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"So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home,"(Herbert).
In the introduction to this NY Times article, columnist Bob Herbert addresses problems with government spending. Unfortunately, he commits the logical fallacy of false dichotomy within his argument. In a false dichotomy fallacy the speaker narrows their reasoning so that only two courses of action seem possible. Herbert states that the government is spending all of it's money on the war and as a result, won't be able to allocate funds to schools. This is a fallacy because he insinuates that the only two options will be funding the war or funding schools. This narrows it down to only two options when realistically the government could still put money into both.
hmmm--I'm not sure this works--he's not telling us we can either fund the war or fund schools; he's asking why we have funds for the war, but not for schools.
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