Pre-Class Assignment:
1. Read “Phony-Baloney Detection Lessons #1-6” and “More on Phony-Baloney Detection” at the Blog footnoted below.[1]
2. Read L.A. Times article, “Border Watchers Gear Up for Expanded Patrol” at the website footnoted below.[2]
3. Using the principles of “Phony-Baloney Detection”, see if you can find some glaring (and the make doo-doo in your pants frightening statements) errors in logic in the assigned L.A. Times article.
Class Lecture:
As I have been predicting about the Minuteman Project and their splinter groups, there is more, much more, than meets the eye. Take for instance their current attempt at invading the good State of Texas.
They are running into problems since much of the Texas-Mexico border is privately owned. The American Mexican hunters (The Minuteman yahoos) are going to have to obtain permission from private landowners to “Observe and Report” those whom they claim are coming into America to kill us all with diseases and with God only knows what other dastardly motives.
Texans are not stupid.
The Texans are, rightly so, worried about liability issues when all Minuteman hell breaks loose on their land.
In my first article on this issue, I threw down the gauntlet in calling the Minuteman folks a “bunch of nutcases”[3] and have been paying hell for that ever since. Though I’ve been vacillating over that generalization, after reading this statement my fears have been renewed,
“J.C. Hernandez, a third-generation Texan, is the founder and president of Americans for Zero Immigration. Hernandez was working with Minutemen organizers in Texas and said he expected to play a leading role in the upcoming patrol. He also wants the right, he said, to make a citizen’s arrest of suspected illegal immigrants. “When you fight a war you don’t fight it with rhetoric,” Hernandez said. “When you fight a war, man, you go in and kill the enemy…. A signal has to be sent to Mexico and all those countries that we are tired of it and we’re not going to put up with it.” [4]
Ok class, did you find the glaring error in reasoning in the entire text of this article?
To solve the problem of private landowners giving their permission to the Minuteman Mexicans hunters, here is what Wanda Schultz, spokeswoman for Americans for Zero Population Growth, a Houston group that expects to play a role in the Texas border campaign, said,
“Those that love their country will surely come around to letting us use their land.”[5]
Go to the following website, footnoted below[6] and tell me what fallacy in reasoning did this woman commit:
1. Appeal to Consequences of a Belief
2. Appeal to Emotion
3. Appeal to Fear
4. The Fallacy of Bandwagon
5. Appeal to Ridicule
6. Appeal to Spite
7. The Fallacy of Begging the Question
8. The Fallacy of Circumstantial Ad Hominem
9. Ad Hominem Abusive
10. The Fallacy of Poisoning the Well
Write a paragraph for each and turn it in by Friday.
Next Week’s Assignment:
Write a ten-page paper explaining why Minuteman Project leaders and founders Simcox and Gilchrist have gone their separate ways since the ending of the Arizona event. Discuss whether the reports are true that Simcox and Gilchrist clashed over management tactics and strategies,[7] causing Gilchrist to realize he was working with a man, Simcox, who has a hidden agenda not to mention having lost all his marbles.
[1]
[2]
la-na-minutemen3jul03,0,7550921,full.story?coll=la-home-nation
[3]http://www.zyworld.com/theolog/Published%20Clips/
Philadelphia_Inquirer__04-17-2005__Bordering_on_the_paranoid.htm
[4]
la-na-minutemen3jul03,0,7550921,full.story?coll=la-home-nation
[5] Ibid
[6]
[7]
la-na-minutemen3jul03,0,7550921,full.story?coll=la-home-nation
Doug Bower is a freelance writer, Syndicated Columnist, and book author. His most recent writing credits include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Houston Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Transitions Abroad. He is a columnist with Cricketsoda.com and more than 21 additional online magazines. He is also a writer with EzineArticles.com with a readership of almost 6,000. He lives with his wife in Guanajuato, Mexico. His newest books, Mexican Living: Blogging it from a Third World Country and The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico can be seen: CLICK HERE: