Flags, Logic, and "There Is No Such Thing As Illegal!"

Last night, I watched yet another demonstration and example of something I’ve been afraid of since boyhood, bias. Of the several subjects I have maintained study of all my life (and by “study,” I include continual and regular returns to college classes) one is the psychology and sociology of bias in human opinion and opinion formation.

Bias amounts to nothing short of a form of insanity. It is very like a reflexive or Pavlovian reaction, in that the individual either responds without thought, or – perhaps even more indicative of his condition – even after thought. In almost all of its forms, the bias so masks its presence that the afflicted individual actually believes he IS thinking, the bias having appeared as thought.

Bias, moreover, is seldom self-induced, being a product almost entirely of the human need and tendency to control his fellow and his behavior. The result is that few of the behavioral sciences – or sciences in general, for that matter – receive more attention and study from government than that of bias creation. That’s what’s become known as propaganda. In my own poor way, I seek to combat bias induced by propaganda with methods like my logic page here, “The Thinker.” The idea primarily is to point out on a continuing basis examples of illogical argument and propaganda – with government, as with all human beings, the determination is always that of evil intent or simple error – being foisted upon the public by the nation’s information and news media.

Last night, on the Lou Dobbs Show, I watched in utter astonishment one of the most egregious examples of human bias I’ve ever witnessed anywhere. As I have again and again wondered here on these pages, I wondered at the mental and psychological state of the principals. Where bias of this kind is derived from the erroneous, but ubiquitous fallacy of moral justification of method by end result, the individual must, I suppose, be excused of any evil being done. The issue here was that of illegal immigration (and, in order to deliberate effectively here, one must begin with recognition of the kind of bias capable of stating categorically that illegal immigration is not illegal – or its inverse, that all immigration is legal), and all that means for the U.S. and its legal citizenry.

It appears that some time ago (I haven’t looked it up), Lou Dobbs made reference to the number of illegal aliens from Mexico who had Hanson’s Disease, or leprosy. That I do not have the precisely correct numbers is due the fact in the first place that illegal immigration prevents knowing the numbers – which is precisely one of the reasons any nation attempts to control immigration.

That fact was conspicuous by its absence from the argument of the Dobbs’ Show’s guests.

Otherwise, the guests’ astonishingly biased argument committed primarily the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion, proceeding to use the irrelevant conclusion in the further fallacy of appeal to ignorance.

That last there is not intended as double entendre, incidentally, but it you don’t recognize appeal to ignorance, you don’t watch much television these days. You may recall from earlier posts here Nazi German Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels’ dictum that propaganda must be directed at stupidity and repeated often. Now that I think of it, your failure to recognize that may prove that you watch too much TV. It would also prove, then, that Goebbels was right.

Dobbs had reported in some fashion – and the fashion constitutes all aspects of the guests objection and argument – that a precipitous rise in cases of leprosy (to say nothing of the danger of epidemics resulted from there being no way to know who or what is crossing the border with Mexico) could reasonably be connected with illegal immigration. The following URLs will relieve me of any necessary recitation of statistics on that specific subject. From them, the reader can proceed to his own research of the issue and problem. If that doesn’t piss you off with Dobbs’ detractors – including, incidentally, Media Matters – nothing will.

ftp://ftp.hrsa.gov/bphc/pdf/nhdp/2003Regreport.pdf

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43275

That second URL, incidentally, is the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons report, and it includes what might be considered a prescription for protecting the health of Americans:

“Closing America's borders with fences, high-tech security devices and troops.
“Rescinding the U.S. citizenship of "anchor babies."
“Punishing the aiding and abetting of illegal aliens as a crime.
“An end to amnesty programs.”

In the report located at the first URL, you will note that thirty-seven percent of all leprosy among immigrants to the U.S. occurs in Caucasian Mexicans. A further eight percent occurs in black Mexicans. The percentage nearest those has to do with “Pacific or Asian Islanders” – twenty-two percent.

Now, to regress momentarily and for cause, the fallacy of argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad Ignoratium (that, actually, means “appeal to ignorance”) or argument by lack of imagination, is the logical fallacy in which one avers that a premise is false only because it has not been proved true. Its corollary is the equally fallacious averment that says a premise is true because it has not been proved false or that a premise contained in the averment is false.

The Dobbs Show guests went even further (as do many – most, and almost invariably – of illegal immigration apologists), to the similar fallacy known as argument from personal belief or conviction. That one says that because the apologist’s bias won’t let him believe something – a premise, technically – the premise or argument can be assumed to be false. The inverse of that one is that a premise preferred is true even though not proved.

Both these dingbat arguments regard lack of evidence for one conclusion as constituting evidence or proof that another conclusion is instead true. In the anti-derivative of that one the dingbat arguer regards his personal bias against the opinion opposing his as probative. “I don’t like it, so it isn’t so.”

If you haven’t recognized that one in all the flak flying up from the illegal immigrant forces – try Geraldo Rivera, for instance – you’re again demonstrating either that you don’t watch television or that you watch so much television that the Goebbels Method has you in thrall

Finally, and summing up, the two Lou Dobbs Show guests asseverated indignantly that because Dobbs’ supposed statement wasn’t provable – I remind the reader that on account of the nature of illegal immigration – there is no way to know – it was false (Dobbs pointed out that, still further along the string of fallacious assumption, he had never said what the guests’ insisted was inferable from his actual statement).

