Read the case State v. Ransom (pp. 411-425). Consider your verdict. Prepare a document that expresses your deliberation that justifies your vote of guilty or not guilty. The goal is not simply a w
4 The Second Deadly Fallacy: The Strawman Fallacy
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The ad hominem fallacy poisons critical thinking: when argument descends to the level of personal abuse, productive argument ceases. If the argumentative process is supposed to proceed cooperatively, then it is obvious that personal attacks poison the cooperative atmosphere. If instead the argument is conducted along adversarial lines, the character of the adversarial advocates is irrelevant to the quality of their arguments: a lecherous scoundrel may give excellent arguments, while the arguments of a paragon of virtue may be lousy. When ad hominem attacks focus on the character of the arguers, they distract from careful consideration of the quality of their arguments; and that is why—in forums in which adversarial argument is supposed to be carried on in pursuit of truth, such as in philosophical and scientific and legal debate—personal ad hominem attacks are regarded with contempt, and elaborate personal courtesy is the rule.
So the ad hominem fallacy—the fallacy of attacking the source of an argument—is the fallacy that is most destructive of productive critical thinking, whether adversarial or cooperative. But there is a second fallacy that is almost as bad: the strawman fallacy. That is the fallacy of distorting or misrepresenting someone’s position or argument in order to make it easier to attack. It is a fallacy that is very common in political argument, which is probably why political argument so often produces much more heat than light. But wherever the strawman fallacy occurs, whether in cooperative or adversarial contexts, it undermines the critical thinking process. The first step in effective critical thinking is being clear on exactly what is at issue; and the strawman fallacy cripples that essential first step by painting a false picture of what is under discussion. Suppose that we are concerned about the federal budget deficit, and arguing about the best way to reduce the deficit. You maintain that we should make careful reductions in spending, while I favor a modest increase in taxes. If you represent my view as a push for much higher taxes on the middle class, while I claim that you want to cut all health-care funding for the elderly, then both of us can score cheap shots against our strawman opponents, but we can’t even begin to have an intelligent discussion or debate—neither adversarial nor cooperative—about the real issue and what policy works best.
Scoring Political Points with Strawman Fallacies
In late December 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested and charged with attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane that was flying into the United States, using explosives he had concealed in his underwear. The suspect was read his rights and offered a lawyer (as required by law for anyone arrested in the United States). A few days later, former Vice-President Dick Cheney made this statement about President Obama’s position on dealing with suspected terrorists:
He [Obama] seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and a trial in a civilian court, we won’t be at war. He seems to think that if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Quaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war.
But Obama’s decision to follow the law requiring that those arrested in the United States be told of their Miranda rights and offered a lawyer does not mean that he believes that will end all terrorist attacks. The question of whether to try terrorist suspects in military or civilian courts is a serious one, that deserves serious thoughtful debate and discussion; but such serious discussion is impossible, if one side paints a strawman picture of the other view, claiming that those who favor a civilian rather than a military court are claiming that having civilian trials would end the threat of terrorism. Should we close the Guantanamo Prison, where many suspected terrorists have been held? That’s a serious question: Some people argue that it provides an especially safe place to hold those who might engage in terrorist attacks on the United States; others believe that it has become a symbol of U.S. mistreatment of terrorist suspects, and has become a rallying point for recruiting those who wish to attack the United States, and that any genuine terrorists still held there could be safely held in maximum security prisons in the United States. But no one proposes that we release any “hard-core al Quaeda trained terrorists,” and that distortion of the issue blocks the possibility of intelligent critical examination of the real question.
In an adversarial approach, strawman arguments score cheap points, and perhaps they improve ratings on talk radio shows; but strawman arguments will not convince anyone to change his or her views: after all, if we are engaged in an adversarial argument, you know what your own position is, and I’m not likely to convince you to change your position by attributing to you a view you don’t hold or an argument you didn’t offer. In cooperative critical thinking, the strawman fallacy is even more destructive. If you and I are deliberating together with the goal of finding a policy or developing a program that will best meet all our interests, then if I start by distorting or misrepresenting your goals and concerns you will not find me a productive partner for cooperative deliberation. The key to effective critical thinking—whether adversarial or cooperative—is being very clear on what’s at issue. Strawman fallacies cripple that essential first step.
