{"id":489,"date":"2007-10-12T08:56:11","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T12:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=489"},"modified":"2007-10-12T08:57:31","modified_gmt":"2007-10-12T12:57:31","slug":"ad-puerum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=489","title":{"rendered":"Ad puerum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and then E.J.Dionne puts up his dukes.  This time it concerns the slime campaign against the 12-year old <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democrats.org\/a\/2007\/09\/twelve-year-old.php\">Graeme Frost<\/a>, a boy who had the misfortune to qualify for Maryland&#8217;s SCHIP program (an expanded version of which Bush <a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/gst\/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0DD1330F937A35753C1A9619C8B63\">vetoed<\/a>).  The young Mr. Frost, who benefited from the SCHIP program after a serious car accident (and brain stem injury) delivered the Democratic response to Bush&#8217;s veto.  In response to this, many mainstream&#8211;and this is an important classification&#8211;conservative personalities attacked young Mr.Frost and his parents, claiming they were undeserving of such federal benefits (among much else). <\/p>\n<p>>So rather than just condemn the right-wingers as meanies, <strong>let&#8217;s take their claims seriously<\/strong>. Doing so makes clear that they are engaged in a perverse and incoherent form of class warfare.<\/p>\n<p>>The left is accused of all manner of sins related to covetousness and envy whenever it raises questions about who benefits from Bush&#8217;s tax cuts and mentions the yachts such folks might buy or the mansions they might own. But here is a family with modest possessions doing everything conservatives tell people they should do, and the right trashes them for getting help to buy health insurance for their children.<\/p>\n<p>>Most conservatives favor government-supported vouchers that would help Graeme attend his private school, but here they turn around and criticize him for . . . attending a private school. Federal money for private schools but not for health insurance? <strong>What&#8217;s the logic here<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>There isn&#8217;t any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and then E.J.Dionne puts up his dukes. This time it concerns the slime campaign against the 12-year old Graeme Frost, a boy who had the misfortune to qualify for Maryland&#8217;s SCHIP program (an expanded version of which Bush vetoed). The young Mr. Frost, who benefited from the SCHIP program after a serious car &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=489\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ad puerum<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,34,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ad-hominem-abusive","category-argument-analysis","category-ejdionne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}