Category Archives: Ad Hominem

Ad Hominem, Dinesh D'Souza

Incorrectly political

Some right wing commentators wear the “politically incorrect” label like a badge of honor. So Glenn Beck, when he asks a Muslim congressman whether he is working for America’s enemies is being politically incorrect, not just ignorant about Muslims, Islam, America’s enemies, and terrorism (to name a few things). What does the phrase “politically correct” mean anyway? If we are to take Beck’s usage, then being “politically incorrect” means being unashamed of one’s ignorance–especially when it’s offensive to a minority group.

But that’s probably not what D’Souza means by it. He writes,

>The reaction I’m eliciting is not entirely new to me. As a college student in the early 1980s, I edited the politically incorrect Dartmouth Review and was frequently accosted by left-wing students and faculty. They called me names back then, too. And at the time I didn’t care. I often informed them that taking on our iconoclastic paper was like wrestling a pig: Not only does it get everyone dirty but the pig likes it.

For him being politically incorrect has meaning in opposition the left wing students and faculty. They were “politically correct” and so against his paper. That phrase, however, has no value here unless it carries with it the supposition that the politically incorrect person is actually correct, and the politically correct person is wrong–but politically in the right place. So, in D’Souza’s mind, the politically incorrect person has the courage to be right.

But this usage confuses contradiction with argument. Just because a view draws a reaction or invites opposition, does not mean it has any merit. As a commenter said recently (citing Monty Python), gainsaying is not argument. Like Beck and O’Reilly, D’Souza has little tolerance for the substance of arguments and so confuses any opposition with his poorly reasoned or researched view with personal opposition to him. Criticisms of his book are personal attacks and so all fights, for him, are dirty. Thus his oddly reversed metaphor. Someone ought to tell him–it’s bad to be the pig.

In case you’re lost, previous posts on this article can be found here.

Ad hominem circumstantial, Dinesh D'Souza

Enemy of the state

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Today the Washington Post has given Dinesh D’Souza a forum to defend his recent book from the near universal chorus of devastating criticisms (many of which concern obvious and colossal errors of fact). But D’Souza doesn’t have the faintest idea how to defend himself, because he does not appreciate or perhaps understand the nature of rational criticism. Sure, much of the criticism was put forward in harsh tones, but that shouldn’t distract D’Souza, a “scholar” at the Hoover Institution, from addressing its content. As he winds up his lengthy apologia pro sterco suo he writes:

>All my arguments can be disputed, but they are neither extreme nor absurd. So why has “The Enemy at Home” been so intemperately excoriated? I can imagine only two reasons. The first is given by James Wolcott himself. I am not, as he says, an unqualified right-wing hack. Rather, I am a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, so Wolcott fears that I will be taken seriously.

When I read the reviews in the New York Times and the Post (Wolcott, as far as I know, hasn’t written a review of the book), I was struck by the arguments of the reviewers. They pointed out that D’Souza’s history was hallucinatory and his logic specious. Those are criticisms relating to the book’s content. But the best D’Souza can do here is attempt to divine the psychological motives of the reviewers. There’s no need at all for that. They have told you that your book is “a national disgrace”.

The second of D’Souza’s conclusion is even more delusional:

>The second reason can be gleaned from the common theme in the reviews: that mine is a dangerous book. But if a book says things that are obviously untrue and can be disproved, then it is not dangerous — it is merely fiction and should be ignored. A book is dangerous only if it exposes something in the culture that some people are eager to keep hidden.

Yours is a dangerous book, dear fellow, because–according to the reviews mind you (the content of which you seem to have ignored)–it has asserted many falsehoods and made appalling arguments. It has lowered the level of the national discussion and emboldened the enemies of civil discourse.

**Update**

James Wolcott did read the book in galley form (click here for the review). Thanks to Vagabond Scholar for the tip.

Ad Hominem, David Brooks, Straw Man, Weak Analogy

Something borrowed

That’s the post. I borrowed almost all of this from someone with more time and a New York Times account to illustrate a point we’ve been trying to make in recent weeks. Most major pundits have been disastrously wrong about Iraq. Wrong in the sense of having held beliefs that (1) did not at the time correspond with reality; and (2) made predictions that did not turn out to be the case and never were likely to turn out to be the case; but most disturbingly, (3) rather than defend the cogency of their own positions they ridiculed those who didn’t have the nous or the spine to agree with them or see things their way. So two examples of the wisdom of David Brooks courtesy of Matthew Yglesias

>1. April 10 2004:

>Come on people, let’s get a grip.

