A false choice fallacy, also known as a false dilemma or a false dichotomy, occurs when someone presents two (or more) alternatives as the only options when there are other, unstated options. It’s a cheap debating tactic, meant to constrain an argument or redirect a train of thought. Cheap and weak, and when I see someone offering one up, either as an opinion or as a rebuttal and counterargument, I find it safe to assume he’s either working an agenda or hasn’t thought his point through very much.
Once detected, the false choice provides a target rich environment for those, like me, who like to argue for sport. But, in the real world where people aren’t paying close attention and quick sound bites pack a lot of wallop, it can sway initial opinions and establish roots that are hard to dislodge. These features explain why it’s one of the most common ploys in the world of politics.
Consider two quotes from President Obama:
Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. I suggest this is a false choice.
I think it’s important for everybody to understand – and I think the American people understand – that there are some tradeoffs involved … But I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.
The first quote is from 2005, the second from 2013. The obvious conclusion, one that many commentators and bloggers have leapt to, is that Obama is a flip-flopping demagogue, who says what suits him depending on the circumstances and who isn’t guided by an over-arching set of principles that would keep his messaging and his views consistent. While this may be true, it’s not the crux of the problem here.
Obama has it right in his first statement – Liberty OR security is a false choice. His second statement is also valid – 100% privacy, if taken literally, would mean that there are no circumstances where police could do any sort of search, ever. It would mean that if, for example, you were going out to Colorado to hunt elk but didn’t want to check your luggage, you could carry your rifle onto the plane with you. Yes, these are exaggerations, but they go to the core of what Obama’s doing, which is marginalizing the principle that government must preserve liberty while working to keep us safe. His argument is a straw man, another logical fallacy in popular use and heavy rotation in the world of politics. We needn’t explore that aspect of the argument, because 100% vs 100% and A vs B as polar opposites are neither the point nor even relevant.
What is lost on our politicians, our statist friends, and on the disengaged folks who are easily led into believing that reality requires A vs B and that liberty and security are the end points of a sliding scale, is that we don’t live in a free-form society and nation, where politicians decide and debate what the trade-offs are between security and liberty. We already have a set of rules in place. They’ve been in place for 226 years. And the government’s job is do its best to keep us safe WHILE ALSO keeping us free. Or, as is aptly and succinctly put at the beginning of that set of rules, to “secure the blessings of liberty.”
Our rights are non-negotiable. While the courts are obligated and empowered to interpret them, our rights are not subject to politicians’ balancing scales. Elected officials aren’t empowered to make “tradeoffs.” They aren’t allowed to infringe on or abridge them because they think doing so would make us safer or make their jobs easier. In fact, their jobs are to protect our rights while working to make us safer. Is that job difficult at times? Yes. Too bad for them, it’s the gig they signed up for.
It is the President’s job, and the job of every elected official who swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, to maximize our security while protecting our rights. Both are fundamental goals and fundamental obligations. They can be, and indeed often are, at cross purposes, but that in no way entitles the government to monkey with one to facilitate the other. Yet that’s exactly what they are doing and have been doing for years. And, in presenting the arguments as they have, they “guide” people into believing that they are not only entitled to infringe our liberties in the name of security, but that they are obligated to.
Consider also the implication of treating security as the polar opposite of liberty. Therein lies an implication that reducing one necessarily improves the other, when there are countless examples of infringements on our liberty that don’t improve our security, and there are other examples that reduce our security. Again, the goals and outcomes of presenting false dichotomies are to alter the nature of the discussion, reorient the direction of the argument, and establish erroneous premises as true. It doesn’t take much to deconstruct and invalidate their arguments, but one does initially have to see through the fallacy. So, when someone presents increased security as something that can only come at the expense of liberty, recognize the false dilemma for what it is. The argument falls apart easily after that.
The premise of a free society and of a nation constructed to codify and protect the fundamental rights of the individual is that the government of that society and nation must preserve those rights while striving to establish the security that enhances the enjoyment of those rights. The choice the politicians face is not liberty or security. It is doing their job or not doing their job.
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