Donald Trump is Right: John McCain is not a War Hero

Recently,  Donald Trump endured the wrath of his fellow Republican presidential candidates, and just about any American you could stick a microphone in front of, by declaring that Sen. John McCain was not a war hero. Trump went on to imply that it made no sense to ascribe heroic status to someone “because he was captured.” Sadly, The Donald has a point.

In making this controversial claim, Trump was merely echoing the oldest tradition of the heroic in the West, that of ancient Greece, and the moral code of the two classic works in that tradition, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Often referred to as the Bible of the Greeks, these two works set forth the heroic standards that guided not only the ancient world but centuries to come. In particular, Trump’s words call to mind a famous scene in the Iliad where Achilles, the greatest of all Greek heroes, is tasked by his mentor Phoenix to be “a maker of speeches and a doer of deeds.” Indeed, the Greek war heroes—Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector—were all admired for their physical strength, their leadership ability, and their prowess during wartime, that is, their capacity to impose their will on the world.

By contrast, McCain more resembles Philoctetes, the Greek warrior who is bitten by a deadly snake that causes him unimaginable suffering and forces his withdrawal from battle. Or Antigone, who is imprisoned for trying to bury her brother and ultimately punished with death for her resistance. Like McCain, these figures from Greek literature suffer wretched fates for reasons beyond their control and bear them nobly. Although a later tradition, Christianity, would view suffering injustice for a cause as a much more praiseworthy fate (Indeed, John McCain is much closer to a Christian martyr than he is to a Greek hero), the Greeks sided more with Trump in favoring “people who weren’t captured.” That is, the heroes of the Trojan War were envied and admired, while the tragic figures invoked above inspired, in the words of Aristotle, pity and fear.

To see the essential soundness of Trump’s point, consider another influence from ancient Greece: the Olympics.  It simply does not make sense to call someone an Olympic hero who, say, is tragically struck down by a disease but inspires his teammates by the noble way he endures. Such a character may be considered courageous, morally admirable, and a role model. But it simply defies a common sense understanding of the term to call such a character an Olympic hero.

The fact that not every positive term we can come up with necessarily applies in the case of John McCain does not undercut the moral significance of what he endured. That is, to deny that John McCain is a war hero is not to deny that his suffering and the way he bore it made him a role model, or a patriot, or even a warrior. He qualifies as all of the above, and more. And while the nation owes him a debt of gratitude it can never repay, such an obligation does not justify twisting language to make us feel good.  Nor does it allow us to vilify a candidate, no matter how you feel about his stance on other issues, who points this out.

Gay Marriage on the Sunday morning shows

With gay marriage due to be argued before the Supreme Court next week, the Sunday morning talk shows were a showcase for arguments.

On Face the Nation, Tony Robbins, head of the Family Institute, made the case that gay marriage like all social issues should be decided by the states and not the courts. If we were to formalize the argument, it would something like this:

P1:If the Supreme courts rules to require all states perform gay marriage, then the issue of gay marriage will be decided by the courts but not the state.

P2: But gay marriage should not be decided by the courts (nor should any social issue)

C:So the Supreme Court should not rule to require gay marriage.

P1 is pretty close to a tautology, so it is clear the work would have to go into criticizing P2. The natural path here is to say that the case of interracial marriage was an issue that was rightly decided by the courts, and so that P2 is false, or at least has an exception you can march a gay parade through.

 I have not seen any reporter bring up to this point, which conservatives routinely appeal to, is whether they think it was wrong for the courts to decide the issue of interracial marriage.  They would either have to day that the court was wrong to decide the issue of interracial marriage or that sexual orientation is somehow different than racial status. And the only way they could really argue the latter point is to say that sexual orientation is a choice, which is a claim I don’t think conservatives want to hinge the argument on because they know the science and public opinion is against them here. It is disappointing not to see this parallel pressed more.

Speaking of choice, the issue came up on Meet the Press, when Chuck Todd asked the two lawyers who brought the gay rights case to the California courts why, if the court approves of gay marriage they would not have to approve of polygamy. The first lawyer, David Boise, dismissed this as a silly question, a classic attacking the person/prejudicial language strategy, which is not really a response. Then he went on to not answer the question. The other lawyer, Ted Olsen, was much more  clear: sexual orientation is not a choice. There is clear evidence that this is genetic, and there exists no such evidence with polygamy.

Of course, this argument could be responded to by claiming that evolution tells us that males naturally seek out as many partners as possible. But this is an argument for another day

Another Tu quoque

As you can see from the blog, I have been encountering a fair number of tu quoque fallacies recently. To remind you once again, the tu quoque is best described as an appeal to hypocrisy that intends to discredit an opponent's position by asserting that the opponent is failing to act consistently with that position. 

