Reflections From a Murky Pond

You hear a lot of people, mostly Liberals and Progressives, whining about supposed ad hominem attacks. They just don’t, from what I can see, have a firm grasp on what that term means.

Ad Hominem

A Hominem ( Latin for  “to the man” ) is short for argumentum ad hominem, a logical fallacy that is an attempt to negate the validity of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.

While Leftists of all sorts do get abused regularly be citizens of the Civilized World, especially Americans, I see only a small minority of the occurrences being truly argumentum ad hominem.

In political discussions and across the blogosphere – neither a place known for staid and polite discourse – I see comparatively few instances where people have tried to negate the validity of a Leftist’s claim by pointing out the Leftist’s negative characteristics or beliefs.

I have, on the other hand, often seen examples of what I’ll call argumentum ad factis ( Latin for “to the facts” ). Very often people try negate the validity of Leftists by pointing out the negative characteristics of their arguments.

It’s not the same thing to say that they’re wrong because of their arguments (“ad factis“) as it is to say that their arguments are wrong because they said them (ad hominem).

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Muslim are angry. All across the Middle East, the Far East, Asia Minor, and Africa Muslims are angry.  They’ve seemingly been angry at the world and each other for approximately 1380 years.

The adherents of the “Religion of Peace” have consistently vented that anger in centuries of violence whose feral savagery shocks the sensibilities of the Civilized World.

Indeed, the only places where you find happy Muslims is in the West, in the nations of Europe and in America – nations where Muslims don’t rule and Islam has no control over the laws and behaviors of those nations.

Yet, despite this, Muslims blame the Civilized World for their problems and their anger instead themselves, their leaders, and Islam. They blame us to point that they’ve started a jihad against us.

Sadly, you can’t reason with creatures like that; they’re just too far divorced from sanity, normative human thought, and basic reason. You can only contain them or exterminate them for the public health.

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Let us for the nonce consider matters as they currently stand in America as if the fantasies of the Liberals and their minority tenants were true. Let us pretend that they’re right and that American society and culture is endemically and inherently racist – vilely and perniciously so.

If Americans are so racist, wasn’t it the nadir of irresponsibility to install a Black man as POTUS during the current crisis-ridden times facing America and the world?

Think about that objectively for a moment. If Americans are so racist and hold such fear, loathing, and hatred for minorities that they were going to attack Obama no matter what he did or said just because he’s Black, how irresponsible or, alternatively, how much hatred for America the Liberals and their minority tenants must one have to willfully saddle America with him as POTUS in these times?

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