Straw Man

At 1:39 Ron Paul begins to respond to the question of whether or not the advisability of non-interventionist foreign policies changed after 9-11.

In a nutshell, he says that non-intervention is still advisable since foreign intervention was one of the major causes of the 9-11 attack. At 2:05 Paul introduces the principle of non-hypocrisy and asks, "What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico [building a massive embassy and a swarm of military bases]? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us."

The commentator then asks: "Are you suggesting that we invited the 9-11 attacks sir?"

This question is a very clever loaded question that insinuates that Paul was saying something very different from what he actually said. Notice that the insinuation that Paul was, in effect, suggesting that "we deserved it" confuses explanation with justification--and passivity ("blow back") with activity ("invitation").

The insinuated position is then used to characterize Paul's actual position (2:41) [and the crowd falls for it!]. This, of course, is a classic example of a straw man.

At 3:20 Paul should have simply said, "I never said that."

Why do straw man's work? Like red herrings, a slight tweak does the trick...