Faulty Reasoning Candidate
of the Week is Senator Patty Murray, Democrat, of the state of
Washington. Murray appeared on Sunday’s Meet
the Press with host Chuck Todd. Todd
asked for Murray’s opions about the allegations
made by Christine Blasey Ford regarding Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court
nomination. This writing is not to
discuss the allegations, but to focus on Murray’s weak thought process when
answering Todd’s question.
Before asking for her opinion with regard to Ford’s
credibility, Todd played two opposing political clips, one of them at odds with
Ford’s allegations, the other in sync with it.
When Todd then asked whether Ford could be believed, Murray
used some very specious reasoning. “Well,
if a person calls in and says their car is stolen, no one questions that.”
That’s patently false.
But it’s what a senator in the U.S. Congress professes to believe, and such
fecklessness and/or sophistry scares me. Senator
Murray’s presumption might apply to persons as privileged as she is, but in
large part, an allegation of car theft is routinely questioned by authorities
in terms of its credibility.
False reports of car
thefts are common. Criminals pay other
criminals to have their cars stolen to collect insurance money. There are many
other reasons for false reports of car theft, and authorities have just as much
right to question such claims as they have to question Christine Busey Ford’s
as yet unfounded accusations of Brett Kavanaugh.
