyone who disagrees with the Administration is an ultra liberal."

So many words, so much air time, so little actually said. I guess that's what they mean by "Fair and Balanced".

Liam.