Talk

Ann Coulter

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war

The first I've heard/seen of Ms Coulter was on hardball last night. She was on to promote her new book. To say "she made an ass of her self" would be insulting the ass. Her facial expressions ranged from those of a petulant 2-yr old smarting at being told she was wrong to a noticeably angered woman frustrated at her inability to hold her own. The segment ended with Ann squirming in her chair her face betraying the lightning, thunderstorms, skulls and bones any caricaturist would have loved to add to a cartoon. All the while she remained adamant that she was on to promote her book and must not be held to any meaningful intellectual debate.

Debates and verbal duels are usually fun and interesting. People use all the tools in their 'thought-box' to maneuver their opponents to traps of contradictions and failures of logic. Unfortunately more often than not interlocuters resort to use of argumentam ad misericondiams (appeal to pity) and other emotion traps to argue their case. Take current uproar over the use of "under God" in the pledge of allegiance. The folks against the ruling use one of two arguments.

a) The founding fathers are turning in their graves. This argument is fallacious because the "under God" phrase was added in the 1950's. Secondly the founding fathers wanted freedom from religious persecution for the citizens of the United States. Most importantly it doesnt matter what the founding fathers would think. This is a good example of how people use appeal to emotion to divert attention from their logic. The appeals court decision was based on use of coercion to promote religion. Their ruling explicitly stated how the logic was used to determine their decision. They didnt make their decision on whim or fancy.

b) Video clips of small children holding their hands on their chests. These pictures are supposed to show the jurists in bad light. Oh look, all this uproar over small children. While the initial court case was filed against coercion in the class room the bigger picture is much much larger. This ruling is about the imposition of "God" in American society. So using children as bargaining chips in this argument is sad and unfortunate.

What do I think? I think if the founding fathers had progressed past deism they would most likely have ended up atheists. It was taken for granted that God existed even if we couldn't agree on the religion we would use to communicate with God. However, today we are not in agreement if God exists. This would explain the reasoning behind dropping the use of God in the pledge. However, given that God is lodged into every nook and cranny of the American ethos its an up hill battle and one that in the long run shouldnt make any difference.