William Illogical Buckley:

Busy, busy, busy draws our attention to a recent essay by Buckley (and summarizes it nicely). We took a look, and found these passages a fine example of foolishness:

[A critic of Bush] glides over the question as if taxes were a zero-sum game, an increase in the federal figure giving us a decrease in the state figure and vice versa. But it is not so.

but two paragraphs later, we read

[Critics of Bush] fail to acknowledge, let alone emphasize, that aid by Washington to the states has got to originate in aid from the states to Washington. If Californians want more public money, they can raise it directly, by increasing the taxes on Californians, or indirectly, by getting it from Washington, which will get it from Californians.

There are other problems with Buckley's writing, including the meaningless statistics of what fraction of income taxes the top X percent is paying, but the item above, where he switches from no-zero-sum-game (for one argument) to it-is-a-zero-sum-game (to make a different point) is typical of the specious reasoning going on. But sometimes Buckley convinces his readers, no doubt due to the peculiar prose style he employs.

posted by Quiddity at 6/16/2003 07:52:00 AM