THE WRONGEST WRONGS

Critics disparage our straw-headed president not because they dislike him personally -- but because he has committed the wrongest wrongs. They're not so much trying to insult Mr. Bush, as to taunt his voters into admitting their leader is wrong-headed. Taunts can be mightier than the sword.

Scientific American's Skeptic at large, Michael Shermer, gives a short history of professional taunts in his piece, "Wronger Than Wrong." Shermer writes that scientists (and others) have been rattling each other's cages since the Earth was flat. He begins by giving a short history of professional taunts.

Among the notable examples was Mark Twain's comment, "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." Winston Churchill wrote of a colleague, "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." And the American icon, Groucho Marx, once quipped, "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

As trial lawyer Louis Nizer once said, "A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults."

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said of a colleague's paper, "This isn't right. It isn't even wrong." That the paper didn't even merit being wrong, was the ultimate put-down.

Not all wrongs are created equal. The idea that the Earth was flat was wrong, and the notion that the world is spherical turned out to be wrong as well (it actually bulges). But one is wronger than the other.

Similarly, Darwin's theory of evolution may be partially wrong, as our president believes, but the theory of Creationism is simply wrong: which is wronger than wrong.

While traveling through Nova Scotia last summer, I couldn't help but notice one book prominently displayed in all the bookstore windows: Outstanding in their fields : Scarecrows of Nova Scotia, by Elizabeth and David Precious. Aside from being one of the great book titles of all time, every time I saw the cover, all I could think of were the logical fallacies of Bush's straw man arguments -- both in going to war with Iraq, and ultimately, winning re-election in '04.

The "straw man" argument itself is a military term, where scarecrows were dressed up to look like the enemy for the sole purpose of attacking (foot soldier Churchill bayoneted them in World War I).

By misrepresenting the opponent's position, the "scare crow" argument creates a position that is easy to refute (e.g.: Purple Hearted Kerry's position on the Iraq war weakened homeland defense"). While a successful rhetorical technique, the adversary's actual argument has not been refuted.

Bush, of course, has been the ultimate scarecrow. After committing the wrongest of wrongs by invading the wrong country, he's tried to scare everyone into thinking he's the only one who can get us out of this mess. Of course, our scare crow from Crawford, out standing in his field, isn't right. He isn't even wrong. He's wronger than wrong.