(A response to Jacob Zellmer’s Letter to the Editor printed below)

Dear Mr. Zellmer,

Ordinarily, letters to the editor are limited to 250 words. However, I welcome yours because I enjoy a good debate and seldom find anyone interested in engaging.

As my editorial of 12-6-17 states, it was written in about 30 minutes, so I appreciate the fact that you wrote yours "rather quickly" as well. Your letter was 1,000 words in length. My rushed editorial was 390 words in length. So I will squeeze-in that small excuse here.

I truly enjoy arguments, especially concerning religion and politics, though most people don't. I'm sure you understand that it takes much longer to answer a detailed critical letter than it does to initiate one - speaking of space in particular. I'll do my best, as tightly as possible. If my efforts don't suffice, we can continue the debate into future editions.

You have laid-out scores of arguments, each deserving a response. If I am to make any headway here I will have to restrict myself to a "bullet" format.

After reading your letter I have to say I envision my editorial pinned to a logic class bulletin board, for the next fallacy discovery assignment. I would not fare well, but not as badly as you might expect. Writing speedily sometimes invites the fallacy of hasty generalization, among other things, of which I willingly admit. I should not have used the word "ignoramus" because it has an offensive connotation, which I didn't intend. This is shooting from the hip while in a hurry.

But let's begin.

The general point I wished to make is simply that Americans, students at every level, and others, don't appreciate their American heritage, mostly due to ignorance of their American past. I based this assumption on personal experience and online statistics. I was reminded of this after noticing reference to a recent poll. (Millennials aren't satisfied with capitalism and might prefer a socialist ...www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article182765121.html.

Nov 4, 2017 - Millennials prefer socialism over capitalism, a YouGov study from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Fund. (Other studies show similar results).

I don't vouch for the accuracy of any poll (see last presidential election polls).

General ignorance of essential information, in this case American history, can reasonably be placed at the foot of the institutions responsible for disseminating it - places of learning, schools and colleges. The information is either transfered or not. Too often today it is not sufficiently transferred. Those who don't know our history can hardly be expected to recognize our exceptional place in modern history, for that reason. Children don't go to school to be educated. They go to school to educate themselves - if the curriculum is absent, opportunity is retarded.

For time's sake I would like to clarify some of my more obvious logical fallacies:

"Proof" of such educational deficiency would be better described as "widespread" instead of "wholesale".

Addressing some of your cruel syllogisms, I have to admit of some slovenly logical construction here as elsewhere. Speedy writing can produce the fallacy of hasty generalization. Not every form of socialism is "bad." It's just that America's form of democratic republicanism is superior - exemplified by America's comparative freedom and material achievements. Many socialist-type nations (like the old "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics") have magnificent-sounding constitutions, but are, and were, fraudulent misrepresentations seeking power. The National Socialist German Workers' Party didn't work out so well either.

Today many European nations successfully represent a mixture of socialism and democracy like those in Scandinavia. However they are not as free as Americans - most lack a Bill of Rights, or subscribe to an established religion, and could not defend themselves against a Russian attack, as happened in the Republic of Crimea. But no time to explore this issue.

Without America's exceptional accomplishments, social, technical, and military, there very likely would be no Western-European "democracies", socialist or otherwise, in existence today. America may be loaded with imperfections (as all other nations) but it is the glue that holds the free world together today, indisputably. Res ipsa loquitur! (Hey, you started it with ipso facto).

Moving right along, I agree, elite college entrants probably have better historical understanding. But saying this involves us in the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam. You have insufficient evidence for making that assertion.

To a reasonably informed person, I think knowledge of American history does in fact lead to the conclusion that America is an exceptional place. This does not diminish the historically immoral and malevolent facts, like slavery. But this is where being reasonable and informed comes in - where understanding that white Americans fought to the death (600,000+ deaths) with white slave owners and sympathizers to end slavery - and were victorious.

Then you point to my most egregious logical fallacy, my assertion that "No intellectually honest person can fail to acknowledge Divine intervention in America's birth and growth."

This was clearly a fallacy-infected statement. The idea of Divine intervention is certainly a matter of faith, and a matter of my faith. But your criticism is badly stated. "...must hold certain faith beliefs to be intellectually honest." I have no excuse here, the statement is clearly wrong. But while it may, as you say, "conflate faith and reason" I believe that faith, reason, and the Gospel are not incompatible - so did Thomas Aquinas.

You're wrong again in stating holding different beliefs "is intellectually dishonest." People under those circumstances could be many things other than dishonest - for example, just naive.

Jacob, I truly appreciate your letter. I should have known better than to have sought to solve the problem of evil in 390 words. I shall repent.

Your letters are always welcome.

