Let me be the teacher here because it appears that Jonathan Panton is very much in need of some review of “Logic and Rhetoric,” as his Aug. 21 “One View” [Who is the real Kamala Harris? Viewpoints] strongly suggests.
In logic, one must be quite careful that one’s argument does not embody what is called a “fallacy.” Many logical fallacies await those who would engage in debate or, particularly, political discussion. One of the most common is known as the “A Priori Argument.” The University of Texas’ “Master List of Logical Fallacies” defines the A Priori Argument as “a corrupt argument from logos, starting with a given, pre-set belief, dogma, doctrine, scripture verse, ‘fact’ or conclusion, and then searching for any reasonable or reasonable-sounding argument to rationalize, defend or justify it.” (1)
People who fall into — or intentionally use — the A Priori Argument fallacy tend to marshal only those “facts” that support the conclusion they start with and to distort otherwise credible sources of information. Jonathan has done both.
You clearly started with “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, bad and evil; the other guys, good.” You then located sources, many of them biased to start with, that “prove” your assertions. You also excised objectively written sources from their contexts and quoted them as if they support your a priori conclusion, which they do not.
Were I grading your essay (and believe me, I’ve graded many such efforts), I’d do a detailed dissection of it in red ink and give it an “F.”
It is quite possible to argue a political position without resorting to, as noted above, an obvious fallacy. Conservative positions can be adhered to without such dishonesty. We have many examples of this. I recommend that you study the work of Adam Kinzinger, David Brooks, and others like them.
Here’s my single footnote, this one an honest citation.
(1) https://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/engl1311/fallacies.htm#:~:text=The A Priori Argument
Ed McDevitt
River Forest
