The Flaw in Logic

If you debate someone with opposing political views long enough, no matter how well-thought-out your position, you will usually come to a place where you are both looking at each other wondering what planet the other guy is from or thinking, "this is what happens when you drop a baby on its head."

After all, you're an educated person. You don't just know what you believe, you know why you believe it. How could this other person look at the same facts and come to such a radically different conclusion? What is wrong with their logic?

Nothing, actually. We tend to assume that two logical people, looking at the same facts, will make the same choices. This is far from the case. Why? Because logic doesn't tell you what to want, only how to get it. Logic is a map, but it does not choose the destination. Furthermore, logic does not say whether it is better to get there by the fastest means, the safest means or the most efficient means. These are left up to your personal value system.

A value system isn't just a list of the things we think are important, it's a hierarchy. Most Americans would list a lot of the same values - freedom, security, life, family, education, fairness. It's the order they put them in that varies, not just from person to person, but from day to day. For example, in the post 9-11 world, a lot of Americans have put security ahead of freedom. Prior to the destruction of the World Trade Center, few of us would have been willing to walk through a full-body x-ray machine just to get on a plane or have people's phones tapped without a warrant.

We make pretty subtle distinctions, too. Life is one of the highest values I have, personally, but at the end of the day, I have to admit that I value my own life more than most strangers' lives and definitely more than the life of anyone trying to do me harm. I value the lives of my nieces and nephews above the value of my friends. (Sorry, friends). On a more material side, I value having enough food to eat and I value chocolate more than lettuce.

To translate that to politics, Democrats and Republicans have such different opinions not because they don't understand each other, but because we don't want the same things, except maybe to be reelected. In a general, broad picture sense, most of us want a safe nation where people have enough to eat and a place to live.When you get down to specifics, though, there's very little common ground. For example, most on the left define poverty based on the difference between what the richest have and what the poorest have. Why? Because 'fairness' is a very high value in their system and 'economic success' is very low. The right, on the other hand, tends to define poverty based on what the poorest have with no regard for what the richest have, because they value 'economic success' much more highly than 'fairness'. If the owner of a business makes 10 times what the employees make, the left views that as superior to a system where the owner makes 1,000 times what the employees make even if the employees make twice as much under the second system.

If you concede, as most people will under enough examination, that the fetus is basically a human being, some people will still argue that abortion is generally acceptable and should remain legal. Why? Because on their value system, there are a lot of things are more important than the assumption that no one should be denied life, liberty or property without due process. Personally, I think there is something fundamentally wrong with those people and I wouldn't trust them with a goldfish, but the flaw is not in their logic, but in their values.