George Will argues that there is too much bipartisanship in Congress rather than too little. He provides several examples of bills that won bipartisan support in Congress. He then turns his attention to subsidized student loans which receive bipartisan support in Congress. He argues that they are paid for by taxpayers who do not have a college education, and that they encourage inequality because college graduates will have a higher lifetime income than the poor taxpayers who paid for their loan subsidies.
Rather than tearing apart his argument about student loans, I want to point how he appealed to the emotions of his target audience in the last part of the article. He concluded the article by referring to a comment made by a woman student after a speech made by Obama at her college. According to George Will, she was more interested in free birth control, provided by government, than in low cost student loans. We certainly would not want to subsidize loans for women who want government to provide free birth control.
George Will's column is syndicated widely. It is picked up by many small town newspapers. His readers get a steady diet of opinion that is heavily colored by appeals to their emotionally held values. It is one of the principle means by which he gains support for the questionable lines of reason that he provides in his op-eds. He is also a regular "talking head" on many of the TV news shows. He is one of the "serious people" who is willing to attack popular government programs with the latest ideas from the conservative "think tanks".
No comments:
Post a Comment