To make my point about sophistry and “values voters,” I am obliged to tell you about a woman who was born in my home state of Missouri, who assumed the name of Sally Rand. We will get to Sally shortly.
When the year 1933 came to the United States, we were then entering our fourth year of the great American Depression. Banks closed, houses were repossessed, and very few people were employed. In many American cities, the residents were reduced to living in shacks which were universally called “Hoovervilles.” But help was on the way because in the election of November of 1932, Herbert Hoover had been turned out of office and was replaced by the Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
As soon as Mr. Roosevelt was sworn in, he lifted the ban on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. From the time of his inauguration, our citizens could buy beer, whiskey, and wine, and have been doing so ever since that happy occasion. It signaled the beginning of the end of the Depression.
In those days, the inaugural ceremony for Mr. Roosevelt did not take place until March of 1933. In May of that year, there was a World’s Fair held in Chicago. The fair was full of futuristic ideas and predicted that soon we would be traveling to the moon or at least coast to coast in no time at all. People who visited the Chicago World’s Fair were anxious to describe the wonders that they had seen. I was ten years old when the fair started, and with my father being out of work, there was no way that I could have attended the fair in person. So I was forced to rely upon the accounts of people who had visited the fair, radio reports, and the news carried in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
There are many accounts which will contend that the fair was stolen by a performer named Helen Gould Beck. Miss Beck was not your ordinary thief who could overpower anyone. She was five feet one inch tall and her measurements were 35, 22, and 35. Her most memorable expression to the newspapers was that “If you love living, you try to take care of the equipment.” In Miss Beck’s case, the equipment was very important because she was a fan dancer who took the name of Sally Rand.
As the music played, Sally Rand stole the show. She accomplished this feat through the use of her feathery fans, which were held, one in each hand, one in front of her upper torso and the other one being held in front of her lower torso. Scholars have argued endlessly about whether Sally Rand performed her dances in the nude. I did not see Sally Rand perform her routine, so I am unable to give you a definitive account. I suppose there are people who want to imagine things whether they are true or not, but in Sally Rand’s case, there were many visitors to the Chicago World’s Fair who contended that Sally performed her routine in the nude.
The debate over Sally Rand’s performance with her fans naturally leads me into a discussion of sophistry. If Noah Webster of dictionary fame is to be believed, sophistry means “A deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.” Sally Rand’s performance qualifies on all counts. It was “a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning” and above all, it meant to deceive us all. So good old Sally Rand, née Helen Gould Beck, was a highly skilled performer in the art of sophistry. Now there are some voters who are also skilled in sophistry.
Pollsters, and particularly exit pollsters, place a great deal of confidence in those who say that they have voted for a candidate or will vote for a candidate who shares their values.
Values voters are generally those with a prejudice. “Values” is simply a euphemism for prejudice. When a values voter is asked whether he would support a female as commander-in-chief, it may be assumed that his values don’t stretch that far. Similarly, when a values voter is asked if he would support a black candidate, it becomes clear that his values differ as well on that score. If a values voter were asked whether he would support a Muslim candidate, a Catholic candidate, or even a candidate who says that he is a non-believer, the answer would be much the same. A good many Americans want to support a candidate who shares their prejudices. When the voters tell pollsters that they are guided by their own values, it is obvious that they are engaging in sophistry, as defined by Mr. Webster. When they say “values” instead of prejudices, they are concealing the fact that “there is a deliberately invalid argument which displays ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.” In this case, it is the pollster who is the one who is being deceived.
Furthermore, if you will notice, values voters rarely, if ever, speak of competence in a candidate. It is my belief that competence is almost always trumped by prejudices masking as values voting. If I had my way, I would always want to pick a candidate who is a hell of a lot smarter than I am. Candidates with no competence at all will govern us into bankruptcy regardless of the values that they represent. At this point in the year 2008, we have had all of the incompetence that we can bear.
As many of you know, my thought processes have been influenced over the years by the works of Henry Mencken. Mencken believed, as I do, that the American electorate is capable of doing some damned foolish things. In 1925, eight years before the Chicago World’s Fair took place, Henry Mencken had this to say:
“On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Mencken has been dead now for nearly 50 years. If he could be revived, he might be pleased to know what values voting for a Christian candidate has done to this country. When a man tells you that he votes in accordance with his values, kindly run for the hills. Such a man will not be persuaded by reasoning or logic. Such a person is prejudiced and is guilty of sophistry in the highest order.
A final note having to do with Sally Rand. Sally was born in the elegant state of Missouri, in a town called Elkton. Being a seminary student all my life, I would know very little about the sinful ways of the infidels in Elkton. But Howard Laurence Davis is a preacher’s son who probably lived in that town while his father preached the gospel. Perhaps one of the Reverend Davis’s sermons might be grounded on the thought that “if you love life, you try to take care of the equipment.” Sally loved life and hung on until her seventy-fifth year, when she became an angel.
Mr. Davis, a Missourian by birth, and your old essayist think of Sally more often than is required for therapeutic purposes by the American psychiatric association.
E. E. CARR
May 28, 2008
Essay 318
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Kevin’s commentary: In my experience, not only do values voters seem to not care about the competence of their chosen candidate, they don’t care much about their candidate at all. Rather they are usually unified only by their hatred of something else. In large part this is because the modern Republican party is actually composed of two major camps, namely the extremely greedy and the socially conservative. Ideologically these two segments have nothing to do with each other; the former really just wants lower taxes and the government to keep their hands off of businesses, and the latter are usually poorer people and would love the government to step in and legislate our lifestyles. Keen observers may notice that these two camps would actually be at odds if they were to try to vote FOR something, so rather they find somebody that they can agree to hate (like a liberal black guy, for instance) and then just throw everything they can to oppose it.
I wonder why they keep losing elections.