Short Shots 4

One more thing. Since you have lumped the Cato Institute in with all the other "right wing propoganda factories," I guess that means all of its studies, articles and books opposing the current war in Iraq (and urging immediate withdrawal therefrom), the Patriot Act and the "War on Drugs," to name just a few, are without merit and should not be referenced by any thinking person. Anyone whose interested can go to www.cato.org and see what I mean.

Short Shots 4

"Nobody is funded by the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Freedom Forum, or any of the rest because they have a disinterested dedication to truth. They are brought on board because they follow an ideological agenda and are willing to hew to the party line.

It would be more accurate to describe someone writing for such organizations as a “Paid Political Hack,” from a “Right Wing Propaganda Factory” funded by “Greedy Corporations and Psycho Billionaires who Hate Taxes.”

Just because they give themselves honorable names, doesn’t mean we have to use them. Using such titles of honor adds to the illusions and delusions."

This is an example of an ad hominum argument. This is the logical fallacy of attacking the person who presents the argument rather than the argument itself. An example would be - "Hitler promoted vegetarianism, therefore no decent person would be a vegetarian."

Mr. Beinhart's argument could just as easily be turned around to support an argument that, for eaxample, because the Sierra Club is an organization devoted to environmentaism, and because such an organization would not fund studies that would run counter to that agenda, all studies on the environment financed by it are the work of environmentalist "hacks" promoted to ensure that the Sierra Club continues to rake in donations.

If you argue that a particular study is flawed or inaccurate, you must base your argument on its content. You must point out the manner in which it is flawed or inaccurate. Attacking the author of the study rather than the study itself is not logical.

Short Shots 2

Actually there is a more direct demonstration of the flaw in your "logical" conclusion:

A prison is home to people whose profession is crime. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people with the propensity to commit crime, as opposed to a random sample of the general population. From that point of view, we see that among people who commit crimes, the majority are black as opposed to white. Among elite prisons, (i.e. those housing more violent criminals) the proportion of blacks goes up. Blackness leads to crime.

This obviously absurd result points out the flaw in your cum hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. I won't bother to explain that term, I'm sure an elite thinker already knows what it means. Those stupid right-wingers who want an explanation can go to www.fallacyfiles.org.

Short Shots 2

"A university faculty is home to people whose profession is thinking. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people who think, as opposed to a random sample of the general population.From that point of view, we see that among people who think, 72% are liberal and 15% conservative. Among elite thinkers, the portion ofliberals goes up 87%.Thinking leads to liberalism.

Until the 1960's, many of our most elite universities had few or no blacks, women or Jews on the faculty. Does this mean that until that time blacks, women and Jews were not good thinkers?