Straw Man
When someone is criticizing an opponent’s argument or position, it is crucial to be sure that the critic is accurately representing her opponent’s views. And this point is especially important when we are the critics in question. When we are confronted by a position in conflict with our own (or an argument against a position we favor), it is sorely tempting to consider that opposing position or argument in its weakest possible form. That makes the argument easy to dismiss, and it saves us the effort of careful critical thinking. But tempting as that approach may be, it is obviously not the path to clear thinking. And tempting as it may be to distort your opponent’s argument to try to achieve a cheap victory, it is certainly fallacious to do so.
It is much easier to win a fight with a straw man than with a real man. And it is much easier to attack a weak substitute for an argument or position than the genuine article. That’s why the strawman fallacy is so seductive. The strawman fallacy consists of distorting, and thus weakening, an opponent’s arguments or views and then attacking the weaker position rather than the real one.1
The Principle of Charity
Instead of attempting to find the weakest version of an argument, we should do exactly the opposite: seek the strongest possible version of whatever argument or theory is being considered. If there are alternative possible interpretations of an argument, consider the strongest one. If there are different versions of a position, consider the most plausible one. If the language of an argument is open to several interpretations, select the interpretation that makes the argument most reasonable. In short, follow the principle of charity when analyzing arguments: Interpret opposing arguments as generously, as charitably, as is possible. By always giving the benefit of the doubt to whatever arguments, theories, or positions you are considering, you will have to think a good deal harder, but you will also think more carefully and be more open to promising new ideas.
If you wish to be comfortably mired in dogma and error, then the strawman fallacy is an effective weapon for you—both against your opponents’ arguments and against your own doubts and questions. But if instead you wish to expand your thoughts, critically evaluate the positions you hold, and honestly examine competing views and new proposals, then the principle of charity will be invaluable.
The Strawman Fallacy
It is important that we avoid the strawman fallacy when examining arguments, and it is also important that we not be misled when others commit the strawman fallacy in their argument critiques. When you are considering a critique of an argument, a position, or a theory, ask yourself the following questions: Is that an accurate statement of that argument or position? Was that actually what the arguer was arguing? Were those the reasons given for the conclusion? And in particular: Is that an accurate statement of the conclusion of the argument?
Many strawman arguments are heavy-handed and obvious. Television evangelist Pat Robertson mailed a fundraising letter that attacked the advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment. He asserted that supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment are not really after equal rights for women: Their actual goal is to destroy the family and encourage women to leave their husbands, kill their children, destroy capitalism, become lesbians, and practice witchcraft. Certainly it is easier to argue against killing children than against the Equal Rights Amendment, but this is such an obvious and absurd distortion that it would be amusing, were it not so vicious. Slightly more subtle is William F. Buckley’s distortion of the arguments of those who favor a ban on handguns:
Now the anti-handgun fundamentalists will tell you that the mere presence of a loaded pistol means that Mr. Finnegan is going to get drunk and shoot Mrs. Finnegan. Or that when Miss Finnegan sneaks in to pay a surprise visit to her mother and father, suddenly she will be dead, taken for an intruder. Or that the Finnegan grandchild, age 6 will one day play with the pistol, it will go off, and there will be tragedy. (July 22, 1982, Universal Press Syndicate)
But of course the “anti-handgun fundamentalists” offer no such ridiculous arguments. They claim instead that the presence of a loaded pistol does increase the likelihood of a domestic squabble escalating into a domestic homicide, of a contemplated suicide becoming a successful suicide, of a child being killed while playing with a loaded handgun. But those accurate and depressing facts are much more difficult to ridicule than the strawman argument that Buckley attributes to his opponents. Or again, those who oppose decriminalization of drugs sometimes suggest that the proponents of decriminalization want to make drugs easily and readily available, like candy at the supermarket checkout counter. Perhaps there is someone somewhere who advocates such open and easy availability of hard drugs, but that is not the position of most of the advocates of decriminalization. They want, instead, something like an improved and expanded system of treatment clinics, or perhaps a system in which addicts must register