Logical Fallacies and the Myth of the Rooster's Rectum

    Rabies is the stuff of nightmares. Humans may contract it from animal bites and if one is infected, there is no cure and death is brutal. Today, a preventative vaccination is available. In medieval times (when our allegedly 6000-year-old earth was declared the center of the universe) a widely regarded cure was attempted:
    The rectum of a rooster could be applied to the area of a bite from a rabid animal. This method seemed successful most of the time. We now know that an individual bitten by a rabid animal only suffers the disease in a minority of occasions. In those days, when no lethal symptoms came after a sequence of two events – a bite by a rabid animal, then contact with a rooster’s bottom – the conclusion was that the treatment was successful. This gives new meaning to the term anal.
    As Spock would put it, this is illogical and the formal name for such a lapse of logic is post hoc fallacy (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this"). Many in the medical community who argue in favor of vaccination would suggest that linking vaccinations to autism is a post hoc fallacy. Symptoms of autism often first appear in children at about the same time that vaccinations are recommended for those children. However no direct genesis of autism by vaccination has been proven. Coincidence is treated as causation.
    Another type of fallacy, called non sequitur means “it does not follow”.  A talk show host may point out that many Nazis were vegetarians (Hitler, among others). He or she might then point out that many liberals are vegetarians. Both statements are true. The illogical conclusion would be “it then follows that liberals are Nazis”. That conclusion is false and a non sequitur because there is no causal relationship between the two facts.
    A similar distortion of facts occurs when liberals apply the label of fascism to conservatives because many conservatives favor public/corporate partnerships. Truly, Mussolini (the founder of the  Fascist Party in Italy) did define Fascism in part as the “merger of the corporation and the state”. But, as in the previous example, no genuine connection exists between the two assertions.
    Today, there is a crisis of diverging opinions in our Republic. The adjective “rabid” seems appropriate. I frequently witness interchanges of viewpoints that are as mindless as a couple of roosters pecking each other for dominance.
    We’ve been in these straits before. 1968 comes to mind because of controversy over the Vietnam War and the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Bias drives such diverse viewpoints. Show me someone who is not biased and we will both be looking at an individual who is cut off from the world or living on another planet. But if sufficient numbers of good citizens can place the agenda of a stable and healthy Republic above their biases, then America can be a greater place and the continuation of genuine democracy will become more of a possibility. In that case, bias becomes an asset because it would be balanced by logic and provide a multiplicity of pragmatic input to the public conversation.
    The good driver is an alert, informed and defensive driver. The good patriot is equally alert, informed and defensive. Among the best defenses against the enormous propagation of misinformation in our (so-called) Information Age is the ability to understand how logical fallacies work and consequently recognize them.
    I can imagine someone reading this and saying to himself: “But I’m a mechanic – how am I supposed to sort all this out.”
    I’ve turned my share of wrenches and nursed more than one old beater down the road. Whether one realizes it or not, we use logic in diagnosing the cause of malfunction in a car. When we hang sheet rock, it fits where it lays or it doesn’t fit. A good dry waller uses logic as well as their strong back. Vetting the logical truth of information can be learned just like one can learn a recipe.
    The fundamentals of logic and critical thinking would be a learning curve for most – but in this writer’s opinion – doable by anyone and a necessity for true self-governance. The alternative is rule by demagoguery and force; that – to coin the obvious pun – would be the chickens coming home to roost.