Rhetoric and Logical Fallacies

Letter to the Editor, to me.

In my school newspaper (The Advocate) this week there was a letter to the editor posted about my article last week on Mcbama. Since I will not be able to give a response to the individual who wrote this nor the readers who read our paper I thought I’d take the opportunity here to dispel some myths the majority of people seem to have, pertaining to socialized medicine.

First here is the LTE in the paper this week:

“Kirk Barbera is out of his mind. I’m sad to say that, contrary to Barbera’s column last week, neither candidate has proposed a truly universal healthcare plan. Kirk would do well to note, however, that developed countries with socialized medicine are healthier, happier, and live longer than American’s. Period.

Waiting lists to see a doctor in Canada are long? Wow. Have you been to an emergency room in the states lately? It’s a nightmare. And when it’s all over, you get a bill for thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting hurt or sick in America.

In an age of unprecedented technological and material wealth, denying anyone medical attention (or driving them to bankruptcy for the audacious desire to stave off dying for a while) is an atrocity. Barbera has it backwards. Socialization of healthcare would liberate rather than oppress. It would liberate us from a system in which life-saving technology is hoarded from the masses by a greedy few. Universal health care is socialism. So what? It couldn’t be any worse than what we have now.”

Weston Wilson,
Metro

The first thing I’d like to say is that writing an editorial as I did and writing a letter to the editor like Mr. Wilson did, are obviously entirely different. Writing an editorial is mainly about sifting through the facts to get the information to your readers. It is about garnering a “reasoned, well-informed, cogently argued stake into the larger community of perspective,” as my editor has said. Now an opinion piece is just that, opinion.

There still comes a time when logical fallacies; a technical flaw which makes an argument unsound or invalid, is something that needs to be watched and warned of. There are probably hundreds of logical fallacies, I’m sure you and I are guilty of them all the time. However, it must be fought against because a logical fallacy can make some people believe you, and your argument, even though you are incorrect.
When I write an editorial it is to inform based off hundreds of bits of information I have attained on a specific subject. I sift through it and come to conclusions for my readers and give them the facts with my view of the situation. LTE’s are just an argument, Wilsons’ argument is the same as most arguments deductive he wishes to dispute the fact that I made the claim Obama has said he will universalize (I.E. Socialize) medicine, and that this is a bad thing. Wilson has about 200 words to prove his point and I believe his rhetoric would make Obama proud. Now there are one or two logical fallacies that are seen more often than others. One of the most common of them is what is called a Red Herring. This occurs when someone brings up irrelevant material to the argument being discussed in order to divert our attention from the points being made. In essence they bring into the argument a totally different argument to hide the fact that their argument is weak. For example:

“Waiting lists to see a doctor in Canada are long? Wow. Have you been to an emergency room in the states lately? It’s a nightmare. And when it’s all over, you get a bill for thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting hurt or sick in America”
- Wilson

In my article I explained the waiting lists in Canada were very long and implied this leads to much suffering and death, I then cited a reliable source. For facts on this I refer you to a few places

1. My article on Socialized Medicine
2. Next is the article I quoted in my Mcbama; an article from Dr. Paul Hsieh and Lin Zinzer in the Objective Standard "Moral healthcare Vs Universal healthcare".
3. Lastly here is The Fraser Institutes (Canadian think tank) yearly “Waiting your turn” survey where they give the stats for waiting lists in Canada:

There are of course hundreds of other places to find stats about this and other things Mr. Wilson brought up, but for now I will just discuss this. The Red Herring in this case is when Wilson brings up the irrelevant information that American Emergency rooms are overcrowded and the waiting list in AMERICA is long. The main problem here is I have never disputed the fact that America has long waiting lines and overall not a very good health care system. This Red Herring allowed Wilson, and unfortunately many like him, to agree with a logical fallacy that perpetuates the myth of how great socialism is.

Also he has made the claim that developed countries are healthier, happier and live longer than American’s, assuming they have socialized medicine of course. There are a couple of problems here, the first is that once again he brings up the fact that America’s health care system isn’t working, which is something entirely different then the point I made of Obama bringing in socialized medicine and how this creates problems, the main one being long waiting lines. Now however, he is using it in a different way to try and persuade people that his point is right based merely off the fact that America’s mainly socialist and partly capitalist system isn’t work. Once again I have never disputed this fact. A second problem with this is that proving that a country has citizens who overall are healthier is hard to prove, and if they are happier it can easily be a subjective idea they have. The only claim he made which can be proven is life span. Which again is not something I’m debating here all I’m saying is that Obama is advocating Socialized medicine and that this is bad, one reason being that it causes such long waiting lines people die waiting.
The purpose of this blog is that I want everyone to think for themselves and do the research to find the truth.

Rhetoric and logical fallacies should not be taken seriously and should be denounced, even ridiculed. When we have a man who is outright lying to each and every one of us who might become president these are the things we need to watch out for. Rhetoric will not save our health care system, rhetoric will not save us from a nuclear Iran, and rhetoric will not get America energy dependent. We need principles, not rhetoric.

Think for yourselves.