Monthly Archives: January 2013

Ad hominem tu quoque, Argument from Inconsistency

If the other guy were president

We’ve had a few discussions of subjunctive tu quoque here at the NS. (See Colin’s original post HERE). Well, here’s another version of it. Sean Paige at the National Review Online is concerned about a recent suggestion from two law professors that President Obama pursue environmental regulatory reform without including Congress. (NB, the title of his essay is “Under the Green Hammer,” a classic!) Here’s Paige’s reply:

But one can’t help wondering what they would say about the propriety and constitutionality of what they are urging if a conservative Republican were president. I’m guessing, at the risk of putting words into their mouths, that a Republican president who embarked on a concerted effort to ram an agenda through without even consulting Congress would stand accused by the two professors of having undemocratic, perhaps even dictatorial, tendencies.

Fair enough, but it’s worth wondering what Sean Paige would say, too.  I’m guessing that he’d be very proud of the Conservative President’s leadership in ignoring a Congress full of liberals. Hey, when we play the subjunctive tu quoque game, we get to stipulate counterfactuals so we all go down.

General discussion

Guns are people too

Fig. 1: an apt analogy for gun control

Unsurprisingly, there has been some talk recently about whether to ban certain types of firearms.  This produced the following comment from a former president of the National Rifle Association:

“And they even admit this is about banning the ugliest guns, it’s about cosmetics and it has nothing to do about how a firearm works,” host Ginny Simone said toward the end of the segment.

“Well, you know, banning people and things because of the way they look went out a long time ago,” Hammer responded. “But here they are again. The color of a gun. The way it looks. It’s just bad politics.”

People and things?

via Balloon Juice.

General discussion

You cannot go against nature

Fig. 1. Natural

Cardinal George sadly continues to embarrass himself on the subject of gay marriage.  He has issued a letter which some unfortunate Catholics will find in their Sunday bulletins.  From the Tribune.

Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George officially entered the political fray today, issuing a letter that urges parishioners to contact state legislators and voice opposition to gay marriage.

“Civil laws that establish ‘same sex marriage’ create a legal fiction,” George wrote in a letter sent to priests today. “The State has no power to create something that nature itself tells us is impossible.”

Someone wiser than me once said that “you cannot go against nature, because when you do, it’s part of nature too:”  See Figure 1.

There’s a fellow somewhere up on I-94 in Wisconsin whose home boasts a sign: Study Natural Law.  I think the Cardinal might have studied with him.

Also, Happy New Year.