Do Canadians hate Americans?

I don't ... (irreverent appearances on this blog notwithstanding)

Most Canadians cannot abide George W Bush and his administration. Most Canadians did not believe the lies that Bush told to get America into the Iraq war. Most Canadians applauded the Liberal stand against joining the invasion of Iraq. In that most Americans did not vote for Bush in either election and most Americans have come to realize that they were duped, most Canadians agree with most Americans about Bush and his administration.

Given the inhumanity and debacle of the Iraq war, most Canadians were absolutely correct in applauding the Liberal stand against joining the invasion of Iraq. Given that Al Qaeda now flourishes in Iraq where it did not flourish under Saddam Hussein, and given that insurgency and anti-American sentiment is escalating, Canadians were correct in thinking that Bush was committing an egregious error in invading Iraq. (Call it what you will, an invasion is an invasion is an invasion.)

Canadians appear to have short memories on this, as though keeping us out of an unjust and futile war pales in comparison to the antics of some party-hangers-on. Had we been so unfortunate as to have had Stevie Blunder as a PM back when Chrétien declared us a "sovereign nation", then we too would be losing Some Mothers' Sons and Daughters in Iraq as we now lose our soldiers in Afghanistan. (Yes, I believe that we should leave Afghanistan to its own people too.)

Janice Stein claims that most Canadians "cannot tell the difference" between the Bush administration and Americans. I believe that we can, in that we recognize the difference between the individual American and the national USian hubris. I believe that most Canadians recognize that the political administration elected (or not elected) by any nation is distinct from an individual within that nation.

However, Canadians do personally object to the vocal America-the-greatest arrogance of some Americans. We have long despised the way some Americans have treated slaves and their descendants – we were the last whistle stop on the underground railroad, after all. We were not happy about a nation that imposed illegal tariffs on our softwood lumber, and then refused to pay the legal compensation ordered by the NAFTA panel. We were not happy with a nation that closed its borders to our beef while hiding its own several cases of Mad Cow.

Has anti-American dislike of some aspects of America risen only since Bush took office? My personal observation has been that many Canadians have long disliked the American political ethos – we were simply too polite to say so loudly. However, anti-USian sentiment has risen dramatically since Giorgio Dubaya Borgio took office. (By "took" office, I indicate that I believe that the outcome of both elections that placed such an incompetent in power were rigged. First, by the deliberate mis-aligned printing of ballots in brother Jed Bush's home state, and next, by tampering with electronic ballots in the swing states.)

Do we define ourselves in terms of not being American? No. Most of us hold "Canadian" values because of the intrinsic merit of certain moral principles. As a friend said, "we prefer to spend our money on social programs rather than bombs". (Obviously, we also suffer our share of rednecks, bigots, and self-serving individuals.) We compare much of the American ethos with Canadian values, and find the American political and social scene desperately wanting in some areas. We thus declare ourselves proud that we do not share the more egregious aspects of the American Weltschauung. In other words, we decry some American attitudes in terms of their not being the more liberal attitudes that typify Canadian values.

Quo Vadis?
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Argumentum ad nauseam

Arguing to the point of nausea, argument by repetition

This fallacious argument is founded in the same principle as commercial advertising – the hope that people will be convinced by an argument if they hear it over, and over, and over . . . and over again until they are truly sick of it.

Fallacious argumentum ad nauseam puts people to sleep because such arguments boringly lack substance. Those who repeat well-founded cogent arguments are not committing this fallacy, whereas those who repeat weak, illogical, innacurate opinions can only hope to persuade through boring repetition.

Websites promoting special prejudices are presumbably founded for this reason – not to mention collecting donations from the credulous, the already-emotionally-convinced, or Aginners. Usenet groups abound with individuals who, whether purely for troll purposes or out of genuine dedication to nonsense, stubbornly bang on and on about ill-conceived opinions.

Giorgio Dubaya Borgia and his administration used ad nauseam emotional appeals (fear of WMDs and terrorism, Saddam Hussein has murdered Iraqi civilians) to attempt to justify an invasion of extremely dubious merit. Facts ultimatlely dispel fallacious ad nauseam claims because most people are not so foolish as to remain conned forever, and Borgia's approval ratings have plummeted.

We all make mistakes–or maybe it's just me–but only some of us are big enough to admit to our errors and to modify our belief system to better represent reality. Those who commit the ad nauseam fallacy seem to be unable to step back from their beliefs, to reassess their convictions, to learn, or to grow. The "Decider' has repeatedly demonstrated that he is too stupid to learn from his many mistakes.

“All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.” ~ Winston Churchill

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ~ Albert Einstein.

