Throwing The Baby Out With The Bathwater
* From “The A**HOLE’S Guide To Arguing (Or, How To Succeed In Politics)”
“We have a massive defect, sorry – deficit, so we need to cut the costs somewhere in the budget. I propose we cut back on military spending. Last year we spent twenty percent of the budget money on the military. So we should spend more, uhm.. I’m sorry, we should spend less on the military if we want to lower the deficit.”
“Don’t listen to this guy. He clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His numbers are all wrong and he knows that, and that’s why he can’t even talk straight. We only spent eighteen percent on defence last year, and I don’t think that’s a penny too much to spend on the guys that are risking their lives every day to keep us safe.”
If you are making an argument from fallacy, you are essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The fallacy assumes that if one part of the argument is false, or if the person had a hard time delivering the argument, then the whole thing should be disregarded. Share on XStuttering, misquoting, getting your numbers mixed up – these things could happen to anyone. But if it happens to you during a debate, you have just given the opposition ammo to shoot you down with.
© Merlyn Gabriel Miller