To sum up the guests’ (and that of literally dozens of proponents of illegal immigration and amnesty for those already here) argument, we don’t know how many people with leprosy (conspicuous again by its absence was mention of all other diseases possible) are coming across the border, so none of the people coming across the border illegally are lepers. Remarkable.

Here, by the way again, we may fairly remind ourselves that all the same logical nonsense is being asserted where criminals and other examples of flotsam and jetsam from Mexican and other South American social paradises are concerned. Want to go a little further along that same line of d-u-u-u-h reasoning (still another reason we so desperately need these people – their surpassing intelligence)?

Pay attention, now – let’s see if you can identify the fallacious thinking necessary to explain the immigrant who flees his Mexican homeland in order to make his new country like his old one . . . If Aztlan belongs to Mexico, and by out-breeding us, they take it back and turn it into Mexico, how will the citizens of the new Mexican state have gained anything? What, the land – the air, maybe - makes U.S. citizens prosperous and successful as a community and nation?

“Splain dat to me, Luci!” Isn’t Mexico the way Mexico is on account of Mexicans?

Still, we’re not done yet. Next, we have the “only a little or a few” fallacy of composition argument. Only a few of the people coming over the border are sick, criminal pedophiles, rapists, or murders. “The new TV is cheap, because it only cost a dollar, fifty a day” (and it you haven’t heard that one, you’re either deaf or haven’t listened to radio, watched TV, or read a newspaper). Illegal immigration can’t cost us that much (some of the fiscal argument being put forward by illegal immigration supporters are deliberate exploitation of public stupidity where innumeracy is concerned, obviously fallacious on their face to anyone who can add, subtract, multiply, or divided numbers in six digits).

It’s only when the TV salesman tells you that his buck, fifty a day adds up to five hundred, forty-seven, fifty that the “cheap” comes out of the innumeracy fog into the light of day.

Again, however, the real trouble comes from having no idea how much the payments are going to be. WE DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS GOING TO COST, BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE THERE ARE! The same is true of how much disease, how many pedophiles, how many drug-pushers, and how many murderers. More, while it is reasonable to assume that some of the people willing to break both our immigration laws and those of their own country (another thing conspicuous – at least to me – by it’s absence from the discussion) are something less than candidates for sainthood, it is equally likely that at least some are criminals of the lowest possible nature - scum of the earth, in other words.

Or, maybe, a Mexican national can’t be a criminal?

What? – Citizens of the U.S. are to play the equivalent of Russian Roulette, just because Mexico wants relief from its own societally prostrate condition? Maybe when we’ve become the victim of an illegal immigrant and illegal immigration the government will give us – like it does the family of a soldier maimed or killed in Iraq “the honor and respect of a grateful nation?” Mexico, maybe?! Maybe we can have cast a new medal, a Purple Heart for wounds suffered while being sacrificed to Mexico’s invasion of the U.S.

Thanks, I’ll take vanilla – enforce the law, I mean.

Want to do some fun numbers? Assume that twenty million illegal aliens are given amnesty – meaning, in a few years, social security benefits. Do the numbers; say, an average of what I get (for fifty years of payments, mind you) $10,320 a year. Multiply by twenty millions (never mind – I’ll do it for you), you get $206,400,000,000. That’s two hundred six billion, four hundred million. And if you think that will do it, you don’t realize how I’m getting screwed; worse, you think illegal aliens will stand for being treated like I was. There’s nobody who doesn’t realize that just social security income – I haven’t mentioned all the rest – benefits for the amnestied illegal aliens will cost people like me – and you - a couple of trillion dollars.

But my topic was bias (again, I digress – if only to demonstrate the degree of dishonesty resulted from bias, my subject). How do two educated persons like Dobbs’ guests dare sit before a national audience and commit the kind of stultifying, stupefying dissimulation and prevarication these birds did? How does a Reverend Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson dare rail one day against the same faux pas he commits the next? A Glen Beck ballyhooing on Monday the end of the world and on Thursday excoriate as fear-mongers exponents of human-originated global warming? How does a Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly, a Rosie O’Donnell or Al Franken take a politically right-wing or left-wing view on every issue?

How is it that a television viewing researcher can watch for days on end without seeing a single logical argument propounded by any pundit on any issue of political and national importance? Not one!

Why is it that that same researcher - and just about anyone who watches television or reads the papers – can know in advance on any given subject or issue what any of these purported experts will argue?

How does a Sean Hannity dare – like every, single one of his to the political right of Attila the Hun ilk – dare say something as illogically stupid as the argument that U.S. departure from Iraq would result in increased violence? Go back to the fallacies of Ignoratium and division, then think about that one.

Three guys in a roomful of people are fighting one another, tearing the place all to hell, and knocking hell out of all the bystanders – innocent or otherwise. All the principals are shooting at all the others. How the hell does one guy being removed increase the level of violence? They’re not going to use the ammo they were shooting at us to go on shooting at one another? The guy who left was preventing them from shooting one another? What - by drawing fire? Our shooting wasn’t hurting anybody? We didn’t have and use far more firepower than either of the other two?

And, pal, if you tell me about the two thousand pound bombs that can hit a doorknob, failing to mention what the explosion does to everything in a one thousand yard radius of that doorknob, if you tell me about a hundred and fifty thousand of our troops shooting in every direction every kind of personal weapon, mortar, rocket, and cannon, all hitting nothing but what they’re aiming at, we’ll be right back to the buck, fifty a day television set.

The violence in Iraq can be worsened when we stop shooting, bombing and blasting, and leave? HOW, do tell!