In my previous note on Professor Emeritus Richard Crouter's piece in today's Star Trib, I pointed out the morally shocking premise of his argument: that the insurgents blowing up thousands of their fellow countrymen, including children, were only doing what we would do in their place. All the fault lies with us and none with them.
Taking a second glance at it, I notice that it is also logically incoherent. Consider the passage that I quoted below.
If mass killings such as occur daily in Iraq took place in a Western country, and especially if they arose through foreign intervention and an ambition to change our civilization, we also would be radicalized. We, too, would be in the vanguard of a desperate movement to drive the disturbing presence from our midst.
Now consider cause and effect here: what has driven the insurgents into the "vanguard of a desperate movement to drive the disturbing presence from [their] midst"? It is the mass killings that occur daily in Iraq, which arise "through foreign intervention." Now by mass killings daily he surely means the persistent bombings. So the bombings are both the cause and effect of the terrorist campaign. They are blowing up their fellow citizens because they are offended that so many of their fellow citizens are being blown up. That's noxious numbskullery.
What is astounding about this piece is not that someone wrote it. There are always numb skulls around. But the Star Tribune is an important metropolitan newspaper, and surely a good editor would notice such a piece of self-refuting logic and suggest that it be rewritten. That at least is what happens when my editor at the Aberdeen American News finds a sentence or an argument that she judges to be unclear or misleading. The editors at the St rib, apparently, don't think that such high minded essays as this my Professor Crouter need any corrections.
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