with the government and obtain drugs from a physician, or decriminalization (with strict regulation) of marijuana. In a speech concerning new proposals for economic recovery and federal deficit reduction, President Barack Obama included these remarks: “From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument—that if we must make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts for wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, and maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away.” But while most Republicans do seem to favor extending tax cuts for wealthier Americans, only a small fringe group want to eliminate more regulations (many do not want additional regulations, but few want to eliminate those that remain); and almost no one thinks it is a good idea to “maintain the status quo on health care”; and in any case, those “on the right” do not believe that such policies will cause “our deficits to go away”—to make that happen, they would be more inclined to make dramatic cuts in social programs. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas manages to pack several strawman distortions into a single sentence: “The pursuit of the radical homosexual agenda to win acceptance and special privileges for a chosen lifestyle is not consistent with the government’s legitimate interest to ‘promote the general welfare.’ ” But homosexuals are campaigning for the same rights against discrimination enjoyed by everyone else: the right not to be denied a job or housing because of sexual orientation, the right to be protected against threats and violence, the right to marry, the right to adopt: those can hardly be classified as “special privileges” when they are the common rights of citizens—rights which are often denied to homosexuals. And of course these are not special privileges being claimed by those with a “chosen lifestyle,” since homosexuals no more choose their sexual orientation than do heterosexuals. (If you recall your “sexual awakening,” did any part of it involve choosing whether you would be sexually attracted to Jack rather than to Jill?)
The Equal Rights Amendment, gun control, deficit reduction, and drug legalization/ decriminalization are important issues, worthy of debate in a democratic society. But they should be debated honestly, without the distortions of the strawman fallacy.
The strawman examples mentioned above are rather obvious. Unfortunately, the strawman fallacy often comes in more subtle and insidious forms. Consider Figure 4-1, an example from a Mobil Oil “Observations” column. What position is Mobil attacking? How does Mobil portray that position? Is it an accurate portrayal?
First, Mobil is attacking the view of those who favor increased use of “soft energy” (such as solar power, hydroelectric power, wind power, wood burning, and other renewable energy sources). What do people who favor increased use of soft energy actually want? As they are portrayed by this Mobil advertisement, they seem to hold some very weird views. They apparently want “to give every American family of four a 40-acre farm” (last paragraph); and they supposedly want to get all our energy from firewood (middle paragraph). This “back-to-nature” movement (as Mobil calls it) appears to include a bunch of crazies, and we are easily led to agree with the Mobil conclusion:
[W]e’re uneasy with people who insist it [soft energy] will do the whole job ... and who then insist on foisting their dreams on the rest of us. Especially when their dreams can’t stand up to reality.
But Mobil’s argument is one long strawman fallacy. Of course it would be absurd to propose that every family live on a 40-acre farm; but the proponents of increased reliance on soft energy do not propose such a silly thing. To portray soft energy advocates as holding such a view is to distort their positions, and thus to commit the strawman fallacy. Again, there are people who believe that we should use more firewood—in heating homes, for example—and less nuclear power. But no one proposes that we rely completely and exclusively “on energy generated by firewood.” (Have you ever heard anyone advocate using firewood to power cars, trucks, and buses, for example?) Mobil points out how absurd it would be to try to rely entirely on firewood for all our energy needs: “If the eastern U.S. tried to live, ‘even at a lower standard, on energy generated by firewood, (that) would mean the end within a few generations of the eastern forest.’ ” And indeed that would be an absurd proposal. But that is not the proposal soft energy advocates actually make. The soft energy advocates propose that we use more solar power, more wind power, and more of other such renewable energy sources and that we make a greater effort to conserve energy (through stronger minimum mileage standards for passenger cars, for example) and thus reduce our use of nuclear power and petroleum. The views of the soft energy advocates may ultimately be implausible (or they may be workable), and certainly Mobil or anyone else should be free to criticize the soft energy position. But that position is more plausible, and more difficult to attack, than the distorted positions criticized by Mobil Oil. It’s always easier to attack a straw man than the real thing.
