Common Liberal Fallacies
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:19 pm
Listening to Our Beloved President speaking over the past month or so (apparently in Full Campaign Mode), he is a walking encyclopedia (encyclopaedia, if you like) of many common liberal fallacies. It doesn't take a great deal of thought to see why these points are fallacious, but then again, Liberals aren't exactly known for giving things a great deal of thought. From my viewpoint as a "moderate" and even-tempered person, here are some of the more eggregious Liberal fallacies that I'm noting these days:
a. That which is BENEFICIAL is necessarily GOOD. One hears the President talking about emails he gets from people who praise him (?) for benefits they are receiving or hope to recieve as a result of "Obamacare." And this is his "argument" for why it shouldn't be repealed or overturned. But so what? Just because someone benefits from something doesn't make it good policy. Give everyone the use of a Prius? Beneficial, but stupid. Take away the Prius and people will be "harmed." So what? It's still a stupid thing to do.
b. That which is GOOD is necessarily CONSTITUTIONAL. This is totally absurd, as anyone who has actually read the Constitution is aware. Maybe it would be a good idea for the Federal Government to completely take over the American health care system and pay for it with a dedicated tax. I don't know. But I do know that it would be Unconstitutional. Apparently, most liberals don't get that GOOD doesn't necessarily mean CONSTITUTIONAL.
c. "Income Inequality" is a problem to be fixed (by the Government). Inequality of wealth and income is as natural as inequality of height, intelligence, beauty, and artistic talent. Increasing inequality over time is also a normal development and is not a "problem," any more than is the fact that track and field records get better and better with each new generation. The slowest people are still at the same speed as 100 years ago, but the fastest will get faster. The poorest people will remain at a very low level, economically, but technology makes it possible for those at the top to earn more and more. This is a good thing (because anyone can pursue and reap these riches), not a problem.
d. Different outcomes between different populations proves insidious discrimination. If 12% of the population is African American and less than 1% of Math PhD's are African American, then Academe must be discriminating against African Americans. If the Firefighters physical exam excludes 98% of the women who take it, then it must be "discriminatory." If 70% of Wal-Mart's employees are women and only 2% of their store managers are women, Wall-Mart must be discriminating against its women employees. If you agree with the preceding three sentences, you MUST be a liberal.
e. Taxing corporations as much as possible is good policy. The U.S. has recently become the country with the highest effective corporate income tax rate of any developed country (Japan just lowered theirs, to put us on top). Corporations are fictitious "persons." Taxing their incomes accomplishes nothing, but causes them to employ strategies to avoid taxes, rather than make money - which is what they are created to do. Enlightened countries tax the owners of the corporation when they take their profit from the corporation, but they pretty much keep their corporate tax rates low enough so as to be little more than a nuisance. The profits that are not taken away as income taxes are either paid to employees (where they are taxed), paid out as dividends (where they are taxed), or re-invested into the enterprise, which is a good thing.
f. Mandates don't cost anything. Liberal politicians are positively addicted to pushing people and corporations around through regulations, permitting requirements, zoning restrictions, and "standards." In their petty little minds, these things are "free," and don't cost anything. In the liberal mind, the Endangered Species Act is just a nice, tree-hugging, harmless initiative. The cost of delayed and prevented construction and development is completely lost to them. In the liberal mind, ratcheting up clean air standards on coal-fired power plants is "free," and the cost of scrubbers, enhanced monitoring, replacing plants (all of whcih are paid for by the rate-payers) is totally off the radar screen.
So it is also with things like government-imposed insurance mandates. To a liberal, it costs nothing to require that health insurers cover everyone, even those with costly pre-existing conditions, or to prevent insurers from imposing annual or lifetime caps on insurance payouts. Hell, they think they are doing everyone a favor with these mandates. The increased health insurance costs are "invisible" to them, and they hope the public will also fail to see these dramatically increasing costs in their insurance premiums.
g. People who disagree with you are "evil." It is ironic that a movement that is so conspicuously anti-religious adopts this quasi-religious practice of condemning those with differing opinions as evil, and adopting silly, nonsense terms like, "homophobe," "denier," "right-wing extremist," to avoid actually confronting the conflicting arguments with rational rebuttals.
