Straw Man
The Straw Man fallacy is an intentional exaggeration or misrepresentation of a person's argument. The result is never refuting the intended argument. The person making this argument can make a statement that is irrelevant to the point they’re trying to make just to make the opponent look bad without true and logical defense. For example, imagine two politicians arguing about global warming, and one of them is not willing to fund research on environmental issues. The other politician could say, “He does not think global warming is important! He must not care about environmental issues!” Just because the politician does not wish to fund research does not mean he/she does not believe it is an issue.
In the Central Florida Future’s article, “Death shouldn’t be an option for mentally ill inmates”, the writer begins by explaining why they feel people who are not mentally
“sane” should not be sentenced to death. Rather than focusing on the argument itself, they begin to include the statement that our government “often gets things wrong”, and that it is “inherently fallible”. Not only does she not give backing and grounds for the fact that the government gets things wrong, but continues to describe the state in a negative way. Just because the government continues to use capital government, it does not necessarily make it “inherently infallible” and wrong too often. Because there was no elaboration on these claims, the argument can become invalid and unsupported.