I think that Joe’s posts on logic are both important and instructive. I would encourage the co-bloggers, every time they see and example of sound logic or the recognition of an argument or fallacy type, to post it. I would encourage the readers to email or post in the comments the same examples.
Here’s one from the current James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today column about Kermit Gosnell and the larger debate over abortion itself:
Our path was more cerebral and less visceral. It started with our education in constitutional law. Although we thought abortion on demand was a good policy, we knew how to read, and the Constitution had nothing to say about the matter. We came to view Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that declared otherwise, as a gross abuse of power by the Supreme Court, notwithstanding that it was in the service of a cause we agreed with.
A funny thing happens when you dissent from Roe v. Wade: You come to see that there’s not much else by way of intellectual content to the case for abortion on demand. Roe predates our own political consciousness, so we have to assume there were once stronger arguments. But these days the appeal to the authority of Roe is pretty much all there is apart from sloganeering, name-calling, appeals to self-interest and an emphasis on difficult and unusual cases such as pregnancy due to rape.
So totemic is Roe that on one recent day two top New York Times commentators, editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal and columnist Bill Keller, cited it as if it were still the law and ignored the 1992 case that supplanted it, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The latter was pretty much a complete do-over, although the “core holding” was the same.
When you dissent from Roe v. Wade, you notice that people committed to the pro-abortion side almost never acknowledge that the question of abortion poses a conflict of rights or of legitimate interests. Try to pin them down as to where they’d draw the line–at what point in fetal development does abortion become unacceptable? It’s pretty much impossible. The court in Casey said abortion could be restricted after 23 to 24 weeks, earlier than Roe‘s 28 weeks, but groups like Planned Parenthood oppose restrictions on late-term abortion, too. All they care about is “a woman’s right to choose.”
The Rio Norte Line 
Here’s a simple logic problem you should ask Pro-Abortion types:
If I can use DNA at a crime scene to convict a rapist or murderer because it is unique to the individual, then why doesn’t that apply to the unborn?
They will start to spin you an answer, but stop them — I mean literally interrupt them if necessary. Then press them to tell you how, if the un-born is just a mass of protoplasm, how can they tell whether or not the DNA at a crime scene belongs to a person or a mass of protoplasm? Don’t let them answer, just follow it with another assertion. tell them that you see their point now. You agree that the un-born is just a mass of cells. then tell them that they should support your new campaign to STOP USING DNA IN CRIMINAL LAW (and paternity tests as well). After all, DNA is just a mass of acids, and as such, it couldn’t possibly identify a person. T
hen sit back and watch their face. If the light bulb doesn’t click on — whether they agree with your case against abortion or not — if the light doesn’t go on and they keep that deer-in-the-headlights look, or just charge ahead with their dogma, then you can know you are dealing with an empty vessel. They are dead inside: both in their heart and their brain. You cannot help them, only defend others from them. In fact, that would be one of the few people who truly need to be protected from themselves — because they have renounced all use of reason.
Joe, it is also important to call out media types on this type of nonsense as well. How many news stories did you see on the Travon Martin case? Hundreds?
Well, Gosnell case (over two years old) has been blatantly absent from liberal media sources, and the ‘why’ is just as obvious. It just simply does not fit the pro-abortion narrative. I think it received 1 story, and only after being pressed to run it?
Americans are waking up to abortion. Some 52% disapprove. Watch that number rise in the wake of this case. Sadly though, new borns had to be murdered to bring us to this level of awareness. 😦
Augger,
That is why I call the MSM State-run propaganda. Here, let this guy ‘splain it fur ya, Lucy:
“Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.”
-Walter Lippmann
Now, the media and those who do not see the govt. threat in our society will all say there is no control over the media — but as you and I know, Augger, you just explained how that control works. And it can be accomplished in ways that the very people implementing this policy of selective censorship will ever see. If all I hire are Leftist journalist graduates who have all graduated from the “right” schools, then I can be 99% assured they will present the Party line and “selectively censor” the opposition without me ever having to tell them to do so. And there you go: no conspiracy, per se, but the same effect. 🙂
If the anti-abortion crowd would start running TV commercials that show fetuses in the wombs a month or so into the pregnancy, I believe the 52% would skyrocket.
“We knew how to read, and the Constitution had nothing to say on the matter.” I disagree. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
That’s just sexytalk…
@Kells,
EXCELLENT! And 100% correct — irrefutably correct, and for the very reason you stated. Now, try that argument out on a libertard and watch their eyes turn green and their head spin around in place. 😉