Fallacypalooza

Last week I disparaged the Main Stream Media for its thin coverage of the Tea Party tax protests around the nation. Which is not to say that there was no coverage at all. For instance, my cousin sent me this article from the New York Times by Paul Krugman: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13krugman.html?_r=1 .

To someone whose hobby is searching arguments for fallacies this is a gift. It's fallacypalooza.

The gist of the article is that Republicans in general and Tea Party protestors in particular are wackos. Mr. Krugman begins his piece by apologizing on the grounds that "it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people." This is the fallacy of the abusive ad hominem attack. (In an equally ad hominem, but much funnier attack of her own, Ann Coulter retorted "It's OK, Paul, you're allowed to do that for the same reason Jews can make fun of Jews.").

The article continues: "Thus, President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre." This is the fallacy of the Strawman Argument. The Right does not call the chief executive a socialist because he wants to make a fairly small change to the top marginal tax rate. The right calls the chief executive a socialist because he wants to construct an economic system in which government owns the means of production (which is the definition of socialism), starting with the automobile, financial, and health care industries, and then, through the cap and trade tax, every other industry that burns fuel. Not bizarre at all.

More tomorrow…