>This week, Chicken Littles like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were ranting that Iraq is another Vietnam. Pundits and sages were spinning a whole series of mutually exclusive disaster scenarios: Civil war! A nationwide rebellion!

>January 25, 2007:

>Iraq is at the beginning of a civil war fought using the tactics of genocide, and it has all the conditions to get much worse. As a Newsweek correspondent, Christian Caryl, wrote recently from Baghdad, “What’s clear is that we’re far closer to the beginning of this cycle of violence than to its end.” As John Burns of The Times said on “Charlie Rose” last night, “Friends of mine who are Iraqis — Shiite, Sunni, Kurd — all foresee a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that would absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing now.”

In April 2004 Brooks attacks the people who suggested imminent disaster (and who were right about it) on the grounds that civil war and national rebellion are logically exclusive. As we have learned–they’re not; it’s possible for all of the Iraqis to fight each other and us at the same time.

>2. September 18, 2004:

>As we saw in El Salvador and as Iraqi insurgents understand, elections suck the oxygen from a rebel army. They refute the claim that violence is the best way to change things. Moreover, they produce democratic leaders who are much better equipped to win an insurgency war.

>January 25, 2007:

>The weakness of the Bush surge plan is that it relies on the Maliki government to somehow be above this vortex. But there are no impartial institutions in Iraq, ready to foster reconciliation. As ABC’s Jonathan Karl notes in The Weekly Standard, the Shiite finance ministries now close banks that may finance Sunni investments. The Saadrist health ministries dismiss Sunni doctors. The sectarian vortex is not fomented by extremists who are appendages to society. The vortex is through and through.

“As we saw in El Salvador. . . ” shows the distance Brooks’s mind had to travel to come up with an analogy. A bad one. El Salvador bears no significant resemblance to Iraq to ground such a comparison. Besides who was it who claimed that “violence is the best way to change things”? I can think of one person.

Ad Hominem, Op-Eds and other opinions

Criticizing an icon

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“It’s hard” Deborah Lipstadt writes in today’s Post, “to criticize an icon.” Not really. It’s only hard if you confuse the icon with the icon’s argument, as she has in an abysmal op-ed that adds nothing of substance to the controversy surrounding Jimmy Carter’s recent book about peace in the Middle East, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. The reason this review adds nothing of substance lies in its insistence on ignoring the kinds of things that make claims such as Carter’s wrong, such as errors of fact and errors of reasoning. On the former Ms.Lipstadt writes, “Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book.”

But it’s easy to criticize this review. Here are two examples.

Lipstadt criticizes Carter for not discussing the Holocaust in his book about Israel and Palestine. But the President who actually attempted to do something about peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the President who signed the legislation creating the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., does not need to establish his credibility on Holocaust related questions. Besides, his failure to mention the Holocaust in a book about the current state of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians doesn’t constitute some kind of gross oversight–it represents rather a focus on questions relevant to the treatment of the Palestinians, who were not Nazis in a past life. Whatever current idiocy issues forth from the mouth of Iran’s Prime Minister Ahmadinejad or Hamas or Saddam or whoever is a separate matter from the Nazi Holocaust.

Second, Lipstadt damns Israel with faint praise:

>Carter’s minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as “one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation” in the world. When the interviewer asked “Worse than Rwanda?” Carter said that he did not want to discuss the “ancient history” of Rwanda.

Well, Rwanda was horrible. So probably no. And that’s a dumb thing to say about Rwanda. But it’s dumbness however colossal doesn’t do anything to excuse Israel. She only makes it worse when she mentions Darfur:

>To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let’s say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians’ situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?

No, let’s say it’s not equivalent–it’s only half as bad. It’s failure not to be as bad as Darfur doesn’t get Israel off the hook, and it doesn’t meant that Carter is wrong to claim that the policies of the state of Israel violate human rights.

It would be pointless here to go into Lipstadt’s accusations of anti-semitism willing or not against Jimmy Carter for his criticisms of the media. I’ll let Eric Alterman do that for me.

