The Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts
Chris Jay Hoofnagle details the public relations methodology of CATO and other anti-consumer, business-funded organizations. Count how many of these you've heard on your favorite topic: global warming, for example.
I think the cards angle is a bit lame (and disliked the Bush Iraq application), but the large number of strategies needs to be organized somehow.
In the Discussion, Environmental, and CATO indexes.
Tip of the hat to David Fetter, who suggested it.
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4 comments:
John, I don't think it would be possible to make such a "grand unified theory": if only because there are so many different, contradictory libertarianisms.
Even if I restricted myself to one well-defined libertarian position (and I doubt that really exists.) based on good reasoning, some libertarian holding that position might make an argument whose assumptions, reasoning, or result I agree with.
CATO and AEI are fundamentally organizations which apply public relations techniques to promote viewpoints in ways that are essentially fraudulent or subrational. See my index So You Want To Discuss Libertarianism....
Of course these ideas could be applied to criticize Public Citizen and other consumerist, populist, or liberal groups IF they were applying public relations techniques instead of straightforward rational advocacy.
But what we see from CATO and AEI is truly grotesque.
Remarkable that you had to go back 42 years to find an example: that is if we agree with you.
But what about the rest of Nader's book, Unsafe At Any Speed? Was he right that auto safety could be improved?
Cato and AEI tells lies, Public Citizen tells lies, therefore Cato and AEI are right? That's some great reasoning isn't it?
John, I wonder if you aren't trying to pull off another "Clinton did it too!" ( http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008764.html ). The objective isn't to defend your own position, but to attack the opposing positions with, "Your Side Did It Too!" (Whether the other side actually did that isn't important. After all, who needs facts?) So you use fallacies, and they use fallacies, then -- bam! -- suddenly that means you're right! Magic!
-- bi, http://zompower.tk/
"Only a dim reader would take my points as either a defense (or criticism) AEI or CATO."
So, what kind of bright reader sees a blog titled "Critiques of Libertarianism" and expects it to be equally hard on all political ideologies?
Since this blog and this blog post is about libertarian rhetoric, let's focus on that; there's no need to try and derail it. Either CATO and AEI's arguments are sound, or they are not. And if they're not sound, then Huben is basically right.
-- bi, http://zompower.tk/
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