"She will develop policies. In Iowa, she’d already delivered her top four, one of which is to take unaccountable big money out of politics. This is rather precious, considering that her supporters intend to raise $2.5 billion for 2016 alone and that the Clinton Foundation is one of the most formidable machines ever devised for extracting money from the rich, the powerful and the unsavory."

So the claim is that because Hilary is planning on raising tons of money for her campaign that it is hypocritical for her to want to take big money out of politics. How can she both want to take money out of politics and at the same time raise large amounts of money? Isn't she a hypocrite.

The reason we call the "tu quoque" a fallacy is that we think a person's argument deserves to be considered even if their actions are inconsistent with their position. But in this case, we do not even have a real incidence of hypocrisy. For the simple fact is that Hilary needs to raise money in order to get elected to institute the policy. It is not inconsistent for a country to call for nuclear disarmament while at the same time retaining its nuclear arsenal, since it would endanger its existence by unilaterally disarming itself. The same thing holds true for political candidates. Unless Hilary gets elected, she has no chance of pushing for a policy to get money out of politics. It is not hypocrisy; it is reality. And Krauthammer knows the difference

Et Tu Quoque, Carly?

Former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina on Thursday blasted Apple CEO Tim Cook's opposition to Indiana's religious freedom law as "hypocrisy."

Fiorina, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, said Cook had a double standard and cited Apple's operations in other countries with controversial laws about gays and women in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” Fiorina argued. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that."

In the days after Apple CEO Tim Cook penned his WP editorial condemning the Indiana law, Carly Fiorina was not the only one to hurl the charge of hypocrisy at him. But she may have been the most high profile person to do so.

As you can see from the text above, the charge is that because Apple does business in countries that discriminate against homosexuals, Tim Cook has no right to criticize a law that would discriminate against homosexuals.

The first thing we need to recognize is the classic tu quoque nature of this charge. I just recently went through the tu quoque fallacy so I won’t go into excruciating details except to say that I commit the tu quoque fallacy when I accuse someone of being a hypocrite rather than deal with the argument they have put forth.

Now the reason this is a fallacy is that even if the person making the charge is hypocritical, this does not undermine the charge itself, which deserves to be considered by itself regardless of who brings it forth.

So the first thing to note is that this is about as clear an instance of a tu quoque fallacy as you are going to find.

Second, it is important to note that if there is a legitimate charge of hypocrisy this ought to be taken seriously from a rhetorical point of view, and the maker of the argument, though not the argument itself, deserves criticism.

But there is no hypocrisy here. I am a hypocrite if I say x and do not x, or say x in one place but say not x in another. But neither of these scenarios apply with Tim Cook.

He did not say he is against discrimination in Indiana but act to support discrimination by selling Apple products in China.Instead, in both cases he should be seen as further equal treatment of homosexuals as far as in his power. In Indiana, he merely pointed out the discriminatory nature of the law. The editorial stated that the Indiana law and laws like it go against the principles this country was founded on and are bad for business. And as Republicans have long argued, by engaging with repressive regimes and even doing business there we can best spread American values.

We can see this by asking Would Apple withdrawing from China really change China’s behavior in any way? Highly doubtful. But can the business community united change the law in Indiana. It seems so.

So both his stance about the Indiana law and the fact that Apple does business in China are consistent with a concern for freedom and equality for all human beings.

And Carly should know better.

Do I contradict myself?

There is a fallacy known as “Tu Quoque,” which essentially accuses the person of saying one thing acting in a way at odds with that. So suppose you know an environmentalist who drives a Hummer, and you point out to him that we should not take his environmentalism seriously because his actions are at odds with his beliefs. Some would say that in making this charge we are committing the fallacy of “tu quoque,” since supposedly his driving a gas guzzling monstrosity is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of his stance on the environment.

True enough. But surely the critic here has a point. We have no reason to take seriously the claim because it is coming from an incredibly muddled person. And so when I accuse Chris Christie of being a big, fat hypocrite (ok, take away the fat—attack on the person), I don’t believe the charge can be dismissed as fallacious. I am simply saying a person who so blatantly contradicts himself should not be taken seriously as a straight shooter that he purports to be but is obviously just another politician mongering for votes. And this seems completely legitimate.

In the wake of the recent measles outbreak, Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey and likely 2016 presidential candidate, has come out in favor of allowing parents to have a choice when it comes to vaccinating their children against measles. But of course this is the same Chris Christie who quarantined a nurse who was returning from working with Ebola patients in Africa.  When it came to the nurse, who was asymptomatic, Christie said, and I quote: “I don’t believe when you’re dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system.” He continued: “The government’s job is to protect [the] safety and health of our citizens. And so we’ve taken this action, and I absolutely have no second thoughts about it.”

