Posted on 10/16/2008 8:07:15 AM PDT by steve-b
Less than five minutes into last night's presidential debate, John McCain started talking about a man he called "Joe the Plumber," who didn't think he would benefit from Barack Obama's tax plan.
And Kevin Heron, a senior at McDaniel College, began scrawling on his bingo card. He was among 50 students playing "Debate Fallacy Bingo" - a game devised by McDaniel professors to show how the candidates' arguments often fail basic tests of logic. Each student had a bingo card, and each box contained a type of logical fallacy.
Heron wrote "Joe the Plumber" in the box marked, "Appeal to authority: fake expert." As McCain continued, Professor Anne Nester shouted out, "Whoa! Class warfare! Anybody got dysphemism? Yield to fear, anyone?"
While most viewers of the debates this fall have listened for how the candidates would fix the economy or end the war in Iraq, students at McDaniel College in Westminster have focused on the arguments themselves, looking for red herrings, loaded language, hyperbole, smoke screens and innuendo.
"This is the only time of year when the American obsession is rhetoric and reasoning, so we're trying to work off that and have students look at this stuff critically," said Peter Bradley, an assistant philosophy professor who created the bingo game with Nester, an adjunct professor. Bradley has always shown presidential debates in his critical thinking classes, but he saw the bingo game as a way to further engage students....
"Not only are we listening to the debate, but you get a mini-lesson at the same time and you see how much of persuasive argument is made up of bull crap," said Heron, 21, of Frederick....
No surprise, then, that Heron had crossed off every box on his card by the end of the night.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Kevin Heron, you get an F.
Joe was not posited as an expert in any field...
See, Obama citing the US Chamber of Commerce (and they don’t often support Democrats!)
John McCain did not appeal to Joseph Wurzelbacher as "an expert" on economic policy, but as an example of an American affected by specific economic policies.
Anne Nester is no Richard Weaver.
Hence what's wrong with our education system. 'Joe the Plumber' was an appeal to emotion, not to authority; but Heron obviously just saw a box to check and so he did.
So basically, this school has the lowest level of indoctinators filling the childrens head with crap.
No indication of which candidate is using class warfare, naturally.
Kiehl clearly knows nothing of logic.
Exactly. Young Mr. Heron was obviously not paying attention in Critical Thinking class. Joe the Plumber was never meant to be an “expert,” but rather a plain old vanilla example of a real, honest-to-goodness, working American who understands that Obama wants to take his money and give it to somebody else. McCain’s only failure on this issue was not saying the rest of the truth: “Obama wants to spread your hard-earned wealth around by giving it to those who already pay no taxes. He proposes to create a brand new and mammoth welfare system funded by you, Joe.”
MM
Joe the plumber was none of the above. He was an evidentiary example. A data point. The principal potential fallacy is a fallacy of composition,the assumption that Joe the plumber is a representative member of a larger class of individuals who would be so injured. But demonstrating that it is a fallacy requires demonstrating that others would not be so injured.
Joe the Plumber is not an economic expert in a college sense, but he has more common sense real-world experience than the entire university system, and unlike all liberal elites in our colleges, Joe “gets it!”
If Joe isn't qualified to say how Obama's tax proposal would affect his personal situation and business plans, who is?
Some useful websites for our college students:
nonindoctrination.com
neverfindout.org
I don’t understand how the statement you quoted matches your statement. A dysphemism is substituting a favorable expression for an unfavorable one.
In reality, Obama and the Marxists want to take the hard-earned wealth and feed it to a corrupt entrenched Washington bureaucracy and have the rest of us scrambling and begging favor with them to get the small percentage that the bureaucrats do not consume.
Money is power and power is what they want.
Joe’s situation is evidence of the effect O’s tax policy would have on small business.
Joe is clearly an expert on his own situation. However, Joe is not an expert in tax policy, per se.
Sorry , that’s
NoIndoctrination.org
I wasn’t referencing that one particular fallacy. The point was the adjunct and the associate prof are hacks. The article doesn’t ever reference what the statement was, but the “teacher” has to help the students with running commentary about what She thinks about class warfare. Any guesses as to which candidate she was responding to? I’ll bet it wasn’t BO.
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