Monday, August 6, 2007

With No Rational Arguments Available for Encouraging Subsidized Immigration- Which Also Spreads Infectious Agents- Smearing, False Dilemma,...

... equivocation and Slippery Slope can still be used. One can still pretend that one's opponent has characterized immigrants as being infectious agents themselves, rather than sometimes carriers or vectors thereof. That effectively smears, sets up a false dilemma (either foreigners are infectious agents, or can never be blamed for what they spread), equivocates people and infectious agents, and posits a slippery slope where one is always on the downgrade towards treating people as if they were infectious agents themselves. Such rhetorical approaches have to be used since there is no rational support for valuing openness to the spread of infectious agents, such that more and worse spread would be better. If, nevertheless, openness to such spread is treated as value without qualification, is this an intellectual error, or perhaps the result of someone's following an impulse to spread the evil that is upon them?

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