Why are facts called a 'smear?'

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Target Practice
Robert Lowry, a Republican challenger to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D-FL), stopped by a local Republican event in October. The event was at a gun range, and Lowry shot at a human-shaped target that had Wasserman Schulz's initials written next to it. He later said it was a "mistake.".

"Those kinds of actions, words and statements can lead people who are unbalanced to potentially engage and carry out that violence," she said. "It's out of line and we've got to dial it back."

Machine Gun Social
Dean Allen, a conservative candidate for state office in South Carolina threw a "machine gun social" in September, drawing 500 people for the chance to win a $700 AK-47 semiautomatic rifle. All attendees got to shoot 20 rounds from a machine gun of their choice. (He didn't win.)

Armed and Fiscally Responsible
Pamela Gorman, a conservative in a crowded Republican primary field in Arizona's third district, got some much-needed publicity with a web ad that showed a montage of her shooting different kinds of guns. She also blasted out press releases with titles like: "Armed and Fiscally Responsible." She lost to Ben Quayle, who went on to win the general election and was sworn in last week.

Quayle himself put out a dramatic primary ad that got a lot of attention, in which he spoke directly into the camera, "Barack Obama is the worst president in history. ... Somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place."

Because they can be misused to make implications that have little to do with actual facts.

And in republicans' eyes, this would not cause violence.

But video games on the other hand...

For the same reason you can't always trust logic to be correct.

Facts arranged in the wrong order can lead to faulty conclusions. The way liars and manipulators often get people to do their bidding is to use the truth (e.g., facts) but manipulate the presentation to create a faulty conclusion.

Logic should result in truth, but if you do everything logically, an illogical argument can easily run circles around you...and many people (and things) don't follow strict logic.

Exactly, logic isn't universal truth. Logic is only as good as the assumptions behind the premise. I think it's mentally lazy to ignore the context behind the logic.

Sinsboldly, facts become smears because they are Not Facts. They are assumptions. Of the three examples, only the first can be considered wrong/irresponsible. Lowry should not have put his opponents initials near a target. If the story is true then Lowry did wrong. The other two examples, target shooting competition and some candidate saying "knock the Hell outa the place" are perfectly legitimate. The last two examples are people doing perfectly acceptable things.

[quote="zer0netgain"

Logic should result in truth, but if you do everything logically, an illogical argument can easily run circles around you...and many people (and things) don't follow strict logic.[/quote]

Wrong. Logic guarantees a true conclusion if the premises are true.

From a false premise one may infer either true or false things.

If p is false then (-p .v. q) is true regardless of whether q is true or not.

Logic is not about true premises. It is about valid inferences.

ruveyn

EXACTLY!

Ace and Zero: Logic is not just a buzzword.

It's not; it's a format to determine the consistency, completeness, soundness, and validity of an argument. But it's only as good as it's givens. I could argue that the world is flat and it would be logically valid, but given the information we have nowadays it wouldn't make sense.

@ ruveyn: Couldn't have said it better myself.

Taking random facts out of context to form a false narative is lieing Orwell.

No it isn't. It may be misleading and perhaps even dishonest, but it is not lying.

As an aside, I love the irony of you being upset about someone "taking random facts out of context to form a false narrative."

<.< awkward. *runs away*

No argument which runs counter to established fact is logical. Remember the First Principle of T'Planahath - "Nothing unreal exists."

However, if you find these a bit specious, one could always look to the campaign run by Giffords' opponent in the election, Republican Jesse Kelly. He asked people to "help him get rid of Giffords" by letting donors to his campaign fire his fully-loaded, fully-automatic M-16 assault rifle. After the shooting, he was quoted as saying that he "didn't see" any possible connection...

What is it with liberals and having no sense of decency? You're trying to capitalize politically from murder and attempted murder. Rush Limbaugh has pointed this out, and can back it up and I can as well just by quoting you leftists on this forum.

He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/jar ... ews_b48040

Do you really think the American people are dumb enough to believe the trash leftists spew anymore? This guy was simply nuts, he wasn't influenced by the right despite what you assert you are not telling the truth.

If you find what I said offensive, too bad I'm not going to sit here and let you accuse innocent people of being accessories to murder for political gain and not call you out on it!

To be fair, ruveyn, you are correct, but only in a pure sense of logical thinking.

Conclusion is true IF the premise(s) is(are) true. The problem is that the vast majority of people out there understand logic as A + B = C, not TRUE + TRUE = TRUE.

All elephants are pink. (premise)

Nellie is an elephant. (premise)

Therefore, Nellie is pink. (conclusion)

Logically true, but the first premise is false by any measure of common sense. Now, if the premise is not subject to scrutiny, then you can easily send people to wrong conclusions by putting false premises into an argument.

Most "logic" arguments used to persuade people in daily life resort to intellectual dishonesty or human error in that the premises are incorrect or erroneously organized. The logic path is valid, but the premises are never scrutinized for accuracy. In these cases, the premises used to construct the argument are presented as fact, and they might be correct fact, but facts incorrectly organized easily results in false conclusions.