And if you read that, you’ll notice that Alterman doesn’t like the book either–but it least he talks about the book: “to tell you the truth, it’s not much of a book. I looked for a segment I could excerpt on my website and couldn’t find anything that was really worthy. It’s simplistic and homiletic and gives only part of the story most of the time. Jimmy Carter is in some ways a great man, and in almost all ways a good man, but he’s not much of a historian.”

**minor edits for clarity–3:08pm.

Ad Hominem, Appeal to Ignorance, General discussion, Politicians

Shorts: Shifting the Burden of Argument and Ad Hominem

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Blitzer: Well you don’t have any evidence though, right?

Rep. McHenry: Well look at the fact points…four weeks out from a national election…

Blitzer: Yes or no: do you have any evidence? Do you have any evidence Congressman?

Rep. McHenry: Do you have any evidence that says they weren’t involved?

Blitzer: I’m just asking if you’re just throwing out an accusation or if you have any hard evidence.

Rep. McHenry: No, it’s a question Wolf. The question remains, were they involved? And if they were not involved they need to say clearly, and it’s a question, it’s not an accusation.

Blitzer: Well, they are denying that they had anything to do with this. source

Sort of like an Appeal to Ignorance. Maybe better described as an illegitimate shift of the burden of argument.

“I know the speaker didn’t go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day,” said Shays, R-4th District, referring to the 1969 incident in which the Massachusetts Democrat drove a car that plunged into the water and a young campaign worker died.

“Dennis Hastert didn’t kill anybody,” he added. source

Nice little ad hominem. Maybe even a form of the tu quoque?

Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, False Cause, False Dichotomy, General discussion, Straw Man, Suppressed Evidence

Call-in

We pulled the following from the comments of Mr.Mayo. It's an analysis of Bush's speech mentioned here. Here’s what i caught: >“The issue on the economy is a big issue in any campaign. And I want the people of this district to know, plain and simple, that if Richard’s opponent wins, your taxes will go up. Make no mistake about it. The Democrat Party is anxious to get their hands on your money.” False cause with perhaps a little ad hominem abusive thrown in at the end. >“The key issue in this campaign is the security of the United States of America. You got to understand a lot of my thinking about the world changed on September the 11th, 2001. I make a lot of decisions on your behalf, and many of those decisions were affected by the fact that we lost nearly 3,000 of our citizens, 3,000 innocent lives on our soil on that fateful day. I vowed then, and I’ve vowed ever since, to use every national asset at my disposal to protect the American people.” Perhaps it’s a reach, but there seems to be bit of suppressed evidence here, namely that the war he is positing as protecting the American people has claimed more American lives than did September 11th. If he’s going to cite the loss of lives on 9/11 as the basis for his war, then he’s ignoring the fact that the war has cost more than 9/11, monetarily and in lives lost. >“You can’t negotiate with these people. You cannot hope that they will go away. I like to remind people, therapy isn’t going to work. The best way to deal with these folks is to bring them to justice before they hurt America again. “ Classic Bushman (can i coin that term in place of the strawman? he uses the thing so often maybe it should bear his name). Has anyone proposed negotiating with Al Queda? Or having a “therapy” session with Bush, Cheney, Osama, and Zawahiri down at Bob Newhart’s office? Do we need to be “reminded” of this? Does he seriously believe this?! He’s created a whole new genre of political discourse. Rather than distort the argument of his opponent, he creates a whole new opponent along with the argument. >“Our fellow citizens ought to listen to the words of Osama bin Laden, and Mr. Zawahiri, who is his number two in al Qaeda. They have clearly stated that Iraq is a central front in their war against us. “ Again, suppressing the evidence. Islamism was strictly nefas in Saddam’s Iraq; then we march in, guns blazing, Texas-style and turn it into a breeding ground for terrorism. Yet once again, he pretends there was no antecedent cause to Iraq’s becoming Osama’s recruiting poster. >“Al Qaeda’s leadership has told us loud and clear in their own words their ambitions are to develop new safe haven from which to launch attacks.” Now he’s Bushmanning Osama! They don’t want to create a “safe haven” in Iraq, for the simple reason that they already have a safe haven in the Afghnai/Pakistani borderlands, which was made possible at least in part because we couldn’t press our attack there because we were gearing up for an invasion of Iraq. They just want to point to Iraq and say to disenfranchised Muslim youth,”Look! We were right all along! They do want to come over here and take your land, your oil, and your religion.” >“The House Democrat Leader summed up her party’s approach to the midterm elections. She said this — and I quote — she said this election “should not be about national security.” I strongly disagree. The security of this country comes first, as far as I’m concerned. And this government, with supporters like Richard Pombo, will do everything we can to protect you. (Applause.) Of course, to give the Leader some credit, given her party’s record on national security, I can see why she feels that way. (Laughter.) I wouldn’t want to be talking about the record, either. “ Ad Hominem Circumstantial. Perhaps what Pelosi really meant is there might be other pertinent issues that should occupy the campaign slate, but then again, she’s just saying that because she’s a Democrat and they can’t talk national security, because their poor record in this area predisposes them to focus on other areas.