Notice the last illustration in the Mobil argument: the scarecrow, stuffed with straw. I have no way of knowing, but I strongly suspect that some devious critical thinker recognized the strawman nature of the Mobil argument, and slipped that illustration into their advertisement as a prank. It would be nice if all strawman fallacies were marked by straw-filled scarecrows; unfortunately, most of the time you will have to pick out the strawman distortions for yourself. But that’s the problem. How do you recognize strawman fallacies? How do you know that the position Mobil is criticizing is a distortion and exaggeration of the genuine views of soft energy advocates? Obviously it’s not easy. You must know something about their position before you read the Mobil essay; otherwise, how will you know that the position being attacked is not the real position soft energy advocates take? And there’s no easy way to accomplish that. It requires that you study the positions in question and that you not rely entirely on the critics of a position for your information. If an issue interests you, and you want to effectively evaluate the arguments on both sides, you must seek out the arguments and positions of both sides. If you want to know the pros and cons of soft energy use, do not rely on Mobil Oil. Look up the actual claims and arguments of those who advocate the increased use of soft energy sources. And to make things even more difficult, you must be sure you are reading the positions and arguments of those who actually promote alternative energy, and not the views of some industry front group that pretends to support alternative energy while actually opposing it and misrepresenting it. Such groups often pose as grassroots organizations, made up of citizens concerned about a specific issue, when in fact they are funded and run by industry groups or their public relations firms (such fake grassroots organizations have become so common that they are now known as “Astroturf” groups). For example, the Workplace Health & Safety Council sounds like a good place to get the position of those who favor improving workplace safety; it is actually a lobbying group funded by companies that wish to limit or block laws promoting workplace safety. The National Wetlands Coalition sounds like a good source for arguments in favor of protecting wetlands; but in fact it is a phony citizens group that is funded by oil and natural gas companies and developers that wish to take over wetlands for development and drilling.
Picking out strawman fallacies will be a little easier in the jury box, since you will have heard the arguments that are being criticized. For example, if the prosecution lawyer uses a strawman fallacy against the arguments of the defense lawyer (i.e., the prosecution distorts a defense argument in order to make it easier to attack), you will have heard that defense argument, and thus you will be in a good position to decide whether the prosecution is presenting it fairly and accurately. But that is not to say that, as a jury member, detecting strawman fallacies will be easy. Try your hand at the following case, taken from the retrial of Clarence Earl Gideon, accused of breaking and entering with the intent to commit petty larceny. Gideon had been convicted almost 2 years earlier on the same charges; during that trial Gideon—unable to afford an attorney—had asked for, and been denied, legal counsel. He appealed his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that he had been denied counsel, and the Supreme Court heard his appeal and ruled that a defendant facing a felony charge has a right to counsel, and that counsel must be appointed for such a defendant if he or she cannot afford to hire a lawyer. Thus the Supreme Court overturned Gideon’s conviction, and Gideon, now represented by a defense lawyer paid by the state, was retried. During that retrial the leading witness for the prosecution, who had testified to seeing Gideon inside the Bay Harbor Poolroom, was subjected to a severe cross-examination. He admitted to having been convicted of car theft and admitted other facts that cast doubt on key parts of his testimony; a possible interest he might have had in framing Gideon was brought out as well. During the cross-examination, and later in his summation to the jury, the defense attorney sketched a quite plausible scenario that involved the prosecution witness’s breaking into the poolroom himself and then attempting to place the blame on Gideon. The prosecutor, in his final charge to the jury, attacked the defense argument with the assertions that “There’s been no evidence that Cook [the prosecution witness] and his friends took this beer and wine [from the Bay City Poolroom],”2 thus there is not enough evidence to prove that Cook committed the crime, and therefore Gideon should be found guilty of the crime.
But the prosecution’s argument involves a subtle distortion of the defense argument. For the defense was not trying to prove that Cook committed the crime; instead, all the defense has to establish is that there is a possibility that someone other than Gideon committed the crime. (Remember, all that the defense has to establish is that guilt has not been proved; not that the defendant is innocent, certainly not that someone else committed the crime.) So presenting the defense case as if it were attempting to prove that Cook committed the crime (rather than attempting to establish merely the possibility that someone other than Gideon committed it) misrepresents the defense argument in a way that makes it easier to attack, and thus commits the strawman fallacy. (Incidentally, the jury voted to acquit Gideon.)
