Informal Fallacies Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Informal Fallacies - Article Example The paper discusses the State of the Union address by the president of the United States, Barack Obama.   In this speech, President Obama said that America was facing a â€Å"Sputnik moment.† This was an interesting premise and one that was designed to gain the attention of millions of Americans, even those who did not remember what Sputnik was. The facts are as follows: Sputnik was a satellite sent into orbit by the Soviet Union. It was the first ever satellite and marked the dawn of the Space Age. Americans were shocked that the Soviet Union was able to beat them in this manner. They believed they were richer and more technologically advanced. Sputnik was a wake-up call. It encouraged America to innovate faster. They were eventually the first country to land a man on the moon. Obama suggests that America has fallen behind countries such as China in terms of economic growth and research. Obama argued that this is a new Sputnik moment that must spur America on.   This is t he fallacy of hasty generalization. It may sound like a persuasive argument but the premise that America in 2011 is like America in the 1950s is a false one, as is the notion that a clear goal such as landing a man on the moon is comparable to increasing economic activity and research. Sometimes nice sounding rhetoric is not effective. The truth is that it was not a concerted government effort that landed a man on the moon, it was the hard work of engineers dedicating themselves to a specific task.