Now, more than ever, our country is polarized by our political beliefs. Quite often it feels as if each person has to belong to one singular party and cannot agree with any ideas put forth by the other. And if you do disagree with someone, it causes mass Facebook arguments or huge confrontations on the street. Just this past Friday I witnessed a group of people screaming at each other because someone was protesting on campus. Because our society has taken a turn towards this mentality, bumper stickers like pictured above have come into our world. The advertisement attempts to use a logical appeal to describe “liberal logic,” but it fails to do so because its statements are based on fallacies.

The main issue with the bumper sticker is that it presupposes all immigrants are terrorists, and therefore, liberals think terrorists have rights because most liberals are pro-immigration. These two statements do not match up. Some liberals may support non-threatening immigrants, who are trying to leave their oppressive lives, yet some may not. The bumper sticker implies that all liberals have the same ideologies, when that just may not be true. Their statements are fallacies because they hastily generalize all people of a specific group into having the same beliefs and characteristics. Also, anti-immigration supporters cannot refrain from hastily generalizing all immigrants as some form of terrorists, when most of them just want a better life for their families. Entire nationalities are blacklisted from people’s hearts because a few people of this specific descent have caused acts of terrorism. It is also strange because according to studies from The Huffington Post, caucasian men are a larger threat than Muslims (the so called terrorists mentioned in this picture) (Grossman, 2017). So, it is honestly comical that people actually remark that liberals support terrorists, let alone state that they have rights. I am almost positive that no person genuinely feels as if terrorists deserve the rights of an everyday person. This bumper sticker just uses quick statements to grab the attention of people who pass it, but their statements refuse to acknowledge facts and reasoning.  

The other issue with this car advertisement is that it somehow presupposes the ideology that christians are at a disadvantage in this society, and that liberals are not christians. This country established itself for reasons of religious freedom, whether practicing or not. So, for this bumper sticker to state that liberals do not want christians to have rights is just incorrect, because most of the time they just want the religious freedom to not have christian ideals forced onto them. For example, any person that believes abortion should be outlawed in this country because “only god can take or give life”  infringes on other people’s right to religious freedom. Each person has the right to their beliefs, and therefore the right to make their own decisions in their personal life, not in our government. Plus I know many christians who support the liberal ideals, and I would find anyone hard-pressed to debate that they do not believe in their own rights.

Many people use quick, flashy statements as a way to grab people’s attention to communicate their message, but it is our responsibility to use logical reasoning to sift through these statements, and realize that they are built on no factual evidence. If we continue to do this, our democracy will survive. Who knows what will happen without it.