Fallacy Detection: Analyzing a Speech from the Past

Now test yourself on the fallacies you have just read. Read through the following excerpts (from a historically important political speech, a speech whose persuasive power won a national election in 1897). See how many of the 44 Foul Ways to Win an Argument this writer used.

Before reading the speech, consider the following description by James Truslow Adams 16 , American historian, of the national mood at the time:

...powerful business interests were chafing because we did not annex Hawaii. Senator Lodge had his eye on Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt was anxious for something to do with his ships...Mr Pulitzer, owner of The World, remarked “that he rather liked the idea of a war — not a big one — but one that would arouse interest and give him a chance to gauge the reflex in circulation figures.”...a group of powerful business men and politicians bent on imperial expansion; a group of newspapers callously searching for sensational news which could be translated into circulation; and a shiny new gun in our hands of which we were proud (pp. 81-82) .

Now imagine yourself a voter in the U.S. in 1898 listening to the following excerpts from a speech, The March of the Flag , given by Albert J. Beveridge (who would soon become U.S. Senator). Using the chart, read through the excerpts indicating which of the manipulative strategies are being used in this speech. Perhaps the best way to do this is to write in the margins the fallacies you notice as you read through these passages.

The Opening:

Fellow citizens: It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a land whose coast lines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England with a nobler destiny. It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the most masterful blood of history; a people perpetually revitalized by the virile, man-producing working folk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their heaven-directed purposes — the propagandists and not the misers of liberty. It is a glorious history our God has bestowed on His chosen people; a history whose keynote was struck by the Liberty Bell; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen who flung the boundaries of the republic out into unexplored lands and savage wildernesses; a history of soldiers who carried the flag across the blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a continent in half a century; a history of prophets who saw the consequences of evils inherited from the past, and of martyrs who died to save us from them; a history divinely logical, in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we find ourselves today.

Beveridge’s definition of the issue:

Therefore, in this campaign, the question is larger than a party question. It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people continue their resistless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind?

Have we no mission to perform, no duty to discharge to our fellow man? Has the Almighty Father endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own selfishness, as men and nations must who take cowardice for their companion and self for their deity — as China has, as India has, as Egypt has?

Shall we be as the man who had one talent and hid it, or as he who had ten talents and used them until they grew to riches? And shall we reap the reward that waits on our discharge of our high duty as the sovereign power of earth; shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, new markets for what our factories make, new markets for what our merchants sell — aye, and, please God, new markets for what our ships shall carry?

...Shall our commerce be encouraged until, with Oceanica, the Orient, and the world, American trade shall be the imperial trade of the entire globe?

...we must deal from this day on with nations greedy of every market we are to invade; nations with statesmen trained in craft, nations with ships and guns and money and men...The world still rubs its eyes from its awakening to the resistless power and sure destiny of this republic.

Beveridge refers to the Spanish-American War as:

...the most holy ever waged by one nation against another — a war for civilization, a war for a permanent peace, a war which, under God, although we knew it not, swung open to the republic the portals of the commence of the world.

His view of the history of U.S. conquest:

...God bless the soldiers of 1898, children of the heroes of 1861, descendants of the heroes of 1776! In the halls of history they will stand side by side with those elder sons of glory, and the opposition to the government at Washington shall not deny them. No! They shall not be robbed of the honor due them, nor shall the republic be robbed of what they won for their country. For William McKinley is continuing the policy that Jefferson began, Monroe continued, Seward advanced, Grant promoted, Harrison championed, and the growth of the republic has demanded.

His view of our conquering other countries:

44 Foul Ways to Win an Argument

Accuse Your Opponent of Doing What He is Accusing You of

Accuse Him of Sliding Down A Slippery Slope

Appeal to Authority

Appeal to Experience

Appeal to Fear

Appeal to Pity (or sympathy)

Appeal to Popular Passions

Appeal to Tradition or Faith

Assume a Posture of Righteousness

Attack the person

Beg the Question

Call For Perfection

Create a False Dilemma

Devise Analogies (and Metaphors) That Support Your View

Question Your Opponent’s Conclusions

Create Misgivings: Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire

Create A Straw Man

Deny or Defend Your Inconsistencies

Demonize His Side Sanitize Yours

Evade Questions, Gracefully

Flatter Your Audience

Hedge What You Say

Ignore the Evidence

Ignore the Main Point

Attack Evidence

Insist Loudly on a Minor Point

Use the Hard-Cruel-World Argument

Make Sweeping Glittering Generalizations

Make Much of Any Inconsistencies in Your Opponent’s Position

Make Your Opponent Look Ridiculous

Oversimplify the Issue

Raise Nothing But Objections

Rewrite History

Seek Your Vested Interests

Shift the Ground.

Shift the Burden of Proof

Spin, Spin, Spin

Talk in Vague Generalities

Talk Double Talk

Tell Big Lies

Treat Abstract Words and Symbols As If They Were Real Things

Throw In A Red Herring (or two)

Throw in Some Statistics

Use Double Standards

Hawaii is ours; Puerto Rico is to be ours; at the prayer of the people Cuba will finally be ours; in the islands of the East, even to the gates of Asia, coaling stations are to be ours; at the very least the flag of a liberal government is to float over the Philippines, and I pray God it may be the banner that Taylor unfurled in Texas and Fremont carried to the coast — the stars and stripes of glory.

Concerning the objection that subjugating other countries conflicts with the right of a people to self-determination, he says:

The opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer: the rule of liberty, that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government. I answer: We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their consent.