Ad Hominem, Straw Man

Prejudiced

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There is a ballot initiative in my native state of Michigan which would make all affirmative action programs (based on race or ethnicity) illegal under Michigan law (similar initiatives were passed in California and Washington state). Touchy subject, race. George Will tells us this morning that some opponents of the measure do not want “to argue the merits”:

>some opponents of MCRI have adopted four tactics, none of which involves arguing the merits of racial preferences and all of which attempt — in the name of “civil rights,” of course — to prevent Michiganders from being allowed to vote on MCRI. The tactics have included:

And he goes on to list four separate charges, which, if true (and let’s assume they are), demonstrate the hypocrisy (at least) of some opponents of the Michigan ballot measure. But demonstrating the hyprocisy of some of an initiative’s detractors does not demonstrate the forthrightness of some or any of its supporters. Nor does it mean they’re right. Lots of voters–even lots of serious political writers–do not want to argue the merits of their case; they’d rather argue about whether the opponent was wounded in Vietnam, or whether he’s an effete snob who would never shop at Wal Mart. The merits of the case–whatever they are (and if they are)–still wait around to be argued.

And now to that argument:

>Because the plain language of MCRI is appealing, some opponents argue that MCRI would have terrible “unintended consequences.” It might, they say, eliminate single-sex public schools (Michigan has none; eight of 3,748 schools have a few voluntary single-sex classes) and breast-cancer screening or might stop a Department of Natural Resources program aimed at helping Michigan women become hunters (the initiative concerns only hiring, contracting and public schools).

>Given the caliber of opposition arguments. . .

These are the best arguments Will could find? If so, it looks as if Will doesn’t want to argue the merits either. And least not seriously. He wants to (1) malign all of the supporters with the hyporcritical actions of some of them and (2) find the weakest arguments against the initiative he supports and make fun of them in order to lend support to the view that the supporters of the initiative

>are provoking remnants of the civil rights movement, which now is just a defender of a racial spoils system, to demonstrate its decadence, even thuggishness.

And everyone knows that’s a straw man.

Ad Hominem, General discussion

Foul mouths

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Sometimes calling people names is not fallacious. And so, David Broder:

>When Powell wrote that Bush’s demand would compound the world’s “doubt [about] the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” he was appealing to Jefferson’s standard.

>It is a standard this administration has flagrantly rejected. Bush was elected twice, over Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, whose know-it-all arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself. The country thought Bush was a pleasant, down-to-earth guy who would not rock the boat. Instead, swayed by some inner impulse or the influence of Dick Cheney, he has proved to be lawless and reckless. He started a war he cannot finish, drove the government into debt and repeatedly defied the Constitution.

No inference is being explicitly or implicitly drawn on the basis of the meanie-meanie-bo-beanie remark (and it doesn’t seem to play a functional roll in this paragraph or the op-ed as a whole). Since no inferences are being drawn, if Broder is guilty of anything, it’s uttering or uncritically repeating dubious memes about Gore, Kerry and Bush. But that’s a question for those who study and analyse the formation and dissemination of the “conventional wisdom.” He continues:

>Now, however, you can see the independence party forming — on both sides of the aisle. They are mobilizing to resist not only Bush but also the extremist elements in American society — the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left and the doctrinaire religious extremists on the right who would convert their faith into a whipping post for their opponents.

We might point out that being vituperative and foul-mouthed doesn’t mean you don’t have an argument, and that one finds many of the same bloggers on the right (add that to religious extremists and the balance shifts!), but that’s a factual point that we’d have to establish by reference to the relevant evidence. My anecdotal sampling of the blogosphere hardly seems sufficient evidence for such claims, so I won’t make them. Maybe Broder shouldn’t either, but he’s not arguing from this, he’s reporting it as fact. So once again, we’d leave that to the foul-mouthed blogers to discuss.

