The Obfuscation Report

Last Night on CNN Lou Dobbs said “If anyone can defeat this syllogism, I’ll step out of the immigration debate altogether.”

“We cannot reform immigration if we cannot control immigration. We cannot control immigration unless we can secure our borders and control those borders?”

Dear Lou- First off, your statement is not a syllogism. That should be enough for you to get out of the immigration debate. If you use a word in which you clearly don’t even understand the meaning, then the rest of your statements are stupid.

1.) A syllogism consists of three parts: a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Each of the premises has one term in common with the conclusion: in the case of the major premise this is the major term, or predicate of the conclusion; in the case of the minor premise it is the minor term, the subject of the conclusion. For example:

Major premise: All men are mortal.
Minor premise: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

"Being mortal" is the major term and "Socrates" the minor term; the connection between them is made by the middle term, in this case "being a man". Here the major premises is general and the minor particular, but this needn't be the case. For example:

Major premise: All mortal things die.
Minor premise: All men are mortal.
Conclusion: All men die.

Here, the major term is "die", the minor term is "all men", and the middle term is "being mortal".

The other definitions for syllogism are; 2) a subtle, specious, or crafty argument or;: 3) deductive reasoning. I'm wondering if you meant the second? Your argument is subtle, specious and crafty, but I doubt you would use that word to describe your own statement. Maybe you meant simply deductive reasoning? Again though, you asked if anyone could "defeat" this syllogism, so I take it you meant the first definition, not the third.

Now that you understand the term, Lou, let’s break down what you actually said. “We cannot reform immigration if we cannot control immigration. We cannot control immigration unless we can secure our borders and control those borders?"

Well, let’s see…. Mmm let me take a stab at defeating this non-syllogism. How about this one dear Lou? What if I suggested we abandon the term illegal immigration. Then you would control it. There would be no such thing as illegal immigration if you allowed anyone to immigrate legally. You wouldn't need control of the borders, because everyone who showed up would be a legal immigrant.

I’m not going to get into the specifics policy implications of such a move, I’m merely demonstrating your inability to think outside the box. I’m also defeating your "syllogism." Are you ready to get out of the immigration debate altogether yet Lou? Are you a man of your word? Are you a man of integrity?

You see Lou, if you allowed anyone to immigrate legally, for example if they just showed up at a border checkpoint, like they could up until the 1920’s, you would eliminate the problem of “illegal” immigration. You would also have Control of your Borders because the vast majority of people wanting to immigrate would be willing to do it legally, if they had a choice. This approach would free up resources to look for people who were trying to cross the border for other reasons, so instead of 5,000 border officers trying to catch 100,000 people a day crossing into the U.S., you would have 5,000 border officers trying to catch drug smugglers and terrorists trying to cross the border and not law abiding citizens doing it the right way.

Yes, there would be problems with this approach. I’m just trying to “defeat your syllogism” Louie. Because I think you’re retarded and a xenophobic jackass. Maybe it’s time to get out of the immigration debate altogether.

I get the feeling though, you were lying last night.