Beveridge believes that people would welcome our domination:

Would not the people of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing government of this republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we have rescued them?

He views other countries as motivated by power and greed. He sees us as guided by the interests of the people we conquer:

Shall we turn these people back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them? Shall we abandon them to their fate, with the wolves of conquest all about them — with Germany, Russia, France, even Japan, hungering for them? Shall we turn these people back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them? Shall we abandon them to their fate, with the wolves of conquest all about them?

Concerning the objection that countries have a right to rule themselves:

...[To give them self-rule] would be like giving a razor to a babe and telling it to shave itself. It would be like giving a typewriter to an Eskimo and telling him to publish one of the great dailies of the world.

Will you affirm by your vote that you are an infidel to American vigor and power and practical sense? Or, that we are of the ruling race of the world; that ours is the blood of government; ours the heart of dominion; our the brains and genius of administration.

Distance is no objection to our conquering foreign lands in keeping with our destiny, for technological development is conspiring with us: Steam joins us; electricity joins us, the very elements are in league with our destiny. Cuba not contiguous! Hawaii and the Philippines not contiguous! Our navy will make them contiguous. Dewey and Sampson and Schley have made them contiguous, and American speed, American guns, American heart and brain and nerve will keep them contiguous forever. Think of the thousands of Americans who will pour into Hawaii and Puerto Rico when the republic’s laws cover those islands with justice and safety! Think of the tens of thousands of Americans who will invade mine and field and forest in the Philippines when a liberal government, protected and controlled by this republic, if not the government of the republic itself, shall establish order and equity there! Think of the hundreds of thousands of American who will build a soap-and-water, common-school civilization of energy and industry in Cuba, when a government of law replaces the double reign of anarchy and tyranny. Think of the prosperous millions that empress of islands will support when, obedient to the law of political gravitation, her people ask for the highest honor liberty can bestow, the sacred Order of the Stars and Stripes, the citizenship of the Great Republic!

What does all this mean for every one of us? It means opportunity for all the glorious young manhood of the republic — the most virile, ambitious, impatient, militant manhood the world has ever seen. It means that the resources and the commerce of these immensely rich dominions will be increased as much as American energy is greater than Spanish sloth; for Americans henceforth will monopolize those resources and that commerce.

In Cuba alone there are 15,000,000 acres of forest unacquainted with the ax. There are exhaustless mines of iron. There are priceless deposits of manganese... There are millions of acres yet unexplored... The resources of Puerto Rico have only been trifled with. The riches of the Philippines have hardly been touched by the finger-tips of modern methods.

44 Foul Ways to Win an Argument

Accuse Your Opponent of Doing What He is Accusing You of

Accuse Him of Sliding Down A Slippery Slope

Appeal to Authority

Appeal to Experience

Appeal to Fear

Appeal to Pity (or sympathy)

Appeal to Popular Passions

Appeal to Tradition or Faith

Assume a Posture of Righteousness

Attack the person

Beg the Question

Call For Perfection

Create a False Dilemma

Devise Analogies (and Metaphors) That Support Your View

Question Your Opponent’s Conclusions

Create Misgivings: Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire

Create A Straw Man

Deny or Defend Your Inconsistencies

Demonize His Side Sanitize Yours

Evade Questions, Gracefully

Flatter Your Audience

Hedge What You Say

Ignore the Evidence

Ignore the Main Point

Attack Evidence

Insist Loudly on a Minor Point

Use the Hard-Cruel-World Argument

Make Sweeping Glittering Generalizations

Make Much of Any Inconsistencies in Your Opponent’s Position

Make Your Opponent Look Ridiculous

Oversimplify the Issue

Raise Nothing But Objections

Rewrite History

Seek Your Vested Interests

Shift the Ground.

Shift the Burden of Proof

Spin, Spin, Spin

Talk in Vague Generalities

Talk Double Talk

Tell Big Lies

Treat Abstract Words and Symbols As If They Were Real Things

Throw In A Red Herring (or two)

Throw in Some Statistics

Use Double Standards

It means new employment and better wages for every laboring man in the Union. It means higher prices for every bushel of wheat and corn, for every pound of butter and meat, for every item that the farmers of this republic produce. It means active, vigorous, constructive investment of every dollar of moldy and miserly capital in the land.

It means all this tomorrow, and all this forever... The commercial supremacy of the republic means that this nation is to be the sovereign factor in the peace of the world.

For the conflicts of the future are to be conflicts of trade — struggles for markets — commercial wars for existence.

Ah! As our commerce spreads, the flag of liberty will circle the globe, and the highways of the ocean — carrying trade to all mankind — be guarded by the guns of the republic. And, as their thunders salute the flag, benighted people will know that the voice of liberty is speaking, at last, for them; that civilization is dawning, at last, for them — liberty and civilization, those children of Christ’s gospel, who follow and never precede the preparing march of commerce.

The American people have the most tremendous tasks of history to perform. They have the mightiest commerce of the world to conduct. They cannot halt their imperial progress of wealth and power and glory and Christian civilization... It is a time to cheer the beloved President of God’s chosen people, till the whole world is vocal with American loyalty to the American government.

Fellow Americans we are God’s chosen people. Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown His providence was above us. ...We cannot fly from our world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose of a fate that has driven us to be greater than our small intentions. We cannot retreat from any soil where Providence has unfurled our banner; it is ours to save that soil for liberty and civilization. For liberty and civilization and God’s promise fulfilled, the flag much hence forth be the symbol and the sign to all mankind — the flag! —