Having been feeling particularly down on myself lately with no obvious reason, I felt a strange vindication this morning while listening to Neal Boortz. A listener called the show with the intention of explaining to Boortz how sometimes government assistance is a necessity, and cited his daughter as an example. An otherwise “good” girl, his daughter, a single mother, was trying to get government assistance in finding a place to live. The basis of the argument was that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and that’s why the government is there to help.
Rather than confess to the man that he’d seen the error of his ways, Boortz admonished him for assuming that hard-working Americans should be forced to pay for his daughter’s mistakes. Oh no, the man countered, she was actually married when she had the child, but the guy turned out to be a drug addict. And that’s not a mistake? It was a rather light-hearted conversation, considering the subject matter, but Neal basically wrapped up his argument that this girl’s hardships are more the responsibility of her and her family (i.e., the caller) than the rest of America.
Then, making a statement that I have often thought but never repeated aloud, Boortz addressed the failures of the American family to teach responsibility to their children. Why stress the importance of responsibility, he argued, when the government is always there to catch you whenever you make mistakes? Why worry about having a child that you can’t afford when you can count on government to supplement you housing, food, and health costs?
At that time, my text message alarm went off, and there was a text from Matt: “Boortz is on a roll about gov subsidized house… making some great comments.” I responded that I was also listening, and commented that whenever I try to make similar arguments, I get called “heartless”. To which he resopnded, “It’s the truth.”
I started to think about my views and how irritated I’ve been lately, especially while listening to talk radio. Boortz is the only conservative show I can pick up during the day – the morning guys are both fairly liberal (although admittedly a little more common sense about it than most radio liberals), and the afternoon guy has me screaming at the radio on almost a daily basis. And while is was bad during the election, that was to be expected, and was almost welcome as a way for me to hear the other side of the issues. But for the past few days, a great deal of air time has been given to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and perhaps that is what has pushed me over the edge.
The afternoon guy, Alan Handleman, basically specializes in pathos. Everyday he talks about the conflict, and every day he does it from the standpoint of “is this right?” Perhaps he’s not that bad, since he doesn’t really have much of a spine, but his callers whole-heartedly answer that emotional appeal and call in to scream about how Israelis, completely unprovoked, are bombing hospitals and schools.
Earlier this week -- Monday, I think, -- he had a weapons expert on the show who happened to be pro-Israel. Throughout the entire show, I don’t think I heard one pro-Israel caller, but there was certainly a plethora of pro-Palestinian callers, all students of the emotional argument. Almost all were young, likely students, and amost all argued that the land which currently makes up the physical state of Israel rightly belonged to the Palestinians prior to 1948, and because it was unfairly taken from them, they had the right to threaten and harm Israeli citizens. It didn’t matter what calm, intelligent argument he provided to them – his responses were always met with emotional pleas to end the senseless bombings, but only the ones being done to Palestinians. One particularly fun caller insisted on screaming that the Israelis were “occupying” Palestine, and insisted that the only way for the conflict to end would be for Israel to “end the occupation” – basically admitting, through her very argument, that it is not the Israelis who refuse to stop the conflict.
No one could respond directly to this guy’s very good points. A few tried to accuse him of lying, but they couldn’t back up their own assertations. This is the crux of the emotional argument: ignore what is either common sense or general knowledge, and appeal to the emotions. The occupation girl, while annoying, certainly tugged on the heartstrings as she sobbed about seeing children injured and killed by Israeli missiles. The Arab man who told of his family being forced to leave their home in Palestine decades ago added a personal element, and no one who was listening could argue that what happened to his family was horrible and unfathomable – but does it justify today’s bombings by Hamas?
Perhaps that is what I couldn’t get over. With these kinds of arguments, there is little discussion over justification, aside from “fairness”. When it was mentioned that Hamas had begun the fighting, people argued that it wasn’t fair for Israel to fight back, because Gaza doesn’t have a military, or an equitable amount of manpower. When arguing the virtues of communism, there is often a general assumption that anyone who becomes wealthy in a capitalist society has done so by cheating. Almost every liberal point of view that I can think of appeals to the emotions.
And this brings my back to my original concern, that odd pang that I feel whenever I tell someone that I am a conservative, or proudly capitalist, or when I find myself agreeing voraciously with an essay by Ayn Rand. Am I heartless?
Am I competely off base here? I’m actually not trying to start anything… really just curious to see if anyone else felt the same way.