“A man's errors are his portals of discovery.” ~ James Joyce

“Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Quo Vadis?
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Argumentum ad numeram

Appealing to the Gallery, Appealing to Numbers

Argumentum ad numeram and argumentum ad populam are closely related fallacies of logic. Fallacious ad numeram arguments take the position that the veracity of an argument can be determined by the number of people who support or believe the proposition. Fallacious ad populam arguments attempt to win acceptance of an argument by making an emotional appeal to as large an audience as possible.

Giorgio Dubaya Borgia and his administration used ad nauseam emotional appeals (fear of terrorism, Saddam Hussein has murdered Iraqi civilians) to attempt to justify an invasion of extremely dubious merit. Most people are not so foolish as to remain conned forever, and Borgia's approval ratings have plummeted.

However, politicians succeed because large numbers of people are conned by propagandistic appeals to emotion, realizing their errors only too late. (This is the chief problem with democracies – the populace is far too easily duped into voting for candidates who later prove, as did Bush, to have absolutely no merit.) As a result of the gullibility of USians who voted for Bush, al Queda is now operating in Iraq when it did not operate under Hussein. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been needlessly killed or maimed, and Iraq faces years of civil war before yet another strong man dictator takes over. The only upside of all this stupidity is that the share value of Haliburton has probably increased, and that is not an upside except to greedy Americans.

Religious dogmatists argue that because most people in the US believe that God was their personal creator, then God must exist and must be their creator. This, of course, demonstrates only that most people have been told, from an early age, that there is a God who is their creator and they have believed the tale in the absence of any confirmatory evidence. Unlike the case for Bush's lamentable record, only death could confirm or deny the existence of this purported creator, and the dead cannot inform the still-living that they were duped. If the dead could speak, then I am quite confident that God's approval rating would plummet almost to zero.

Fallacious argumentam ad numeram or argumentam ad populam is particularly damaging in the hands of dishonest politicians, but it is also a general problem amongst those who refuse to believe in the valid, empirical-based knowledge of credible authorities.

Because it is easy and cheap to form and hold an opinion, no matter how ill-informed or illogical that opinion, people with virtually no knowledge of a field will dogmatically insist upon ridiculous notions that run counter to received wisdom from those who are authorities in their fact-based field.

Thus, people who know nothing of meteorology or atmospherics will decide incorrectly that global warming is a myth simply because they do not wish to believe that they must alter their behaviour. People who know nothing of medicine, biomedical sciences, or epidemiology will erroneously decide, for example, that smoking is not harmful, or that vaccination causes autism.

Such errors would merely result in the holding of unfounded opinions by peope not sufficiently informed to host any opinion, but because politicians pander to public opinion, public ignorance becomes translated into harmful political action or inaction.

Quo Vadis?
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Appeals to Emotion

Emotional appeal, subtype of red herring argument

Unless an argument is solely about motivation or emotionality, an emotional appeal is never a legitimate strategy in an argument. Such arguments are fallacious because they focus on emotion rather than providing verifiable or evaluative support.

An appeal to false authority is a subtype of emotional appeal, as is the more obviously fallacious appeal to celebrity. The Bible is fallaciously cited, in the argumentum ad biblium fallacy, as an authority in many an emotional argument emanating from a religious dogmatist.

Irrelevant negative emotions evoked within arguments can include:
Envy (fallacious appeal to envy, argumentum ad invidiam)
Fear (fallacious appeal to fear, scare tactics, appeal to force, argumentum ad metum)
Force (argumentum ad baculum)
Hatred, Spite, Prejudice (fallacious appeal to hatred, stereotypes, against scapegoats, argumentum ad odium)
Pity, Altruism (fallacious appeal to pity, sob story, argumentum ad misericordiam)
Pride or Vanity (fallacious appeal to pride, apple polishing, argumentum ad superbiam)

Irrelevant positive emotions evoked:
Loyalty (fallacious appeal to loyalty, to conformity, bandwagon, peer pressure, argumentum ad populum)

Traditionally, many religious arguments have appealed to fear (eternal damnation) or to positive emotions (love of the Father, salvation, eternal life, heaven, forgiveness). To argue that an army should be mobilized because enemy forces are massed at the border is a much more valid argument than any religious argument founded in supernatural positives or negatives.

“A vast sector of modern advertising... does not appeal to reason but to emotion; like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually.” ~ Eric Fromm

“No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight of the soul.” ~ Ingrid Bergman

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons." ~ Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." ~ George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles." ~ George Jean Nathan (1882 - 1958)

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." ~ Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

Patriotism seems a sadly appropriate footnote in a post about fallacious emotional appeals–those who have died or been maimed in the Iraqi war were told that they were helping "the war against terror". However, it much, much, much more likely that America's invasion of Iraq has merely heightened world-wide anti-American sentiment and certainly that it has given Al Queda a foothold in Iraq, neither of which are anti-terror victories. Tragically, those young men and women did not die or suffer to benefit America, rather they were sacrificed to Giorgio Dubaya Borgia's political ambitions and the economic interests of big American corporations.

Quo Vadis?
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