Supreme Court Straw ManEven the U.S. Supreme Court is not immune to the charms of the strawman fallacy. In the 1986 case of Bowers (attorney general for the state of Georgia) v. Hardwick, Hardwick appealed his conviction under a Georgia statute that prohibited sodomy. Hardwick had been charged after a police raid discovered him engaged in homosexual conduct in the privacy of his own bedroom (apparently the police had broken into the house on a drug raid, but had somehow gotten mixed up and gone to the wrong house, and decided to charge Hardwick under the sodomy statute). Hardwick’s attorney argued that Hardwick’s right of privacy had been violated: that the U.S. Constitution protects the right of adults to engage in intimate, consensual, nonharmful behavior in the privacy of their own homes. Georgia’s law against sodomy applied to both homosexuals and heterosexuals, and so—as Justice Blackmun noted—the defendant’s claim that the Georgia law “involves an unconstitutional intrusion into his privacy and his right of intimate association does not depend in any way on his sexual orientation.” The Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 majority, upheld Hardwick’s conviction on the grounds that the U.S. Constitution does not recognize a “constitutional right of homosexuals to engage in acts of sodomy”: “The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time.” But as Justice Blackmun pointed out in his dissent, “the majority has distorted the question this case presents.” Obviously the U.S. Constitution does not recognize a “constitutional right of homosexuals to engage in acts of sodomy”; but that’s a strawman argument that misrepresents Hardwick’s argument and thus makes it easier to attack. Hardwick’s attorney had argued that there is a fundamental right of privacy, that includes the right of all persons to be free from government interference in their most private and intimate behavior. Or as Justice Blackmun states it: “The Court [majority] claims that its decision today merely refuses to recognize a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy; what the Court really has refused to recognize is the fundamental interest all individuals have in controlling the nature of their intimate associations with others.”3 (In a striking reversal of that 1986 decision, in 2003 the Supreme Court forcefully agreed with Blackmun’s 1986 dissent.)
Special Strawman VarietiesA few special varieties of the strawman fallacy deserve special note. First, one of the most effective and deceptive means of distorting a position is to find someone who holds an extreme or implausible version of that position and then treat that individual’s version as if it were genuinely representative. For example, it might be possible to find someone who believes that every family in the United States should be given 40 acres of farmland and be required to live on that land and farm it; however, such a bizarre view is not favored by most advocates of increased use of soft energy, and to treat that position as if it is typical of the soft energy view is certainly a distortion. In a similar manner, there may be some supporters of capital punishment who believe that condemned prisoners should be tortured on the rack before being boiled in oil, but that is not the position of most proponents of capital punishment, who favor executions in the least painful manner. To argue against capital punishment by torture as if it were the typical view of those favoring capital punishment is to pick on a straw man rather than the genuine position.
A second special strawman technique is to criticize an early and relatively crude version of a theory, neglecting the more developed and powerful current versions. Thus, a criticism of behaviorism that deals exclusively with the work of Watson (and neglects all the behaviorist work of the past half century) would be an attack on a weak and outdated strawman version of behaviorism. And an attack on the theory of evolution that dealt entirely with Darwin’s early evolutionary efforts in Origin of Species (and neglected the further evidence and theoretical development of the past 125 years) would commit the strawman fallacy of attacking a weaker version of the target.
One standard strawman trick is to represent everyone in a large group or movement as if they supported the views of one small element of the movement. For example, suppose there is a rally in favor of Palestinian independence: it may include Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and atheists, as well as labor unions, peace activists, women’s rights advocates, and students; and among the participants might be some supporters of Stalinism. If the rally is represented as being a gathering of Stalinists, that would be a strawman distortion of the aims and character of the overall group. That would be just as unfair and illogical as suggesting that because the Republican Party contains some members of the Ku Klux Klan—David Duke, a former Klan leader, was a Republican member of the Louisiana Legislature from 1990 to 1992—the Republican party shares the views of the Ku Klux Klan.
