Tuesday, March 01, 2005

A doubleplus good website

Inspired by a post over at The Disgruntled Chemist, I am doing a small post today on propaganda which will be followed by a much bigger post tomorrow. Today's feature, the Propaganda Critic website. This website offers simple explanations on the basic tools of propaganda with historical and contemporary examples. PC categorizes the common techniques of propaganda into three basic categories: word games, false connections, and special appeals. Sites such as The Museum of Left Wing Lunacy tend to mainly use words games such as name calling and glittering generalities. President Bush is currently using the logical fallacy of unwarranted extrapolation in inventing the "Social Security Crisis". Any real economist will tell you that attempting to extrapolate the specific behavior of the US economy 40 years into the future is at best a tenous prediction and at worst just foolish. Could anyone in the 1960's possibly predicted the current state of our economy today? Doubtful. Tomorrow's feature: How many tools of propaganda can I find in Ann Coulter's weekly column? (Tomorrow's post might be very long!)