Ad Hominem is the strongest form of argument! Only an idiot would say otherwise!

I am told that most Liberals and Progressives are unaware that the Conservatives claim that the kind of bureaucracy-mandated death referred to in the previous article would and must occur under Obamacare.

It has been a puzzle to me for decades how the Liberals could fail to understand basic rules of cause and effect, such as that when politicians force the market to lower prices on any good or services, the politicians must assign bureaucrats to ration those goods and services, and they are rationed according to political considerations, i.e., the weakest voting bloc suffers first and most.

Or such as that you cannot keep your cake and eat it too.

It has also been a puzzle for decades how Liberals could fail to understand that an ad hominem argument is not a logically valid form of argument.

I would recall many a time asking a Leftish what he would think of my words had they been uttered by some other man, presumably one of better moral character, or not a white Christian male, or whathaveyou. I don’t recall even one ever answering the question, or apologizing, or showing any awareness of their lapse in reason.

I have never heard a Liberal, for example, argue against what was intercepted in the Venona cables, or found in the KGB archives, but to this day I have heard them accusing Senator McCarthy of orchestrating a “witchhunt” and referring to Soviet spies and fellow travelers and useful idiots as innocent victims of irrational popular paranoia. I have heard many a Liberal denounce the Tea Party for being racist or being insincere or being violent, but never heard any Liberal denounce the Tea Party’s argument or principles, or even to show that they were aware, unlike the Occupy Wallstreet Movement, that the argument or principles existed.

I discovered, to my shock, despite all the publicity surrounding, say, Sarah Palin’s claim that death panels (as they have in other countries with socialized medicine) would be appointed in America, that most Leftists are simply unaware that the claim is being made.

They do not hear and dismiss these claims, they simply never hear the claims.

In my life so far, I have met exactly one Leftist who does not make ad hominem attacks. It is not their default mode of argument, it is their only mode of argument.I have always wondered why.

Why? Surely they were not persuaded by such a cheap and transparently childish tactic — or is every Liberal a Liberal because someone called him names, and to escape that shame, he adopts a set of incoherent beliefs and ritualized fetish-words? That could not be, for then the first Conservative who mocked him would likewise shame him into being Conservative.

With a thunderbolt of astonished clarity, I suddenly realized why this is, or, rather, what the great benefit intentional or not would be: if a man says that an opponent argues that price fixing causes rationing, or that politicians cannot be trusted to make decisions over your baby’s health, that man spreads his opponent’s message, even while denouncing it; but if that man denounces the opponent, saying he is a tool of moneyed power, or is a member of an ‘astroturf’ movement rather than a grassroots opposition, then no one who hears that man hears the message. All they know is that they opponent is a man of bad character.

It is simple, simplistic, and effective.

It fits into the paranoid fantasy world that describes all politics as a conspiracy of shadowy evil powers, Jews or International Bankers or ‘the Establishment’ or Capitalists or Crypto-racists or the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, versus the scattered and helpless victims-groups.

It fits into the Manichean worldview of the Left. If every war on earth is a war between perfectly pure angels of the Left and perfectly evil racistsexisthomophobicislamophobicglobalwarmingdenying devils of the Right, then logically merely establishing one bad or selfish motive characterizes the opponent as “Rightwing” ergo a devil ergo wrong by definition without the need to discover his argument or know his position. It is refuting without taking the effort to refute; it is thinking without the effort of thought.

And, with the advent of Marxist or Freudian pseudoscience, the motive of the opponent can be declared to be unknown to the opponent. All the Marxist need do is claim that the alleged scientific rules of history show that each category of economic activity (wage-earning, investing, renting land) produces a separate species of man whose interests are all identical and yet whose interests with Darwinian ruthlessness oppose the other separate species, and further that the economic conclusions of each category are self interested self deception, an ideological superstructure unaware of the basic historical forces producing the conflict. The Freudian has a simpler defense mechanism — all he need do is pretend that he understands the mind of the person being denounced better than that person himself. And you will see this over and over again in the mouths of the Modern liberal.

I should have realized it long ago. It is obvious once you see it.

 

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