It must be fun to be a liberal. Everything is so simple.
a. That which is BENEFICIAL is necessarily GOOD. One hears the President talking about emails he gets from people who praise him (?) for benefits they are receiving or hope to recieve as a result of "Obamacare." And this is his "argument" for why it shouldn't be repealed or overturned. But so what? Just because someone benefits from something doesn't make it good policy. Give everyone the use of a Prius? Beneficial, but stupid. Take away the Prius and people will be "harmed." So what? It's still a stupid thing to do.
b. That which is GOOD is necessarily CONSTITUTIONAL. This is totally absurd, as anyone who has actually read the Constitution is aware. Maybe it would be a good idea for the Federal Government to completely take over the American health care system and pay for it with a dedicated tax. I don't know. But I do know that it would be Unconstitutional. Apparently, most liberals don't get that GOOD doesn't necessarily mean CONSTITUTIONAL.
c. "Income Inequality" is a problem to be fixed (by the Government). Inequality of wealth and income is as natural as inequality of height, intelligence, beauty, and artistic talent. Increasing inequality over time is also a normal development and is not a "problem," any more than is the fact that track and field records get better and better with each new generation. The slowest people are still at the same speed as 100 years ago, but the fastest will get faster. The poorest people will remain at a very low level, economically, but technology makes it possible for those at the top to earn more and more. This is a good thing (because anyone can pursue and reap these riches), not a problem.
d. Different outcomes between different populations proves insidious discrimination. If 12% of the population is African American and less than 1% of Math PhD's are African American, then Academe must be discriminating against African Americans. If the Firefighters physical exam excludes 98% of the women who take it, then it must be "discriminatory." If 70% of Wal-Mart's employees are women and only 2% of their store managers are women, Wall-Mart must be discriminating against its women employees. If you agree with the preceding three sentences, you MUST be a liberal.
e. Taxing corporations as much as possible is good policy. The U.S. has recently become the country with the highest effective corporate income tax rate of any developed country (Japan just lowered theirs, to put us on top). Corporations are fictitious "persons." Taxing their incomes accomplishes nothing, but causes them to employ strategies to avoid taxes, rather than make money - which is what they are created to do. Enlightened countries tax the owners of the corporation when they take their profit from the corporation, but they pretty much keep their corporate tax rates low enough so as to be little more than a nuisance. The profits that are not taken away as income taxes are either paid to employees (where they are taxed), paid out as dividends (where they are taxed), or re-invested into the enterprise, which is a good thing.
f. Mandates don't cost anything. Liberal politicians are positively addicted to pushing people and corporations around through regulations, permitting requirements, zoning restrictions, and "standards." In their petty little minds, these things are "free," and don't cost anything. In the liberal mind, the Endangered Species Act is just a nice, tree-hugging, harmless initiative. The cost of delayed and prevented construction and development is completely lost to them. In the liberal mind, ratcheting up clean air standards on coal-fired power plants is "free," and the cost of scrubbers, enhanced monitoring, replacing plants (all of whcih are paid for by the rate-payers) is totally off the radar screen.
So it is also with things like government-imposed insurance mandates. To a liberal, it costs nothing to require that health insurers cover everyone, even those with costly pre-existing conditions, or to prevent insurers from imposing annual or lifetime caps on insurance payouts. Hell, they think they are doing everyone a favor with these mandates. The increased health insurance costs are "invisible" to them, and they hope the public will also fail to see these dramatically increasing costs in their insurance premiums.
g. People who disagree with you are "evil." It is ironic that a movement that is so conspicuously anti-religious adopts this quasi-religious practice of condemning those with differing opinions as evil, and adopting silly, nonsense terms like, "homophobe," "denier," "right-wing extremist," to avoid actually confronting the conflicting arguments with rational rebuttals.
It must be fun to be a liberal. Everything is so simple.