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Barney Frank, a liberal Democrat, recently stated that the “…vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government’s business.” Interesting. But the vast majority of your money is definitely the government’s business. They’ll take your hard-earned cash away to give it to people who haven’t worked for it. That is indeed the government’s business. But hey, government knows best, right?
Personal responsibility? Nah. Just let the government take care of you. Let the government be in charge of your retirement savings. Sure, nothing will be there for you when you retire, but don’t let that little detail bother you. The government will take away earnings from those who have worked hard to achieve greater rewards. Then those funds will be given to you so that you can continue slacking. And are you wondering what kind of life you get without personal responsibility? Well, we have one example right here.
Black U.S. AIDS rates now rival those in some African countries. Read the details here. Do you suppose that a lack of personal responsibility might have something to do with that? Relying on the government to educate your kids about AIDS obviously isn’t sufficing. That’s where solid parenting comes in. If you’re not already doing that, now just might be a good time to look into it.
As is graphically represented on the CreateDebate blog, here is Paul Graham’s hierarchy of disagreement. We’ll see in later posts that name-calling tactics are often used by those who cannot logically refute an argument. Such approaches are often found in discussions on race, unfortunately. For example, if a person presents an argument against affirmative action, he/she might be labeled as a racist. While name-calling is in no way an elenchus for the speaker’s argument, one will still encounter it frequently.
Obama didn’t support the surge when it was first proposed, so he was recently asked whether he would have chosen to support it had he known then what he knows now. Here’s the exchange:
Reporter: “If you had it to do over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?”
Obama: “No, because keep in mind that question, you wouldn’t … but keep in mind that kind of hypothetical is very difficult to know hindsight is 20-20 … later … but I think that what I’m absolutely convinced of is that at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.”
Is this man’s reasoning what we want in the White House?
Nancy Pelosi and other dems have spoken recently about Bush’s failed policies. The current economic woes are offered as evidence to support such claims. But correlation does not establish causality. Two events can coincide without either causing the other. Did Bush’s economic strategies cause higher oil prices, the weakened dollar, etc.? Pelosi presents no evidence to substantiate such a notion.
One of the key fallacies involved with such reasoning by the dems is Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, which means “After this, therefore because of this.” The fallacious reasoning at work is easy to demonstrate. I might utter a magic phrase on day x. On day y, rain falls. I then claim that my magic phrase caused the rain to fall. That’s Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc reasoning. And politicians love it.
Why do the politicians employ such specious reasoning? They think you’re stupid. And that’s why you need them to take care of you. Or so they think.