Ad Hominem, George Will, Straw Man

Willful ad hominem

To add to J.’s discussion of Will’s straw liberal argument:

The absurdity of the argument becomes clearest to me in his final example:

>The current issue of the American Prospect, an impeccably progressive magazine, carries a full-page advertisement denouncing something responsible for “lies, deception, immorality, corruption, and widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses”” and for having brought ”great hardship and despair to people and communities throughout the world.”

>What is this focus of evil in the modern world? North Korea? The Bush administration? Fox News Channel? No, it is Coca-Cola (number of servings to Americans of the company’s products each week: 2.5 billion).

So, a progressive magazine has an advertisement criticizing Coca-Cola for labor abuse, human rights abuse, and environmental abuse and Will’s response is to point out the number of coke’s served each week.

This staggers me. What possible relevance to the ad could the number of Cokes possess? Is anyone questioning whether Coke tastes good? Or that it sells well?

Will might respond that it shows the degree to which ordinary americans like the taste of coke and progressive magazines take advertisements from people who think Coca-Cola engages in various forms of injustice. True. But again, what possible relevance to the ad does that have? And, even if we read Will’s comment this way, does it even show that progressives are “out of touch” with americans? That a magazine takes an advertisement from someone criticizing Coca-Cola, suggests this as much as the NYT taking an advertisement from Firefox (1 billion Microsoft Explorers bought!) suggest that the NYT is out of touch with americans. The argument, even given the kindest possible interpretation is stunningly misleading.

But then it becomes clear. As pointed out yesterday. It isn’t responding to actual arguments that Will is interested in. He only wants to portray liberals as condescending and out of touch with regular Americans and the rest of the ideological caricature that substitutes for serious criticism of liberalism in the last 20 years.

Just as in the case of Wal-Mart, Will doesn’t have any interest in responding to the actual criticisms leveled against it, but instead he engages in quasi-populist demagoguery and ad hominem argument based on the caricature of liberals as snobs and elitist. Note the wonderful ad hominem swipe at John Kerry:

>Which vexes liberals such as John Kerry. (He and his helpmeet last shopped at Wal-Mart when?)

Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem Abusive

It’s not a fallacy if you do it

8 Comments

Reasoning fallaciously is like lying–it’s not wrong if *you* do it. On that topic, I stumbled across this from the blogosphere:

>Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. [Sigmund Freud – unsubstantiated attribution]

>Then I get this email telling me that when I apply the epithet “idiots” to those with whom I disagree, I am guilty of using the logical phallacy, oops, Freudian slip, I mean using the logical fallacy of “Ad Hominem”. Instead of attacking the arguments and premises of my opponent, I attack on the basis of some irrelevant fact, like his intelligence.

>So I ask my dear readers, what do you make of this? [with a tip of the turban Hat Tip to GOP and College]

[missing here is a picture of a protester with a sign that reads: “If Hezbollah hides among civilians, the IDF has no choice– It must hold fire”]

>liberal idiot moron imbecile

>For the life of me, I tried to think of the correct appellative to apply to this leftwing nutjob and after hours of excruciating and rigorous exercise of my little grey cells I could not come up with anything more accurate, more descriptive, more truthful than Liberal Idiot. And although, in the main, it is a shabby argument to use, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a liberal is just an idiot.

>Anyone else out there want to give it a try?

I’ll give it a try. And yes, Jimmy, you are guilty of the fallacy of ad hominem. If you don’t know what that is, then click that link for other examples. Or just go here for an explanation.

The reason–yes there is a reason–you’re guilty of this fallacy is this. If the fellow with the poster makes *an assertion* you consider idiotic, then it’s (a) up to *you* to show the assertion is idiotic and (b) conclude as a result that the person making the assertion is an idiot. (a) is easy. You only need an argument. (b) is harder, because idiots say smart things all of the time, and smart people say idiotic things even more often. So the idiocy of the sign-holder, you see, is irrelevant to the idiocy of the sign, unless you show, as you probably could, that they’re linked.

So, just because you can’t think of of an argument against a sign-holding protester (a pointless endeavor in our estimation–argue against people with arguments for Chrissake–doesn’t excuse you from the basic rules of rational discourse.