Finally, one insidious form of strawman distortion is taking part of an argument out of context. For example, suppose a member of the opposition party stated, “We must fight any administration budget proposal that reduces aid to the elderly.” A member of the administration might then argue, “How can we possibly develop a budget plan when the opposition party has resolved to fight any budget proposal the administration offers?” But of course that was not what the opposition stated; the speaker distorted the opposition’s position by taking part of it out of its context. Or imagine that a politician claims that we should first cut military spending, close tax loopholes, and cut many federal programs, and that if all those measures fail and if the budget deficit is still not substantially reduced, then we should raise taxes. If her opponent attacks her as advocating higher taxes, then her opponent is attacking a straw man.
Limits on Critical ThinkingCritical thinking is very useful, in both adversarial and cooperative settings. But if you are dealing with someone who purposefully misrepresents your views and arguments, and has no interest in genuinely discussing the issues, then critical thinking runs into a brick wall. No matter how polished your critical thinking skills, you will not persuade a tornado to be less destructive; and if you encounter someone who refuses to reason, and who grossly distorts opposing views, then critical thinking cannot gain much traction. Critical discussion of health-care policy is vitally important: the United States now spends better than 1/6 of its entire gross national product on health care, yet we have millions of people with no access to health care; health-care costs continue to rise, and major health problems often push hard-working families into bankruptcy. There are many legitimate questions about what direction the U.S. health-care system should go, and a lot of careful honest respectful argument is needed, both adversarial and cooperative, in order to find the best policies and the most effective reforms. But if the discussion is poisoned by gross and malicious distortions, those valuable debates cannot occur. One particularly vicious and obvious distortion was that some reformers wanted to set up “death panels,” which would review all older patients entering hospitals and choose which ones would live and which ones should be killed. Obviously no one ever proposed anything of the sort. Instead, a law had been passed—with bipartisan support, and signed by George W. Bush—that would require that all persons admitted to hospitals be offered the opportunity to complete a living will, in which they could specify the conditions under which they would and would not want treatment. For example, many people do not wish to be placed on a respirator; others, who have severe heart problems and perhaps other illnesses, prefer not to be resuscitated should they stop breathing, but instead be allowed to die peacefully; others wish to reject all artificial tube feeding. On the other hand, some patients want to specify that they do want to be resuscitated, placed on a respirator, and tube-fed; and they have the right to make that choice for themselves: a living will empowers them to make their own choices, rather than leaving such difficult choices to others when the patient is unconscious. And if patients did not want to fill out a living will at all—“just leave all those choices to my children”—they could choose not to do so. Of course most patients do want to make their own choices, and like the idea of having a living will. The problem is that many patients wanted to discuss the living will with their physicians and get further information: What does tube-feeding involve? Is it unpleasant? If I am placed on a respirator, what are my chances of ever breathing again on my own? But many insurance companies were refusing to pay physicians for the time they spent discussing these important matters with their patients. The new proposal—that some people twisted into strawman claims about death panels—was only that insurance companies compensate physicians for these consultations with patients. When Congressman Barney Frank held a townhall meeting to discuss health-care reform, one questioner showed up with a picture of Barack Obama represented as Hitler, and—based on the death panel straw man—shouted this question at Congressman Frank: “My question to you is, Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy.” Barney Frank quickly recognized that this was not a case in which offering careful critical argument would be productive, instead responding: “You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis. Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.” If you are faced with someone who genuinely misunderstands your perspective and arguments, be patient in helping them understand your real view: just as you should be diligent in trying to understand and appreciate their actual arguments, in their strongest possible form. But if someone is dedicated to distorting your views, and is unwilling to honestly consider your actual arguments, then arguing with them is likely to be a useless endeavor.
In sum, if you remember to seek the strongest version of the arguments or positions you are criticizing or examining (follow the principle of charity), you will not be guilty of the strawman fallacy. And if you carefully question whether the attack on a position, argument, or theory is presenting an accurate account of the target, then you will not be taken in by strawman arguments.