May 23rd, 2009 by Manila Ryce
During a speech in which he attempted to justify the future illegality of his administration, President Obama also committed a crime against logic by setting forth a false compromise often used by moderate progressives to justify their lack of backbone. After criticizing the far-right for their authoritarian policies and prideful ignorance, the president then surmised that those on the exact opposite end of the political spectrum must also be incorrect, therefor leaving the only sane position to be the compromised one in the middle. There is an idiotic inclination in American journalism and politics to be “fair and balanced” by insisting that the truth to any debate must be in the middle even when one side is clearly wrong.
Using that fallacious argument, Obama could have very well said, “On one side of the spectrum there are those who insist that the world is 6,000 years old, and on the other end of the spectrum we have ideologues who insist that the world is 4.5 billion years old. Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right. The American people are not ideologues. They know that the answer lies somewhere in between these two dates.”
Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is not happy that President Obama has labeled him an “absolutist” for defending the rule of law. Ratner also rightly criticizes the president for being too weak on matters like Guantanamo. He states: “It’s pretty remarkable to me that he would equate on one side the Cheney et al. people who advocate torture, continuing people at Guantanamo, continuing military commissions, having preventive detention, all of those types of depredations of the constitution, and then put us on the other extreme, saying we’re extreme also or absolutist because we actually want the rule of law. It seems to me that that equation is pretty false and outrageous.“
