Letters to the Editor
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Suggested Book Title
Standing in the Shadows of Real Men: The Republican Boys' Lament
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On the military career of Commander CooCoo Bananas...
Anoymous the Top Gun wrote:
If you spit on that, then you spit on the service of every single soldier, sailor, airman and Marine who served during the Cold War but didn't see any actual combat because of where he was stationed or what his MOS was.
No, I spit on officers who desert. They set the example, so the penalty for their criminal acts should be very high indeed.
George W Bush is a deserter. John Kerry and Al Gore went to 'Nam; George W Bush plainy marked his dream sheet as "don't wanna leave the confines of CONUS"...and then got his flight status revoked, transferred to Alabama, and neglected to put in his weekends. With no consequences at all.
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titles
Unreal Men
(In)Action Figures
and so on.
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Boy, did I come late to this party
My suggestions for a title with apologies if they have been mentioned before:
Real men are Right
Real Fellas
Brokeback Mountain Men.
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Orson
Here's an example for you:
A: Bush lied about WMD in Iraq.
B: You have lied before, therefore you are just a hypocrite for pointing that out.
A: That's a pointless ad hominem argument.
"A" clearly doesn't understand the meaning of "ad hominem." Calling someone a hypocrite, and offering simple proof of such, is not ad hominem. Glenn has attempted to say exactly this several times.
I also concur with lupercus that you make a false equivalency between lying in general and lying about a critical rationale for a massive war and occupation. Change B's response to "You have lied before about something to get a nation into an unnecessary war, therefore you are just a hypocrite for pointing that out," to make the comparison fair.
Anyway, your point has been amply heard, and now you do it a disservice by repeating it ad nauseum.
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Are We Not Men ? (title suggestion - h/t Devo)
or Why the Right-Wing's Obsession With Manliness is Destroying American Politics.
Child of the 70's that I am, it was the first thing that popped into my head...
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Title suggestion: 'The Peter Principle'
I realize it's already been used. But Glenn likes the clever pun (witness 'A Tragic Legacy', in light of Bush's leaving a tragic legacy behind, AND having gotten into Yale largely as a "legacy", i.e., the son of an important alum). So, that's my suggestion: The Peter Principle.
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@lupercus
>>If you want to assert that me lying to my wife about how much the HD cost is the same as lying the country into a war
Actually, I want to assert that you can't seem to distinguish the form of an argument from its content. Logic is concerned with the form of an argument. An ad hominem is a logical fallacy -- relating to the FORM of an argument -- which is what we were discussing.
I guess if I would have used the "Socrates is fat" example, you would have become indignant because I was comparing (and conflating!) the weight of Socrates with lying about a war.
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If it hasn't been suggested already
Soldier Boys
With cover art of small boys playing with Army toys, perhaps against a background of genuine wartime carnage.
Count me as pre-ordering this book, Glenn. The cult of uber-masculine chickenhawks is one of the driving forces behind the crassification & destruction of this country. Basically a gang of scared little boys, telling each other how tough they are, unable to convince even themselves ...
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@Orson_
"ad hominem" is generally applied only to non-relevant personal attacks.
If the chief of police is a klepto, and he says "stealing is wrong," and someone says to him, "but you steal!":
Then the someone is indeed making an "ad hominem"-formed argument, but they have not comitted an ad hominem fallacy, since the subject of their objection is not the police chief as he is in himself as a being, but a particular attribute relevant to the argument which clearly demonstrates the chief has no grounds to impugn anyone else on the matter, even if he would be correct in any particular case.
The objector in the audience is denying a premise of the original argument, the chief's opinion cannot be used as a valid general rule in argument because his opinion has a pathological exception: himself.
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@DClaw
>>Calling someone a hypocrite, and offering simple proof of such, is not ad hominem.
Sorry, wrong:
"Ad hominem tu quoque refers to an irrelevant accusation of hypocrisy. Accusations of hypocrisy are inadmissible in legal and scientific debate, and can be distractions from the business of politics. That is, it is not relevant to the credibility of a didactic argument whether its presenter has trod over the principle he espouses." Wikipedia. Want 20 other sources?
>>Change B's response to "You have lied before about something to get a nation into an unnecessary war, therefore you are just a hypocrite for pointing that out," to make the comparison fair.
No True Scotsman-much?
>>Anyway, your point has been amply heard, and now you do it a disservice by repeating it ad nauseum.
Shorter DCLaw: shut up. Unfortunately, that is what almost any disagreement is met with in the comments around here.
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Orson...
...said that "Accusations of hypocrisy are inadmissible in legal and scientific debate"
Yeah, but this isn't a legal debate, and this isn't a scientific debate.
It's politics.
Which means that hypocrisy and accusations of hypocrisy are very much in play.
Nice try.
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tu quoque
Wikipedia, Orson's source:
Not all uses of tu quoque arguments involve logical fallacy. They can be properly used to bring about awareness of inconsistency, to indirectly repeal a criticism by narrowing its scope or challenging its criteria, or to call into question the credibility of a source of knowledge.
<>You-too version
A legitimate use of the you-too version might be:
A makes criticism P. A is also guilty of P. Therefore, A is either inconsistent to criticize P, or the criticism is confused because it does not reflect A's actual values or beliefs.Example:
"You say that taking a human life is wrong under all circumstances, but support killing in self-defense; you are either being inconsistent, or you believe that under some circumstances taking a human life is justified."