A cornucopia of convoluted corrupting fallacies (CC)

As we have been discussing fallacies in class, and we need look outside of our classwork for examples, I new I needed to look no further than the Holy grail of fallacious reasoning and rhetoric, a veritable treasure trove of examples and a testimony to just how bad people's reasoning can be - Conservapedia. Written from "a self described American conservative and Christian point of view" (Wikipedia), it is also described by it's rival site, RationalWiki, as a " purposefully deceitful, heavily biased, conservative blog project  encyclopedia project". The site's use of fallacies are quite literally too numerous to list (as you will discover if you visit the site yourself), but I will list 3 of the best one here for your enjoyment. 

A good place to start is the page on Liberals. "A liberal is someone who favors increased government spending, power, and control, as in ObamaCare, as well as the censorship of Christianity.". My Webster's  dictionary says otherwise. "Liberal: Not literal or strict; tolerant; favoring reform or progress.". Wikipedia defines liberalism as "A political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties.". This is a very clear, yet poorly executed, example of a straw man fallacy.

Moving on down the auricle into a list of what "liberals" support and or practice, I see more fallacies than I even really care to mention. They seem to greatly using the appeal to tradition fallacy, as things listed include "Anti-Americanism", "Destroying the Christian foundations on which America was built on", "Ending western morality", and "Denial of traditional gender roles". None of these arguments have any real substance behind them, merely hollow appeals to tradition.

Moving even deeper into the article, we find this gem of a section "Liberalism and bestiality", entirely based on the total skewing, debasement and slandering of a professor of ethics, Peter Singer. They claim he supports such things as bestiality, infanticide, necrophilia, etc. etc. you get the idea. These claims are, of course, entirely false, but moreover than that the argument of the entire section is a a kind of reverse genetic fallacy, as well as a false cause and effect fallacy. Peter Singer supports bestiality, Peter Singer is a liberal, therefore liberals support bestiality. The article also repeatedly talks about the connection between atheists and liberals, and below the section it has a link to an entirely separate article about "Atheism and bestiality". Implying the argument that "Liberals are Atheists, Liberals support bestiality, therefore Atheism leads to bestiality" - wait what? Either way, there you have it, a genetic and false cause and effect fallacy all wrapped up into one nice little package.

I could write for pages and pages about the hundreds if not thousands of fallacies they employ throughout their thousands of pages of swiss-cheese consistency writing. But frankly, I have better things to do with my time, and I'm worried that that would just dignify it.

So I leave you with a link, and a quote from Dante. 

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here"

http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page                    

Metaphors (RD)

The more eloquent cousin of the simile, the metaphor is a rhetorical device that has been used and reused for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The core concept of a metaphor is the comparison of two ideas, objects, experiences, etc. without the use of "like" or "and".

Examples of this device are everywhere in reading from the most casual of books, to the heaviest of literature. Perhaps one of the most famous metaphors, and one of the most phrases, "All the word's a stage, and all the men and women merely players", from Shakespeare's As You Like It compares the world we live in and the lives we live to a play happening, "And one man in his time plays many parts". It is obviously a brilliant metaphor, which is why is has stood the test of time.

Another, and almost as famous Shakespearean metaphor is the famous line from Sonnet 18 "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day". Here, he compares the fairness/beauty of the subject (probably a woman) to the splendor of a sunny summer day. This one is particularly effective because the love of summer and sunny days is cross-cultural idea, and is almost a social norm. As such, it makes it a very effective metaphor that has remained for hundreds of years.

As somewhat less well-known, but still famous example would be from Emily Dickinson's poem Hope where she writes "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.". Here she compares the idea of hope to a bird that perches in ones soul and sings the song of hope. This is a very interesting metaphor, as she says "thing with feathers that perches" instead of bird. I imagine the purpose of this would be to avoid any sort of preconceived notions of birds. It instead allows the reader to create their own mental image of a "hope bird" perching in the soul. Overall, this is what makes is such an effective metaphor.

These three examples illustrate some of the most famous metaphors in literature, and also show why the metaphor is one of the classic tried and true rhetorical devices.  

Not quite fair and balanced.

The situation with the civil war in Syria is a mess. That is stating the obvious however, as any casual observer could see that. What is equally a mess is the reporting of certain media outlets on these events, namely, Fox News. I, however, cannot say that I am really all that surprised to find this little gem nestled in the sea of irrational, pharisaical, religiously biased reporting, subverted and twisted language, and of course, the ever-present fervent hatred of Barrack Obama. The article is titled "GOP Leaders should let Allah Syria's Islamic civil war". Let us notice a few things here. Firstly, even with the absence of inflection that comes with the spoken word, one can see the mocking tone that "Allah" is said with, the writer scoffing at the idea of a god different than his. Secondly, the writer very specifically that it is an Islamic civil war, exemplifying the classic American bias against anything middle-eastern. Moving into the article, the writer cannot help but once again point out just how much of a demon Obama is. "While America continues to become an economic and moral wasteland under this regime..." (Horowitz). The author has chosen to use the word "regime" instead of administration or presidency to obviate once again his hatred of Obama. The article goes on to provide various fallacious and biased reasons why intervening in Syria would spell doom for the United States, this idea personified in the statement "Our only interest in Syria is ensuring that as many Islamists on both sides are killed and keep each other busy so they can't affect our national interests or threaten Israel .". Indeed, the writer suggests that simply letting the "Islamists" kill each other is a very good option. It simply does not matter to him if thousands of civilians are caught in the crossfire. Not only is this statement morally rotten, but the writers, puffed up, pompous, ignorant blindly chauvinistic figuratively turns his nose up at the idea of lesser beings getting in the way of his grand plans, in this case, the repeal of the so-called "Obamacare". "Republicans should vote with a unified voice against this ridiculous escapade, and summarily reconvene the fight against Obamacare.". It's truly sobering to see that in the authors mind, the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are nothing in the face of his dislike of a healthcare bill. This kind of deceitful, biased reporting proves that one must be truly careful when choosing what to believe.   

 Link to article - http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/03/gop-leaders-should-let-allah-sort-out-syria-islamic-civil-war/