Fallacies on Parade

Wanna read a really, really, really incredibly awful article? I thought so. Go check out Maggie Gallagher's "Marriage Defeatists" in today's Weekly Standard.

I started to write something about it on the day it first appeared, but grading got in the way. Now that that's all over, I though about turning my attention back to the Gallagher piece. About three pages into joyfully shredding the thing, I realized that I really wasn't sure why I was expending energy on it. Will it make any difference? Will any anti-same-sex marriage people even read this blog, and, if they do, will they be willing to really think about the arguments? Will any pro-same-sex marriage folks really think about the arguments, or will they just be looking for a little "affirmation" from someone who shares their conclusion?

Partly I'm just kind of disappointed with a lot of what passes for thinking in the blogosphere. Partly I'm disgusted that The Weekly Standard can still pretend that it's a semi-serious publication. I started realizing what a joke the Standard is back when I wrote a post on Kristol and Kagan's "Why We Went to War." Then came the absurd "Case Closed" business. Now this Gallagher nonsense. IMHO currently, The Weekly Standard has about as much credibility as The National Enquirer.

So anyway, what's the point? My new theory is that the Righties don't even expect The Standard to be taken seriously. They just fill it with inane crap that they know will drive sane people crazy and prompt them to spend hours and hours writing responses. Hours that they might otherwise spend productively, e.g. working to defeat the current occupant of the White House.

On the other hand, the lefties produce some real trash of their own, like Matt Taibbi's recent piece on Clark in the Nation.

So the point is what's the point? I understand why discussion and careful analysis are important when it is between honest people who are genuinely puzzled about something and genuinely trying to find an answer. But when someone strings together a bunch of terrible arguments--arguments that would never be produced or believed by anyone even remotely objective about the matter--why do we bother to respond? Take David Brooks's recent piece about the Bush administration being too honest. Why waste our time thinking about or responding to something so patently absurd?

As it turns out, I am genuinely puzzled by this, and I have the feeling that we all may simply be wasting our time.


[Oh, and I know that it's a sign of a real kook that he thinks that everyone who disagrees with him is either stupid or dishonest. Although I may be a kook anyway, I want to make it clear that I don't think that everyone I disagree with is stupid or dishonest, though I'm often prompted to respond to the worst stuff I run across, and that stuff is often written by people who do, in fact, have one of the two defects in question. Maybe that's my problem. Perhaps I need to start responding to more sensible people.]

[Oh and: as I've suggested before, I conjecture that lots of the polarization we currently see is caused, at least to some extent, by focusing on the real wackos on the other side of the issue. Eventually, the wackos come to represent the other side to us.]