False Dilemmas: The Plague of Our Political System

If you were to conduct a survey on a large sect of the American people, or any nations people, and you posed the question “What do you think is the worst problem with your countries political structure?” then you would likely see a large amount of people say issues such as corruption or greed are up there. Now, these are very real and very apparent issues facing us, but issues such as corruption are only byproducts of a very basic and systemic logical fallacy that plagues each and every one of us.

I am of course talking about the false dilemma, or the "either-or" fallacy.

Let us start with defining what a false dilemma is. For our intents and purposes I will try to use the most unbiased and accurate definition as I can. Texas State University defines a false dilemma as "[An attempt to] reason from an either-or position [when] you haven't considered all relevant possibilities..."

Ironically enough, the same Texas State source uses "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" and "America. Love it or leave it" as examples of false dilemmas.

The issue arises when these dilemmas become so integrated into our way of viewing the real world, originating from our quasi-instinctual political alignments mind you, that they affect our view of objective reality by becoming subjectively true. This is the plague of the false dilemma, and it is a disease that has always been with us, but it only surfaces when sparked by the pens of bureaucrats, or by the microphones of the media.

The most common and widespread false dilemma of them all is the liberal-conservative tug-of-war. When in conversation about any political debate with friends or family, the question of, "Well are you a liberal or a conservative" usually comes up, and these labels are often used as insults to demean another persons view on an issue. The problem this causes is division and the loss of individual thought.

People like quick and easy. There is no time anymore for intellectual debate or thought provoking arguments. This has caused us as people to want to quickly label and group individuals into an ideological pool like we are manufactured goods. Unfortunately, each person has their own independent thoughts and ideas. The process of labeling as a "liberal" or "conservative" is just a means of stripping people of their unique and individual thoughts. These words themselves don't even mean what people think they do anymore.

Being a "liberal" simply means that you support change and progress in society and that there should be no sense of limits. Being a "conservative" simply means you support tradition over change, and you want to keep society more ordered. It would be very intellectually dishonest to say that (roughly) half of America supports traditionalism in all issues, and that (roughly) half of America wants to change all social institutions. The world works and changes off of human thought and action, so what we say and do matters and influences others. This makes the process of quick and easy labeling very dangerous for the future of mankind. We must move past this barbaric way of thinking and understand that each person is different. The solution to this issue is to address issues separately with people, and to listen to our fellow man a little bit more.