Hey look kids, the part/whole fallacy!

"If one person has freedom of speech, then multiple people banding together -- such as a corporation (but also unions) also have freedom of speech."

More for the fallacy files

Via Molly, this bit of wisdom from Ben Stein, speaking to the Trinity Broadcasting system

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

In general, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the hell is going on with this line of thinking. I know it comes up under the general heading "fallacious ways bring up the Nazis in a political discussion." He could be using a straight fallacy of the undistributed middle, the central tactic from Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.You could also call this a variation of the ad hominem, one that probably deserves its own subtype, along with ad hominem circumstantial and ad hominem to quoque. It could be the ad hominem "oh yeah, that's what Hitler thought." This would be a useful subtype to teach to undergraduates, who are used to thinking that ad hominem is simply a fancy term for insult. Here the fallacy occurs not because the speaker accuses the person holding a belief of being awful. Instead, he says the belief was held by someone else, who was awful.

I'm particularly distressed by this line

I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed

Wait. Scientists ran the death camps? And haven't done anything since? Remember that the next time your doctor tells you to get more exercise: the last time a scientist gave any advice about anything was when famous scientist Adolf Hitler greenlighted the final solution.

PS: I can't find the Unfogged thread where we brainstormed Republican Communism. I'd include a link if I could.

One for the fallacy files

For the fallacy files, this paraphrased description of a conversation between NPR and Jake Tapper about the questions asked Obama by the moderators in the last debate:

Q: "It seems like a lot of the complaints weren't about the questions being tough or necessarily biased against one candidate, but instead some people thought the questions were irrelevant and nonsensical. Do you think there might be some truth to that?"

A: "Well, the questions were tough, but I don't think they were necessarily biased against one candidate. And as for being irrelevant, you know, these are the kind of questions the candidates are going to get from journalists, so it's important for journalists to ask these questions so the candidates know what kind of questions journalists are going to ask."

I need to get the original transcript