The Left has essentially given up argument as a means of persuasion, replacing it with disqualification. The strategy of disqualification — take it from a former teacher of rhetoric — is the ad hominem elevated to a grand scale. Never mind that it is a fallacy — it works. If you can reduce, e.g., Sarah Palin to the Tina Fey cartoon of Sarah Palin, you do not have to address her substantive arguments. The added benefit of this strategy is that one has the opportunity to bathe one’s self and one’s colleagues in a sense of moral and intellectual superiority, which, no matter how ill-gotten, is among the most exquisite of emotions. Thus a political movement full of people too ill-informed to know that Sarah Palin never uttered the words I can see Russia from my house! — that was Tina Fey — get to dismiss her as ignorant.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 16:17:41 +0000
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