Annoying Debate Tactics
by tgirsch

Those geniuses over at Right Wing News have brought us this gem about fallacious debate tactics used by the left, "and sometimes by the right." Trying to argue that either side is more or less guilty of this is ridiculous. Politicians of all stripes do this, and the same goes in the blogosphere.

Anyway, some gems:

1) Attack The Messenger: Instead of addressing the argument that has been made, people using this method attack the person making it instead. This is particularly easy for many delusional people on the left who believe that almost everyone on the right is a racist, sexist, homophobic, Fascist who longs for the return of the Confederacy and is planning to start throwing leftists in prison camps if they let their guard down for five minutes. The charge made doesn't even have to be accurate, in fact it's better in some ways if it's off target. That's because the more whacked out the charge is, the more compelled your opponent will feel to spend his time defending himself while you continue to make your points.

Umm, excuse me... ever heard of a guy named Sean Hannity? What about Bill O'Reilly? These guys are as guilty as anyone of such tactics.

4) Enter The Strawman: Tremendously exaggerating your opponent's position and then claiming to fight against a position they don't hold is always a great way to dodge the issues. In all fairness, this is a technique often used by the left & right. But still, the right can't hold a candle to the left in this area. I mean how many times have you heard, "Republicans are going to take your Social Security away," [TJG: Not really a strawman, as scrapping entitlement programs is a stated goal of the neo-cons.] "The GOP wants to poison the water and the air," [TJG: Strawman of sorts. They don't specifically want to poison the air, they just don't want to cut into their profits to STOP poisoning the air.] "Republicans want to take away your Civil Rights" etc, etc? [TJG: Perhaps they don't want to take them away, but they're doing it.]

This whole concept has gotten so out of hand on the left that we now even have some people on the left comparing the Israelis to Nazis. Look, when you're claiming that a bunch a Jews defending themselves from people who want to kill them are like Nazis, you've gone so far past irony that you almost need a new word to describe it like -- "Idiorony" or "outofyourmindony". But that's what happens when people wink at all these strawmen that are tossed out in debates. Eventually some people start to take them seriously and build on them.

I wonder if the irony here is intentional. His argument that "some on the left compare Israelis to Nazis" is itself a strawman. I've never heard anyone with any degree of prominence seriously argue this.

6) I'm Not Hearing You -- La La La: Just totally ignoring what your opponent has to say and going on to something else is another technique often used by politicians of all stripes, but no one, and I mean no one, can hang with Yasser Arafat and company when it comes to totally blowing off any uncomfortable questions that are asked.

Do the words "Shut up! Shut Up! Cut his mic!" mean anything to you?

7) Motives Matter, Results Don't: Oftentimes when people on the left are losing an argument or can't explain why they seem to be so inconsistent on certain issues, they start questioning the motives of their opponents.

Of course, this is why conservatives embraced Clinton's economy. Because despite any motivations he may have had, the results were beneficial for everyone! Oh, wait, they didn't embrace his economy? Never mind...

For example, if you favored going to war with Serbia based on nothing more than humanitarian grounds, then logically you should also be in favor of invading Iraq for exactly the same reason. But of course, that's not how it works for a lot of people.

Yeah. A lot of people recognize the differences between working unilaterally, and working with the full support of the international community.

So to get around that, they just claim that there are impure motives afoot. The Bush administration may have claimed to care about stopping terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian causes, or UN Resolutions, but it was really all about stealing oil, getting payoffs for business buddies, getting revenge for an attack on "daddy", because Bush needed Iraqi sand for his garden, Bush was jealous of Saddam's rugged good looks, etc, etc, who cares -- they're all equally ridiculous. When the real issues are too tough to deal with, it's all too easy to just pretend something else is what you're really upset about.

Except that the administration has accomplished exactly zero of its stated objectives in Iraq, while accomplishing several of the unstated objectives (oil, payoffs for business buddies) that are attributed to them.

By the way, who's using straw men now? Iraqi sand? Rugged good looks? Sheesh!

The whole thing is tripe. The fact of the matter is, people all across the political spectrum use these tactics, and neither left nor right has any sort of monopoly on them. No matter who's doing it, we should be ready, willing, and able to call "bullshit." And on this piece, I call "bullshit."

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