8Having fought in them since the 1980s, I know that America’s culture wars never change. My early tours of duty in the culture wars were on the gaming fronts, and I was forced into the fight during the 1980s. And have been fighting ever since. The culture warriors who start wars are usually unimaginative and lazy. Hence, they use the same rhetorical tactics and fallacies each new war.
On the one hand, endlessly refuting the same bad logic and rhetoric is exhausting. On the other hand, I can reuse my criticisms by updating them for the latest content allowing us all to fight a lazy, unimaginative war. To help others who are exhausted by these eternally stupid fights I am writing a series of essays focused on the tactics used in one type of culture war. When the next culture war starts, you can probably just use the templates discussed in this and the following essays to logically counter the culture warriors. That said, not every culture war front uses the same arguments and there is a slight chance that the culture warriors might come up with a new method.
As a veteran of the culture wars of the 1980s serving on the gaming front I saw the fight over technology, mainly video/computer games but also including the Walkman. Another part of the front was the war over tabletop role-playing games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons.
I started playing computer games in the 1970s. While my memories are faded, I recall my dad taking me to Old Town High School (where he taught math and computer science) on the weekends or after school. To keep me occupied, he let me play games like Trek and Hunt the Wumpus on a Digital DECWriter II that dialed into the University of Maine main frame. I’ve been a gamer since.
I was introduced to D&D by my mother in 1979; she had heard it would help kids like me socialize. I played for a decade before becoming a professional write and made some ramen noodle money writing for GDW, TSR, Chaosium and R. Talsorian Games while I was in graduate school. As I’m writing this, I am running a D&D 5e campaign and still publishing.
Younger people reading this might wonder about my reference to computer games and D&D as part of the culture war. After all, gaming is a billion-dollar worldwide industry and an accepted part of the culture. But this is because we won. That war. While that fight can be seen as a matter of mere historical interest, the culture war never changes, and we see the same tactics used in the last war on gaming deployed today against other targets. One tactic is what is now known as “think of the children.”
The first known use of “think of the children” is believed to be in the1964 Walt Disney Pictures film Mary Poppins. The movie opens with Mrs. Banks trying to persuade a nanny not to quit. In popular culture, it is best known for being used by Helen Lovejoy on the Simpsons. In philosophy, it is recognized as a fallacy or a rhetorical tool, depending on how one defines the terms and how “think of the children” is used.
Oversimplifying things, a rhetorical tool draws its persuasive power from emotions or psychological factors. From the standpoint of logic, rhetoric is inert—it adds nothing (and subtracts nothing) from whatever logic might also be present. Rhetoric can be thought of as pure flavoring, making things “taste” better or worse. It would be a mistake to believe a claim based solely on a rhetorical tool. This is not to say that the claim must be false, just that a rhetorical tool provides no evidence for a claim.
As would be suspected, “think of the children” draws its power from the emotional concern most humans have for children. Even those who feel no such concern, such as some politicians, often know that they at least need to pretend to have such concern. When used as a rhetorical tool its function is to make people feel (or pretend to feel) negatively towards something that is alleged to be harmful to “the children” or feel positively towards something that is alleged to be beneficial for “the children.” The simplest way to use this is to simply say some variant of “think of the children” and rely on its emotional impact to influence people. It can also be used to empower fallacies by adding extra emotional impact.
For example, “think of the children” is often used as part of the scare tactics fallacy. This is a fallacy in which something intended to invoke fear is substituted for evidence. The error is, obviously enough, that a feeling of fear is not evidence for a claim. As another example, it is also often paired with an appeal to anger. As might be guessed, this fallacy uses something intended to invoke anger in place of evidence for a claim. It must be noted that something that causes fear or anger could also serve as evidence for a claim. For example, the fact that children are especially vulnerable to the harm of environmental pollution can be frightening and the fact that our environment is constantly being polluted might make someone angry. But the vulnerability of children to environmental pollutants can, in a developed argument, provide a reason to believe that pollution should be reduced. The fact that children are especially vulnerable to harms such as pollution, sexual abuse by authority figure (like police, clergy and coaches), and hunger does serve to enhance the rhetorical power of “think of the children” and this routinely exploited. To be fair and balanced, people do sometimes use “think of the children” in good faith because they believe there is a danger. But in most culture war battles it is used in bad faith by those who know they are exaggerating (or fabricating) the danger or who do not care about “the children.”
While a person’s motivation is irrelevant to the quality of their logic or the truth of their claims, it is reasonable to check to see if they are operating in bad faith. One way to test this is to check for consistency. If someone, for example, claims to be motivated to protect the children from a perceived threat by drag queens, they should be equally concerned about the danger presented by pollution, lack of health care, hunger, poverty, and other things that indisputably harm children. But since motivation is irrelevant to logic (but not morality) the main concern is how to tell when “think of the children” is used fallaciously.
While there are various ways to use it to empower other fallacies, the general fallacy occurs when the argument depends on the emotional appeal to “think of the children” and fails to establish a connection between the alleged harm (or benefit) and the children. For example, during the war on video games and D&D it was often simply asserted that these games would harm children and hence they should be dealt with appropriately. The error was accepting the conclusion without having adequate evidence to support the claim of harm. No doubt some people sincerely felt that games were dangerous, but however sincere their fear or concern for “the children” might have been, these feelings are no substitute for evidence.
Recently, my adopted state of Florida (and other states) has been waging war on books that reference minorities and LGBT+ people by using “think of the children.” As another example, “think of the children” is being employed to support proposals mandating age verification on the internet. Critics note that “think of the children” scare tactics are being used so that corporations and governments will be able collect more private data and more effectively track people across the internet under the guise of protecting the children.
While we should protect children from real harms (such as pollution, poverty, poor education, lack of health care and hunger) when someone invokes “think of the children” it is wise to check if there is evidence for the alleged connection between the alleged harm (or benefit) and children. If someone is only offering an emotional appeal, this does not mean they are in error, but it means that you have no reason to accept their claim based on what they have provided. It is also wise to check to see if they are acting in good faith. If they seem to otherwise fail to “think of the children” when it comes to such things as pollution, health care, hunger, education and poverty, then it is wise to be suspicious they have other motivations and are, perhaps, merely engaged in a culture war fight. And war never changes.
A Philosopher’s Blog is Now on Substack!
You can subscribe and read for free.