Now, there was literally zero threat from an asymptomatic nurse. Measles, on the other hand, is a highly contagious. An unvaccinated person has a ninety percent chance of getting the virus if they come into contact with it. And an unvaccinated child poses all sorts of threats to the public at large. If the child does get measles, he poses a threat to other unvaccinated children.  And though you might say this is their own fault for not getting the vaccination, it is still likely the state would have to pick up the tab for the treatment. But more importantly it is also the case that a child with measles can threaten those who are too young to be vaccinated as well as those who for some reasons are compromised, for example, someone receiving chemotherapy.

So why when dealing with a hypothetical threat would Christie insist on state intervention but when it comes to a very real threat, he says the state keep its hands off? Why indeed, unless you realize there is a Republican primary electorate made up of paranoids that need to be pandered to.

Bad Analogy 2

“In a world of scarce resources, a slightly higher mortality rate is an acceptable price to pay for certain goals — including more cash for other programs, such as those that help the poor; less government coercion and more individual liberty; more health-care choice for consumers, allowing them to find plans that better fit their needs; more money for taxpayers to spend themselves; and less federal health-care spending. This opinion is not immoral. Such choices are inevitable. They are made all the time.

Consider, for example, speed limits. By allowing people to drive their cars at speeds at which collisions result in death, our government has decided that the socially optimal number of traffic fatalities is not zero. Some poor souls die: There were more than 30,000 traffic fatalities on America’s roads in 2013. If we didn’t accept that risk, we’d lower the speed limit to a rate at which accidents simply don’t kill, such as 10 mph. Instead, we’ve raised it periodically over the years, and you can now go as fast as 85 mph on a few highways.” Michael Strain 1/23/15

The author admits that repealing Obamacare would cost life but argues that it would be worth it because repealing Obamacare would bring a wealth of good. In order to argue this, the author draws an analogy between the health care system and the highway system. Just like the highway system allows a certain number of deaths to occur in order to run efficiently, so should the health care system.

One problem with this analogy is that in the case of the highway system everyone can agree what the central purpose of it should be—to run efficiently—and that this purpose by its nature will mean that a certain number of people will die. But what is the central purpose of a health care system if it is not to prevent the maximum numbers of unnecessary deaths. And how is that going to be achieved by allowing more deaths? So the first disanalogy is that in the case of the highway system the central good is being maximized and in the case of the health care system the central good is not being maximized.

 A second disanalogy is that the health care system that allows more death is said to be better because it has cash for other programs, less government coercion, less federal health care spending. But all of these were existent before Obamacere. So if the system that has these things is supposed to be better, why are Republicans not claiming just to repeal Obamacare but to repeal and replace? There is an admission that the previous system was worse than what we have now. But if this is the case, then the system that allows more death is not in fact better than the one that allows fewer deaths--by their own admission.

Finally, the author says that the new health care system that will replace Obamacare will have all these great features. But of course, the Republicans have never said what that new plan will look like. So it is hard to see how a fictional plan can really be an improvement over what we have now.

Bad Analogy Blues

The New Republic rightly points out a bad analogy from Pope Francis on the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and insulting someone’s mother. All analogies will breakdown, but when they breakdown at first glance, you know you have a particularly bad analogy. The Charlie Hebdo cartoons invariably claim to use their insults to make some larger point: “not to insult religious people…but to bring attention to the harmful effects of faith.” By contrast, an insult to someone’s mother has no more purpose than, well, to insult someone’s mother.

Here's the story:

"On a trip to the Philippines this week, Francis, after decrying 'murder in the name of God,' carefully delimited how far magazines like Charlie Hebdoshould go: 'One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people's faith, one cannot make fun of faith.' 

Then, punching the air, he made an implicit comparison between the 'offensive' behavior of those who satirize religion and those who would insult his mother.

'If Dr. Gasbarri, a great friend, says a swear word against my mother, then a punch awaits him,' Francis said. 'It's normal, it's normal.'

Leaving aside whether the Pope is ignoring Jesus’s advice to turn the other cheek, the comparison between satirizing religion and insulting one’s mom is ludicrous. The cartoons of Charlie Hebdo, and other mockery of religion (the magazine has made fun of all faiths, including Catholicism), are meant not to insult religious people or designed only to give offense, but to bring attention to the harmful effects of faith. The magazine, for instance, often called out the Vatican for mishandling the epidemic of child rape by priests."

[TNR:1/16/2015]