|
Reader's Favorites
Media Casualties Mount Administration Split On Europe Invasion Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire Congress Concerned About Diversion From War On Japan Pot, Kettle On Line Two... Allies Seize Paris The Natural Gore Book Sales Tank, Supporters Claim Unfair Tactics Satan Files Lack Of Defamation Suit Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff A New Beginning My Hit Parade
Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) Tim Blair James Lileks Bleats Virginia Postrel Kausfiles Winds Of Change (Joe Katzman) Little Green Footballs (Charles Johnson) Samizdata Eject Eject Eject (Bill Whittle) Space Alan Boyle (MSNBC) Space Politics (Jeff Foust) Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey) NASA Watch NASA Space Flight Hobby Space A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold) Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore) Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust) Mars Blog The Flame Trench (Florida Today) Space Cynic Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing) COTS Watch (Michael Mealing) Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington) Selenian Boondocks Tales of the Heliosphere Out Of The Cradle Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar) True Anomaly Kevin Parkin The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster) Spacecraft (Chris Hall) Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher) Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche) Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer) Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers) Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement) Spacearium Saturn Follies JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell) Science
Nanobot (Howard Lovy) Lagniappe (Derek Lowe) Geek Press (Paul Hsieh) Gene Expression Carl Zimmer Redwood Dragon (Dave Trowbridge) Charles Murtaugh Turned Up To Eleven (Paul Orwin) Cowlix (Wes Cowley) Quark Soup (Dave Appell) Economics/Finance
Assymetrical Information (Jane Galt and Mindles H. Dreck) Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen et al) Man Without Qualities (Robert Musil) Knowledge Problem (Lynne Kiesling) Journoblogs The Ombudsgod Cut On The Bias (Susanna Cornett) Joanne Jacobs The Funny Pages
Cox & Forkum Day By Day Iowahawk Happy Fun Pundit Jim Treacher IMAO The Onion Amish Tech Support (Lawrence Simon) Scrapple Face (Scott Ott) Regular Reading
Quasipundit (Adragna & Vehrs) England's Sword (Iain Murray) Daily Pundit (Bill Quick) Pejman Pundit Daimnation! (Damian Penny) Aspara Girl Flit Z+ Blog (Andrew Zolli) Matt Welch Ken Layne The Kolkata Libertarian Midwest Conservative Journal Protein Wisdom (Jeff Goldstein et al) Dean's World (Dean Esmay) Yippee-Ki-Yay (Kevin McGehee) Vodka Pundit Richard Bennett Spleenville (Andrea Harris) Random Jottings (John Weidner) Natalie Solent On the Third Hand (Kathy Kinsley, Bellicose Woman) Patrick Ruffini Inappropriate Response (Moira Breen) Jerry Pournelle Other Worthy Weblogs
Ain't No Bad Dude (Brian Linse) Airstrip One A libertarian reads the papers Andrew Olmsted Anna Franco Review Ben Kepple's Daily Rant Bjorn Staerk Bitter Girl Catallaxy Files Dawson.com Dodgeblog Dropscan (Shiloh Bucher) End the War on Freedom Fevered Rants Fredrik Norman Heretical Ideas Ideas etc Insolvent Republic of Blogistan James Reuben Haney Libertarian Rant Matthew Edgar Mind over what matters Muslimpundit Page Fault Interrupt Photodude Privacy Digest Quare Rantburg Recovering Liberal Sand In The Gears(Anthony Woodlief) Sgt. Stryker The Blogs of War The Fly Bottle The Illuminated Donkey Unqualified Offerings What she really thinks Where HipHop & Libertarianism Meet Zem : blog Space Policy Links
Space Future The Space Review The Space Show Space Frontier Foundation Space Policy Digest BBS AWOL
USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste) Media Minder Unremitting Verse (Will Warren) World View (Brink Lindsay) The Last Page More Than Zero (Andrew Hofer) Pathetic Earthlings (Andrew Lloyd) Spaceship Summer (Derek Lyons) The New Space Age (Rob Wilson) Rocketman (Mark Oakley) Mazoo Site designed by Powered by Movable Type |
Insulting Our Intelligence One of the classic debating tricks is something called "attacking a strawman." It consists of putting forth a flawed argument that the opponent has never made, but implying that she has, and then knocking it down. It allows a cheap rhetorical victory while sidestepping the real issues, and unfortunately, it's often effective. That's exactly what the DEA is doing with their series of commercials in an attempt to convince people of the nonsensical notion that drug use equates to support of terrorism. The commercial template is a hapless fool attempting to defend his drug use, putting forth dumb arguments, which are easily slapped down by his more intelligent (and virtuous) friend. (And of course, one of the subthemes is that because he's a drug user, he can't think well, unlike his teetotaling companion.) The latest one is what Mr. Idiot calls the "might" loophole. He only "might" be supporting terrorism by using drugs, so it's OK. This is indeed a dumb argument, which is shot down by simply rephrasing it more graphically: "So, you might be helping terrorists murder kids, or you might be helping them do something so horrible that we can't even conceive of it." Of course, if this were a real debate, rather than a mindless strawman exercise in a propaganda campaign, the appropriate response would be, "Yes, just like when you gas up your car, you "might" be funneling money to the Saudis and their madrassas that teach children to go on Jihad against America, and when you purchase clothes made in Pakistan, you "might" be providing profit to a factory owner who funds similar activities there." This whole campaign is stupid, for the reason described above: anything that we purchase has the potential to go to funding nefarious activities. Not all drug purchases do so, any more than all gasoline purchases do so, and to the degree that drug purchases do so, it's largely because our War on (Some) Drugs has put criminals in charge of the enterprise. It would be just as accurate (indeed, perhaps more so) to say that, given that some people are going to purchase drugs regardless of their legal status, it is the DEA and the federal drug policies that are helping the terrorists. Apparently, judging by this ad campaign, they don't have any good arguments. And the need to resort to spending taxpayers' money in such a blatantly dishonest way is just further evidence of the moral and intellectual vacuity and bankruptcy of those policies. Posted by Rand Simberg at January 19, 2003 10:45 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/mt-diagnostics.cgi/670 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference this post from Transterrestrial Musings.
Comments
Don't take LSD or any drugs. They will cause chromosome damage and your children will be born with birth defects!! Wait that didn't scare them. This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs!! Wait that didn't scare them.
NOW that should scare them!!! Posted by Steve at January 20, 2003 07:22 AMIt seems they're making a case for legalization. The terrorists are only in the loop because the crop has became immensely overvalued. Only a drug-addled nitwit would be taken in by such arguments, and said nitwit is highly likely not to give a crap. Posted by David Perron at January 20, 2003 09:37 AMDon't smoke dope. It will get you Ji-High-D Posted by Hefty at January 21, 2003 02:32 PM. Posted by at October 17, 2004 05:27 PMzyban Posted by zyban at December 15, 2004 11:06 AM Posted by celebrex at December 17, 2004 09:04 AM Posted by nexium at December 18, 2004 09:47 AM hgh Posted by vioxx at December 26, 2004 08:51 PM Posted by xenical at December 27, 2004 03:58 AM Post a comment |