{"id":3999,"date":"2013-01-30T20:47:20","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T01:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3999"},"modified":"2013-01-30T20:47:20","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T01:47:20","slug":"when-ad-populum-identification-itself-is-a-fallacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3999","title":{"rendered":"When ad populum identification itself is a fallacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Purple<\/a> has diagnosed the Republican Party with a case of Stockholm Syndrome.\u00c2\u00a0 They identify with their oppressors, now.\u00c2\u00a0 Specifically, liberal Democrats.<\/p>\n

Turn on MSNBC these days and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see a non-stop metronome of post-Romney Republican flogging. You want this to stop?! Then pander to Hispanics! Give up on entitlements!<\/em> It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enough to send you thumbing through the Geneva Conventions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, he just made a torture analogy.\u00c2\u00a0 Ignore that.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s the meat of the argument.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that you lose an election, argues Purple, isn’t evidence that you’re wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, it’s evidence that you’re just principled.\u00c2\u00a0 The electorate is just… well… you know…\u00c2\u00a0 citizens of a democracy, and so stupid. [Here’s<\/a> an old post on what I’m starting to call The Plato Principle, <\/strong>without fail invoked by losing parties of elections.]\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s Purple, again, on why electoral results aren’t reasons to change any policy planks in the Republican platform.<\/p>\n

Certain conservative quarters are starting to sound like political strategy shops, fretting over which principles to jettison so they can win an election and make the abuse stop. Forget the Resurrection or American Founding or French Revolution. For these commentators, the formative historical moment for conservatives is now the 2012 election.. . . . This is such spectacularly bad logic that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tough to know where to begin<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The fact that Purple invoked logic (particularly, of the\u00c2\u00a0 “spectacularly bad” kind) is what caught my eye.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s the first line of argument, again, on the Plato Principle<\/strong>: what wins elections is only what appeals to the stupid and easily moved by their debased self-interest, so is likely wrong<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 So the fact that 2012 went against the Republicans is good news.\u00c2\u00a0 The degenerate idiots don’t like them.<\/p>\n

The second line of argument is that the torturers have a hidden agenda with their criticisms.<\/p>\n

Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start with the fact that the right\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Democrat tormentors don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want a legitimate opposition party. They want a single Democratic Party, in agreement so it can pass its agenda. . . . Entitlements. Spending. Taxes. The debt. Regulatory policy. Healthcare. Abortion. Gun control.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the next line, which is that one shouldn’t take critical input from those who you disagree with, as they are not only wrong, but also are out to make you change your mind<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Once we’ve gotten to the point where finding reasons to agree with others on anything is taken as a form of fallacious reasoning (again, I’m thinking that Purple’s main line of criticism is that in democracies, ad populum is rampant), we’ve hit the point where fallacy-hunting itself is a meta-form of fallacy. [N.B<\/em>., John’s got a really great post on meta-fallacies from a few years back HERE<\/a>].<\/p>\n

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Matt Purple has diagnosed the Republican Party with a case of Stockholm Syndrome.\u00c2\u00a0 They identify with their oppressors, now.\u00c2\u00a0 Specifically, liberal Democrats. Turn on MSNBC these days and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see a non-stop metronome of post-Romney Republican flogging. You want this to stop?! Then pander to Hispanics! Give up on entitlements! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enough to send you … Continue reading When ad populum identification itself is a fallacy<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,204,23],"tags":[780],"class_list":["post-3999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appeal-to-the-people","category-specious-allegations-of-fallacy","category-weak-analogy","tag-argumentum-ad-populum-fallacious-kind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4000,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3999\/revisions\/4000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}