Mark Levin, the radio host who despises Ron Paul, addressed a caller's concerned statement about war deaths, to which Mark replied that "40,000 (not sure the actualy amount) of deaths occur in car accidents every year." He's basically saying who cares about the deaths caused by the Middle East wars because people die all the time.
My first instinct was this was stupid and fallacious, but I'm not sure what fallacy he committed, if any. Moreover, how would one respond to this claim? Something just doesn't seem right with the comparison. Thanks!
the implication is that Levin might be murdered, but everyone might stop and contrast that to thousands of deaths a year on the roads and think to themselves, 'who cares', and such a dismissive attitude to the injustice would be reasonable and proper given this larger fact.
oh wait.
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first of all, exactly how is the number of automotive fatalities per annum relative to the discussion? The black death killed 100 million people, approximately half of europe's population. So obviously, if his argument is solid, no one should be upset about anything, ever, until it kills 100 million people or half of any continent's population. Potentially both.
secondly, what is this guy's point? 40,000 americans dying each year simply isnt enough, we need to send more americans overseas to get killed so we can get the numbers up more? What is the actual argument here? Or are we just swapping random statistics? Did you know that There are almost 25 million veterans in the united states, around 8% of the population? Yet only one half of a percent of the population is serving at any one time. However, nearly all americans expose themselves to the public road system, and we all pay for it one way or another, so if you want to argue about the government's monopoly on transportation, I am anybody's huckleberry. But what exactly does that have to do with the war?
I didn't actually listen to it, my father told me, so I don't know what else was said. Either way, it just didn't sound right, morally and logically. I don't know if its a red herring or what. All I could muster was accidents are accidents, whereas war is intentionally killing. But yeah, I hear variants of this a lot and wanted to really get to the heart of the argument, if it is one.
Ive been waiting to use this one
Did you know that the Holocaust killed off significantly less than 1 percent of humanity? Who cares?
Most importantly three thousand people died on 9/11, who cares? 10 times that die by car accidents every year?
His logic is utterly inhuman and could be used to justify almost any morality.
If they more or less make an argument that 6,000 is not a significant number of deaths, ask them to define "significant number of deaths" or whatever. Basically, you want to make them get specific with their misanthropy, and tell you how many deaths it is ok to give a shit about, so you know whether the news anchors are being stupid or not.
From which I would conclude that the U.S. should not only end foreign military adventures, but also privatise all roads and highways.
Mark Levin lacks either the strength to change what he can, the wisdom to know what he can't, or both.
The fallacy is technically a non sequitor, meaning the conclusion does not follow from the argument presented.
Let's set it up as a syllogism and see what we have:
1. 40,000 people die in road accidents every year.
2. Therefore, it is OK to have people die in wars.
Nothing there.
Now, there might be an implied, or hidden, piece of reaoning from which the conclusion would follow. Let's see if we can produce one:
2. Therefore human life is of little value.
3. Therefore it is OK to have people die in wars.
This one is even worse than the previous. The new Statement 2. is still a non sequitor, and exposes the inhumanity of Mark Levin for believing such a thing.
But as the other posters have pointed out, it seems to be what he is saying.
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