http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOKWkL4v3Bo&feature=watch_response
“Don’t call it global warming. Call it climate change.”
“Not ‘drilling for oil.’ ‘Energy exploration.’”
“That’s not a war. It’s a police action.
“No, no, no. It’s an overseas contingency operation.”
“We’re not talking about creationism. We’re talking about intelligent design. That’s totally different.”
“It’s not a tax hike. It’s a refund adjustment.”
I give you another great logical fallacy, the unfortunate staple of any successful politician, my personal favorite, the weasel word. This is what results when a highly descriptive term is replaced with something not exactly false, but misleading nonetheless.
Someone talking about climate change could be referring to global warming, but usually isn’t. At least, not until recently. When you hear “energy exploration,” you might guess “drilling for oil,” but you might just as likely guess the funding of research into ways to make hydrogen fuel cells more practical or the search for arable land from which to grow crops from which to produce biofuels. When you hear a public official making the case for something, ask yourself, “How clear are the explanations involved? Is he or she making the image clear, or hazy and rosy?” If the conclusions do not follow from the premises, then what you have is a non sequitur, but if you can’t even tell whether they do or not, if the image painted for you by this, that, or the other public official is hazy and rosy instead of being clear, then you can’t tell what you are getting into, in which case there are probably weasel words at work.
Somewhere on youtube, I don’t remember exactly where, there is to be found a video about an interview with J. K. Rowling. In the comments, I came across this crackpot trying to make the case by the Bible that Harry Potter is evil because it glamorizes witchcraft which is of the devil and leads to the lake of fire bla bla bla...
I engaged the fellow, pointing out all manner of absurdities in his reasoning. He responded with more absurdities in an effort to get rid of me. Of course, he should have been able to tell, if this was the desired result, this was the wrong approach. This went on and on until finally, apparently all out of patience, he told me I need to practice a little “intellectual reverence.”
Oh! I like doing intellectual things! Ah, but let’s think about this for a moment. What is reverence? It’s quiet. Practicing reverence means being reverent. Being reverent means being quiet. “Practice intellectual reverence” means “Be intellectually quiet.” “Shut intellectually up.” “You need to practice a little intellectual reverence,” is a really rosy way of saying, “You need to shut up.” The “intellectual” part is just to shine it up.
As kind of a punchline to this, I once came across a British fellow on one of these videos who was criticizing us Yanks for “dental vanity.” Perhaps I should have invited him to this channel.
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