Counter Arguements
Counter Argument Essays
Prompt #3: Bruce Hughes
P1: President Obama said that small business owners’ success was possible only due to the acts of the government.
P2: Obama made this absurd assertion using his prior experience as a community organizer.
P3: The people created the government with a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution.
P4: The people come before the government.
P5: Obama’s speech is an insult to those who work so hard, taking time to get educated with the tools they need in college and grad school to make their business successful.
P6: When choosing to go to college these same people lost years of happy goof-off time.
P7: They made a conscious decision to do something and followed through.
P8: Their effort, not the governments, made their business grow and succeed.
C: Obama is wrong for saying that small business owners could do anything without the government’s help.
Bruce is unfortunate enough to use a false dichotomy with suppressed evidence. The premises are all true except for P4 where one could argue that those two documents were created by a very small percentage of the colonists. P5 is neither true nor false because it is an opinion but is plausible. The important evidence that was left out was what exactly Obama said in his speech. Hughes uses a false dichotomy just by leaving out all the other factors putting the deciding choice between just the government or just the business owner who causes their success. With this there is loads of suppressed evidence. For example, many small business owners fail if they couldn’t manage to get that government loan or for whatever cause. Not viewing the government as a large group of people who are also taking years out of their life to be educated to become successful so that they can help others, such as small business owners, with having a better life (whether or on not this ends up happening). This argument is uncogent based on the fact that there is suppressed evidence so it is
Prompt #3: Bruce Hughes
P1: President Obama said that small business owners’ success was possible only due to the acts of the government.
P2: Obama made this absurd assertion using his prior experience as a community organizer.
P3: The people created the government with a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution.
P4: The people come before the government.
P5: Obama’s speech is an insult to those who work so hard, taking time to get educated with the tools they need in college and grad school to make their business successful.
P6: When choosing to go to college these same people lost years of happy goof-off time.
P7: They made a conscious decision to do something and followed through.
P8: Their effort, not the governments, made their business grow and succeed.
C: Obama is wrong for saying that small business owners could do anything without the government’s help.
Bruce is unfortunate enough to use a false dichotomy with suppressed evidence. The premises are all true except for P4 where one could argue that those two documents were created by a very small percentage of the colonists. P5 is neither true nor false because it is an opinion but is plausible. The important evidence that was left out was what exactly Obama said in his speech. Hughes uses a false dichotomy just by leaving out all the other factors putting the deciding choice between just the government or just the business owner who causes their success. With this there is loads of suppressed evidence. For example, many small business owners fail if they couldn’t manage to get that government loan or for whatever cause. Not viewing the government as a large group of people who are also taking years out of their life to be educated to become successful so that they can help others, such as small business owners, with having a better life (whether or on not this ends up happening). This argument is uncogent based on the fact that there is suppressed evidence so it is