TDB | 'Fallacy of the Day'

Ali over at Think Progress commits a common error, dismissing good ideas simply because they belong to an 'unacceptable' class 0r category:

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group “devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.” When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York Cirty before invoking the military’s tactics in Iraq as the model for crime-fighting:

MCCAIN: And some of those tactics — you mention the war in Iraq — are like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement, etc, etc.

There is nothing wrong with doing exactly what McCain proposes. If a proposal includes good ideas - in this case, the exact right ideas - then surely we should not dismiss it, as Ali does, simply because of a categorical misalignment. We are naturally inclined to recoil when we encounter things 'military' in a place assumed to be well within the realm of 'domestic law and order'. But it's stupid to assume that because something is part of, in this case, military m.o. it is exclusively so. It can also work in other situations. In fact, in our case, it's only fitting that it should work in other situations: what the military provides is a basic of security and order; and it's only upon such foundations that institutions can function and law can reign.

The 'military tactics' used in New York (occasional instances of indefensible and egregious actions notwithstanding) were not employed in order to establish military authority; rather, they were used to prevent a kind of military authority from from having to be established. They were used to return to a state where 'domestic law and order' - and the family, community and governmental institutions that essential to it - could function. And that is exactly exactly what is needed in many of our crime-ridden urban areas.