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Ruth Marcus, columnist for the Washington Post, wrote today (Sep 17, 2008) of a kind of fallacious thinking not yet described on this site. She wrote of "false symmetry." This is the simple-minded dismissal or assumption that persons in conflict are equal in guilt and therefore equal in their unworthiness of support. It is the same as false equivalence arguments, and it bears the weakness of absolutistic thought in that it rests on an expectation of perfection.
Of political campaigns Macrus writes that "all campaigns fall short, but some fall shorter than others. And it is a phony evenhandedness, comfortable for journalists but ultimately misleading, that equates these failures without measuring the grossness of their deviation from the standard of decency."
It is our dumber fellow citizens from whom we can hear expressions of disinterest in politics on the ground that they are all crooks, liars, cheats, corrupt or what have you. Discerning grades of difference requires more thought.
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Copyright © 2007 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
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