On Friday, Obama campaign director Jim Messina responded to the news that Mitt Romney had filed for an extension on his tax returns by saying it "begs the question — what does he have to hide?" For some reason, possibly because everything Jim Messina does annoys me, this is my last straw over our perpetual misuse of the term "to beg the question."
To beg the question means to engage in circular reasoning. It occurs when the support of your argument is a restatement of its initial premise (i.e., you return to the original question rather than moving forward, as if you were "begging the question" for proof of itself). For instance, if Mitt Romney were to say, "Taxing the wealthy too much hinders job growth, because when the wealthy are taxed they don't create jobs," he'd be restating his premise as its own proof. Whether taxation negatively affects job creation is what needs to be proven in order to justify the premise, so the statement itself can't be used to support the argument that taxation hinders job growth. That's begging the question.*
What Messina means, and what people usually mean when they misuse the phrase, is raising the question. Messina is certainly not the only person in the public sphere to make this mistake, but it would be nice if the man speaking for the President of the United States were conversant with logical fallacies.
* Not that this is the extent of Romney's tax complaint or anything.
---
Join: ElectionOlogy
Follow: Evan McMurry @evanmcmurry | PoliticOlogy @OlogyPolitics
Comments (0)
Be the first to comment!