***

Response to Dec. 6th Editorial

Dear Martin Farrell,

I grew up in Fillmore and still consider it home. The Fillmore Gazette has been a way for me to check in on what’s happening in Fillmore while I am out of town and for that I am grateful.

I am writing in response to your Dec. 6th editorial. The structure of some of your arguments don’t seem valid and I find it difficult to accept the truth of some of your premises. I’ve written this rather quickly, and so despite the critical nature of my response, I hope this comes across as respectful.

Your first paragraph cites an anonymous polling organization as evidence that millennials are more attracted to socialism than democracy. It is then asserted that this data is “proof” of the wholesale failure of our educational system. To make this assertion you need to have the following assumptions, (1) every form of socialism is a bad political or economic system, (2) anyone who thinks otherwise must have received a bad education, and (3) an educational system that produces people who disagree with my opinions is a failed educational system. This is an interested line of argument, but it has flaws. First, there is no reasoning given in your op-ed for why we should believe (1). And so (2) is a non-starter. (3) is odd because it assumes that everyone with opinions opposed to your own are irrational or at least their arguments are irrational or unintelligible.

The second paragraph then narrows in on how you think educational systems are flawed: American history has been hijacked by “radical Left fake history.” I think your point here is that because American millennials are ignorant of American heritage, they are more likely to think socialism is better than democracy. It isn’t clear what makes you say that millennials are ignorant of American heritage. Do you mean that (1) millennials must be ignorant of American heritage based on their attraction to socialism, or (2) millennials are ignorant based on personal experience you’ve had with them, or (3) millennials are ignorant of American history because of external data/polling? You also don’t make clear how knowing American history causes a person to think socialism is a bad thing. First, socialism isn’t defined in your op-ed, so it isn’t clear what you consider socialism to be. Part of the confusion here is that you contrast socialism with democracy even though socialism as a form of government isn’t mutually excluded from democracy. This is why “social democracy” and “democratic socialism” are forms of government. So, I wonder if socialism vs. democracy is in some ways a false dichotomy. If I had to guess, I’d say that millennials are more critical of capitalism than of democracy.

Your argument for why American history is important is that America is “exceptional”: it has thrived for 240 years as a democratic republic. The assumption you make is that students who know American history better will be more critical of socialism in all its forms. I don’t see why this is the case, unless learning American history is a form of brainwashing in which all political systems besides American democracy and capitalism are portrayed as irrational. Studying American history should let students see the ways in which democracy (and capitalism) have been both successful and not perfect, i.e., both systems have flaws.

Part of your op-ed criticizes elite colleges and universities for devaluing studies of Western Civilization, which was mostly, as far as I know, universities dropping the requirement for students to take Western Civilization courses. You claim that the chant was “Hey-hey, ho-ho, American Civ has got to go,” but my Google search of this phrase only brought up, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Western Civ has got to go,” (at least for what happened at Stanford; if I am wrong here, point me to the relevant news articles). Western Civilization would include all European, American, and colonial history, which is much more than just American history. (Interestingly, Plato is a part of Western Civilization, and he hated democracy.) The required courses that were dropped were in Western Civilization, but charitability causes me to think the university still required courses in history, philosophy, art, etc. of world civilizations (and this might include western civilization).

So, your most pointed claim here strikes me as odd. You say: “Some (most ?) of our colleges and universities, those touted as the greatest, have for decades now produced a crowd of history ignoramuses.” First, it seems likely to me that students who get accepted into elite colleges probably have a better understanding of history (world, western, and American) than those who are not accepted into elite colleges; They probably did well in their high school history courses. Hence, calling people with elite college degrees “a crowd of history ignoramuses” seems mistaken. I think this point holds even if you only mean that they are American-history ignoramuses. Second, requiring college students to take American history doesn’t necessarily make them less of an American history ignoramus. Students can do the minimum to pass classes and so remain “ignoramuses.”

I think part of your conclusion on this subject is viable: “…it’s not too much of a stretch to conclude that most American citizens are dangerously ignorant of their own American history…” But it doesn’t necessarily follow that knowledge of American history will make you “acknowledge its greatness” and think America an “exceptional” place. Yes, America is good in certain ways, but history also shows the ways in which America has slaughtered and enslaved people. Why would people of color, after coming to know American History, ipso facto think that America is an “exceptional” place?

Lastly, you make this excessive claim: “No intellectually honest person can fail to acknowledge Divine intervention in its [America’s] birth and growth.” My understanding of Divine intervention is that it is a matter of faith (for the most part) and not knowledge. So, it is odd for you to claim that every intellectually honest person must hold certain faith beliefs. This conflates faith and reason and it also claims that everyone who doesn’t hold your beliefs is intellectually dishonest – this seems unreasonable to me. This letter has already become very long, so I won’t go deeper into this part.

With respect,
Jacob Zellmer
PhD Student in the Department of Philosophy
University of California, San Diego