Questioning Motives

Suppose you walk into your living room one night to catch a man who just broke your window and was walking through the room with muddy feet. You ask what he is doing, and he responds, “I just came in to clean your carpet.”


Would you respond by saying, “Oh, I see that your intentions are good. However, you should have done a better job. Your muddy feet are a major oversight, and I see that you forgot to bring carpet shampoo.”

I hope you wouldn't respond that way (except maybe in sarcasm). If somebody does something harmful and claims an utterly absurd reason for doing so, typically we question whether the motivation they gave us is actually true.

Unless, that is, it's the government making the claims, in which case most people always assume that the officials are 100% truthful but maybe didn't do as good of a job as they should.

I am writing this after seeing two major examples of this flawed reasoning being applied. The first is with the Fast and Furious scandal, which is where the US government arranged to have 2000 guns sold to Mexican drug cartels.


Fast and Furious:
What they told the public once this was uncovered was, “We were going to track the guns as part of a plan to find and eliminate the heads of the drug cartels. We just lost track of most of the weapons.”

The response from most of the public, including many who are critical of the government was “Well, you didn't do a good job on this one. Shame on you.” What they should have done was say, “Wait, does this even make sense?”

First off, I can't get a clear picture of how exactly these guns were supposed to be tracked. It clearly wasn't by a carefully installed GPS system, or as soon as they started losing track, they would have realized that the plan had been figured out. Second, how the heck is this going to help you find the leaders of the gangs. Stop reading for a few minutes and really think about the specifics of that. Is it because they assumed that the guns were all being bought for a few leaders? (“When I go on a raid, I always carry at least 50 rifles. And as the leader, I like to risk my neck in dangerous operations that I could easily order my subordinates to do.”) I did some research trying to find any explanation of exactly how this strategy could possibly work, but as far as I could tell, nobody even addressed the question.

I don't claim to know what the motive was, but this follows the exact pattern of the theoretical example above. Somebody claims an intent that doesn't possibly work with their action and results in the exact opposite (because, of course, now the cartels are more powerful). We don't know if the criminal in the example above had intents to rob, kidnap, or murder. We don't know if he was just cold and wanted somewhere warm to sleep for the night. But we can be pretty confident that he wasn't in to clean your carpet.


Supreme Court's Obamacare Decision:
The sad thing is that there was another example this week with the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare. For a moment, suspend your opinion on whether Obamacare is good or bad, as this is focused on the reasoning of people. Chief Justice Roberts voted in favor of the individual mandate, which angered some of Obamacare opponents, but then he got a lot of praise from other Obamacare opponents in articles such as this one: http://www.ijreview.com/2012/06/9398-why-chief-justice-roberts-made-the-right-long-term-decision-with-obamacare/

Why is he getting praise? Because he spun the penalty for not buying insurance and presented it as a tax instead of a fine. Thus, people are saying “Good job, Roberts, you managed to set a precedent where requiring citizens to buy stuff is still considered unconstitutional.” Do you want to know what would have been more effective in setting that precedent? Declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional like these people wanted him to do in the first place.

So, in other words, by putting a different spin on the definition of terms, he got praise from people who opposed his actions. And, of course, with a few more seconds of thinking, you realize that he said that it's constitutional for the government to tax you for not buying a consumer product. How exactly is that different from an individual mandate? If the government wants to force you to buy a GM car, it can just set the “tax” for not buying one so high that everyone will buy. So basically, the people that would have blasted him for saying that the individual mandate is constitutional are now praising him for providing a way for the government to get the exact same thing.

The obvious conclusion: Roberts supports the individual mandate. Please, people. Learn to question motives a little bit.