Who also happens to be the legislator for his district so it’s particularly relevant for him to bitch about that particular elected official. Your apparent rush to find Democrats just because a Republican was criticized is indeed a tu quoque. Rather than deal with the specific instance of the specific person pitted, you sought to distract and derail the OP’s topic. It is a textbook example and just one of many times you’ve done it.
Again, his OP didn’t merely identify the legislator as being from his state. The legislator was identified as a “typical hypocritical ‘conservative’ douchebag.” THAT was what started the partisan attack. It was irrelevant to his gripe - why include it?
And your misunderstanding of what tu quoque entails is beginning to border on humorous. Here is the “textbook” definition of tu quoque. If you believe my post represented a tu quoque argument, then identify precisely what behavior I accuse the OP of preaching but not practicing.
You misunderstand the tu quoque fallacy.
You sought to deflect criticism of a Republican by pointing out “Democrats do it too”.
Absolutely not what I did.
I asked if the OP’s criticism would extend to Democrats as well. This was a relevant inquiry, because the OP made a point of the hypocritical conservative douchebag status of his legislator. It makes it relevant, then, to show that being a conservative is not a necessary and sufficient condition to oppose gambling. One can make this showing in two ways: by identifying other conservatives who favor gambling, or by identifying liberals who also oppose it.
How would you contend it’s appropriate to refute the implied charge that “hypocritical ‘conservative’ douchebag[s]” are the ones that oppose gambling?
Bull fucking shit. You can niggle over Kyl’s own philosophy, but the OP is right; ostensibly, a conservative (note: not a Republican, a conservative) should be against legislating bigger government. There is no insult in that, it’s the fucking definition of a conservative. The fact that a conservative wants to legislate against something he opposes because he doesn’t like it makes him a hypocrite. It’s not because he’s a Republican, it’s because he’s supposedly a conservative who is nonetheless ignoring conservative philosophy because he’s personally morally opposed to something. That’s what makes this Pitworthy. Conversely, a liberal legislator pushing for more regulation may well be a douchebag, but is not necessarily a hypocrite for it, because the liberal philosophy advocates bigger government.
Now where’s the partisanship in that, I ask?
In all of this erudite discussion, I believe you folks are missing one of the biggest points of the 60 Minutes piece. Politicians are making a grandstand play with their positions against internet gambling. They can dramatically play to their moralist base and pass a law that cannot be enforced at all. The only real effects are to drive these companies, and their taxable income, offshore.
That’s an interesting argument, but it’s one that the OP disavowed.
And by the same token – although THIS is a tu quoque observation – a liberal should be fighting for personal freedom: if it doesn’t hurt anyone, the government should permit it.
But both that view of liberalism and your characterization of conservatism are myopically flawed. There is no question that the conservative movement holds that regulating moral behavior is a legitimate role for government. You have them confused, I think, with libertarians.
There is no inherent hypocrisy in a conservative seeking to ban gambling, or adultery, or sex toys, while simultaneously preaching small government for general purposes. That’s what they do. Libertarians will reliably select small government across the board… not so conservatives.
See now theres hypocracy but you can’t even see it.
No. There is a distinction which you apparently refuse to recognize as valid as between social ills and general governmental functions. A conservative may say the proper role of government is to enforce morality, but let the free market deal with other issues.
Why, specifically, do you say it’s hypocrisy? Because you contend that there is no meaningful distinction between morality and other government functions; you believe the same set of rules should apply to each. But that’s simply your own belief – that’s not a rule of nature. And rejecting that interpretation does not make someone a hypocrite.
Becuase saying you are for small government and them :drum roll: doing the complete opposite makes one a hypocrite. It has nothing to do with whether I agree with their political beliefs or not. I just happen to have the ability to rub two brain cells together and realize that legislating morality is not small government. If a politician is advocating small government yet supports lots of large government policies they are a hypocrite.
I think, looking at your very own link, that Bricker’s correct. It isn’t ‘tu quoque’. The diversion part would apply, but you seem to be saying that he did so not by using the exact same argument used by the OP against the OP, but by introducing a new one: partisanship.
Seems ‘tu quoqe’ is the fancy name for “You’re a stupid head” "No you’re a stupid head!. So if the OP is “This guy’s an idiot”, Bricker would have had to say “No. you’re an idiot”, not “Aren’t these guys also idiots?”.
If Bricker introduced a new thing as a diversion that isn’t actually in the OP, isn’t that just the simpler “red herring” but not “tu quoque”?
I suppose that is the current political landscape. It’s changed enough that conservative and liberal have shifted meanings in the last few years. I’m not happy with the reason it’s shifted, but I’ll leave it at that and just agree that anyone who tries to turn their personal morality into legislation is a douchebag.
Ah, an opportunity to trot out another overused SDMB cliche – that happens, here, to be accurate. This is a strawman. Conservatives are NOT saying, “We are for minimal government in all things.” That’s YOUR construction.
Conservatives are saying, “We are for small government in the regulation of business, trusting the free market; we are for strong government regulation of morality.”
No hypocrisy. Except in your version of their argument.
It would be arguably correct to call my comment a red herring, especially if you feel that the OP’s argument actually had nothing to do with partisanship.
Thanks for the response Bricker. I was just curious to see what the heck ‘tu quoque’ was. Cause, ya know, it sounded naughty.
Which, to rub the point in, it didn’t. The OP’s senator is a conservative hypocritical douchebag. Because he’s the OP’s senator, he’s the senator that the OP is criticising, using available means. It is you who instantly sought to turn this into a partisanship debate.
He didn’t make that charge. You are the one who morphed the OP’s charge into a charge that conservatives are exclusively the ones that oppose gambling.
You are prevaricating on “conservative” and “the conservative movement”. The movement as it may in fact be is not necessarily ad idem with “conservative” as a philosophy. The OP only used the former. You have switched in the latter because it suits your argument better.
Yes, yes there is. You are so used to the idea that you don’t see it, but it is blindingly obvious that there is.
I would agree with you if and only if many conservatives did not use “small government” as an argument in itself when it suits them. If conservatives argued for lassez faire economics and no gun control (for example) purely on other rational bases, then yes, you’d be right. But they don’t. Many conservatives throw round the “small government” and “Freedom” rhetoric like confetti right up until they don’t like something morally or philisophically and then those ideas go out the window. Those conservatives are hypocrites.
I should’ve said:
Wonder how much the US is missing out in tax dollars with companies operating out of other countries because of this tomfoolery. Could be helpful with, you know, the massive defecit we’ve got now?
Whatever, if you truly believe that conservatives by and large don’t claim to be for small government then so be it. Thats something I simply can’t prove but thats certainly a platform the Republican party has run on. Certainly Senator Jon Kyl thinks he is for limited government:
http://kyl.senate.gov/legis_center/budget.cfm
So, is he a hypocrite?