| Wednesday, September 18, 2002 |
01:43 - Arguing by Analogy
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Whoisourenemy.shtml
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Cap'm Den Beste (whose name I just discovered I've been miscapitalizing all this time-- damn my eyes) has posted a nutshell summary-- though it's anything but short-- of who our enemy is in this defensive war (this jihad, if you will), and he doesn't mince words. He points fingers, but the targets he finds aren't ones that the antiwar left really has any intellectual mechanism to tackle. "Cultural genocide" is what we're going to have to end up committing, he says. Naturally no good liberal will be able to read those words without bristling.
And indeed, he's taking plenty of flak from the usual suspects who have been lobbing water balloons at his arguments increasingly steadily of late. But what I've noticed is that the people who have a bone to pick with the kind of cut-to-the-chase outlining of the problems and our tedious but clear-cut proposed solutions all seem to use the same tactics to try to argue against war and against American assertiveness: they argue by analogy, using such brilliant devices as:
It's time for an intervention. Take a day or two away from your blog.
Then go back and read your manifesto again. This time substitute the words "Jew" and "Jews" for the words "Arab" and "Muslim."
If it doesn't send a chill up and down your spine, check yourself into a mental hospital, or seek professional counseling.
And I'm not being sarcastic about this.
You accuse the Arabs of living in the 14th century. Arguably, your "solution" comes right out of the 20th. Roughly from the years between 1932 and 1945 to be precise.
It's not to late to wake up and re-think things.
...This is what I meant a couple of days ago by the intellectual tendency to want to draw parallels, form analogies, and make logical leaps that one can present in the form of a paper to one's professor and appear terribly clever. "You want to defang radical Islam by gutting the culture that it exists in concert with. Well, just pretend it's Jews that you're talking about defanging, and suddenly-- voilá! You're a Nazi!" But, you know, never mind that the circumstances are about as different as they can possibly be. Never mind how many Jews you could have counted in 1932 Munich firebombing ice-cream parlors and shooting guns in the air praising Jehovah. Never mind how adamant Judaism is about establishing a global Judaic ruling order that enforces strict adherence to Talmudic law. Never mind how many skyscrapers Jews have knocked down with planes for the furtherance of their religion.
Some people are placing as their highest goal the discovery of hypocrisy in any policy decision we make: if something we do can be shown even tenuously to mirror something the Nazis did, or that the Soviets did or that the Arabs do, then it's an instant deal-breaker. Yeah, hypocrisy sucks. But in and of itself, hypocrisy-- or the accusation thereof-- does not validate or invalidate a given policy. Just because some historical parallel can be drawn and turned against us, some would have us believe that that should trump any action on our part. I say that's bunkum. What we're interested in is the problem we face in the here-and-now, and what solutions we can propose that are appropriate. We are capable of deciding upon their ethicality and their international sensitivity without the aid of delicious historical irony, thankyouverymuch.
Den Beste defends his reasoning as well has he needs to-- arguments like Hesiod's deflate themselves in the very unfolding of the metaphors by which they define themselves. And that's exactly it: nobody making these anti-war comments seems willing to do it directly, without appealing to historical parallels or diplomatic precedent. It's all got to fit into a formula, these guys seem to be saying. This situation is no different from anything else that's happened in history. We're an advanced, enlightened culture nowadays. We have international laws to cover any and all circumstances that might arise. And that's why this insane cowboy Bush is so dangerous-- he's making up his own rules as he goes along! Whereas we all know that the answer to Islamic terrorism has got to be found in poring over history books, finding ancient causes and effects, finding successful solutions to contemporary problems, and applying them to the issues at hand. Never mind that saying that if we reduce our energy consumption, recycle more, and give more aid to Central Africa, we will eliminate global poverty and end terrorism is rather like saying that a pothole in the road is best fixed by declaring roads illegal.
I remember a Trek episode in which Data, having lost his memory, found himself in the midst of a pre-warp, medieval society with a very "Greek" physical model of the world. A teacher explained to her students how all matter was made up of sky, fire, water, and stone; she said that wood contained all of these in some measure, reasoning that because the wood was heavy it contained stone, and that because it was combustible it contained fire (and the smoke released was sky that was trapped in the wood). In what was one of the more scientifically conscientious Trek moments, Data argued, correctly, that she was reasoning by analogy, and that that was a logically flawed tactic; just because wood is heavy doesn't mean it contains stone. Naturally, though, she wanted to hear none of that.
(Yes, I'm aware of the irony of using a Trek reference about reasoning by analogy, as an analogy to the current debate structure.)
Mind you, there's nothing inherently wrong with reasoning by analogy, or arguing by analogy-- but only if the analogy makes sense. At best it's a poor substitute for real direct evidence, and when that's in short supply, the temptation to analogize hockey-sticks. Some people are so eager to appear clever with their rhetoric that they'll pull a bad analogy out of their ass-- and because it lends itself to trick wording and because the audience feels so compelled to follow the same parallels so they can "get the reference", such an analogy will often get a lot more critical reaction than it deserves.
I wonder why so few people seem willing to face up to the possibility that this war is indeed something new, something entirely and fundamentally modern-- something that could only have come to light in the age of the Internet and satellite TV and their impossibly ubiquitous and never-before-seen reach in broadcasting the message of American success to the world. Countries who had previously only heard of America as a vague name on the horizon now have Baywatch episodes to download via KaZaA. This is something that could never have happened in another age. And the rules of the engagements of history, the solutions to the problems of the past, will not avail us here. We do have to make up new rules as we go. The old ones will address the wrong problems. (Although I do agree that we'll have to demolish "Arab Culture" and reconstruct it, Japan-style. It's not that it's what we should do because "it worked in Japan", but because it's the only tenable solution regardless of historical context.)
I can just hope that our government sees it in this light, and that they're not seduced by the temptation to define what this war is like, rather than what it is. After all, who are we more concerned with outsmarting-- the enemy, or each other?
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