{"id":6,"date":"2004-04-20T14:31:26","date_gmt":"2004-04-20T19:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/server97.snhdns.com\/~ravik\/wp\/?p=6"},"modified":"2005-09-24T20:31:07","modified_gmt":"2005-09-24T15:01:07","slug":"beware-of-madmen-bearing-logical-fallacies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200404\/beware-of-madmen-bearing-logical-fallacies\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware of Madmen bearing logical fallacies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to prove that we libertarians don’t always agree with each other, I wish to disagree with Madman’s comments on Jivha’s post<\/a>. <\/p>\n

He is right as to the logical fallacies of course. If you are trying to prove the proposition “The BJP committed a grave crime by killing hundreds of Muslims in the Gujarat riots”, then it is true that nothing <\/i> – nothing at all<\/i> – do you hear me? nothing<\/i> can justify it. The only way in which Godhra can justify the pogrom that followed is if you can somehow prove that a) all the muslims who were killed, (individually, not as a group) were responsible for the train burning, and b) the criminal justice system had broken down so completely that killing people in acts of vigilantism becomes justified. The first condition is obviously not true, and the second is certainly not an argument when you are running the government<\/i>. The BJP hasn’t been put to power to carry out pogroms on behalf of Hindus. It had the responsibility of prosecuting criminals, but instead it choose to kill people at random. <\/p>\n

So anyone who wishes to defend the BJP has a lot to answer for.
\n
\nBut what about me? I am not for the BJP. I just want secularism in India. What about Jivha, who by his own claim is a Congress supporter?<\/p>\n

If Jivha wants to convince me, a neutral observer, that the Congress is better for secularism in India than is the BJP, he has to explain the past actions of the Congress too. And I must say that the Congress has a lot of explaining to do.
\nYes it is possible to honestly defend even an imperfect Congress; you can claim that it will be better than the BJP inspite of its imperfections, but that is not what Jivha does. His approach convinces no one who doesn’t already agree with him.<\/p>\n

Yes I am mixing up two issues here. The debate was about “pseudo”-secularism vs. “real” secularism. But there too the argument runs parallel. Jivha can justify his attacks on the BJP by claiming that because it is in power right now, focusing on it to the exclusion of the other is valid. But we are not talking of just another party here. We are talking of the Congress<\/i> which claims to be the “natural party of government” which has governed India for perhaps 40 years. If you run an exclusively negative campaign, people will naturally think that you have something to hide. <\/p>\n

Similarly, in the debate on the two secularisms, those who attack only Hindu communalists claim that they do it because Hindus are in the majority, Hindu communalism is more dangerous than Islamic communalism. They claim that because Muslims are in such a minority, their fears have to be accomodated. I’ll call this “elder brother” school of secularism. Don’t try this at home. You will find that the younger brother becomes whiny and the elder brother resentful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to prove that we libertarians don’t always agree with each other, I wish to disagree with Madman’s comments on Jivha’s post. He is right as to the logical fallacies of course. If you are trying to prove the proposition “The BJP committed a grave crime by killing hundreds of Muslims in the Gujarat riots”, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}