Tony Perkins, of Focus on the Family fame, shows the uninitiated how to iron man. For those playing along at home, an iron man is a kind of reverse straw man. Instead of weakening an argument so as more easily to defeat it, an iron man strengthens an argument so as to make it more difficult to defeat. Both violate the dialectical principle of fidelity, and so are wrong.<\/p>\n
Today we have Perkins doing the iron-manning (rather than being iron-manned, as would be more common in his case). Here he is speaking on the subject of the President's Birth Certificate (via Think Progress<\/a>):<\/p>\n PERKINS: [The media] have attempted to marginalize anyone who challenges this administration on those principles and that driving ideology. You know, it goes back to what they did to those that questioned the issue of his birth certificate. Look, I don’t know about all that, but I will tell you this, it’s a legitimate issue<\/strong> from the standpoint of what the Constitution says.<\/p>\n And I think what we’ve done is we’ve done great harm to foundation of our government by marginalizing and attacking anyone who brings up a legitimate issue.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Holy Batman is that awful. Now, to be fair, whether a candidate for President is born in the USA is a constitutional issue. An iron man view of Perkin's awful argument would stop there (as does his iron-man view of birtherism). <\/p>\n But Perkins is saying more than that. He saying it is still an open question in this circumstance–i.e., Obama may not have been born in the USA. But that matter has been settled on all reasonable accounts, and those who continue to believe that it's false or questionable do not have good, sound constitutional<\/strong> points to make. They have factual<\/strong> points to make–namely in this case the President was not born in the USA. <\/p>\n This is of course false a thousand times over. <\/p>\n Calling them loony-toons is precisely what is called for. <\/p>\n *"the stone man," as in Il Commendatore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tony Perkins, of Focus on the Family fame, shows the uninitiated how to iron man. For those playing along at home, an iron man is a kind of reverse straw man. Instead of weakening an argument so as more easily to defeat it, an iron man strengthens an argument so as to make it more difficult to defeat. Both violate the … Continue reading L’uomo di sasso*<\/span> \n