In reality, ad hominem is unrelated to sarcasm or personal abuse. Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker’s argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument. The mere presence of a personal attack does not indicate ad hominem: **the attack must be used for the purpose of undermining the argument, or otherwise the logical fallacy isn’t there. **It is not a logical fallacy to attack someone; the fallacy comes from assuming that a personal attack is also necessarily an attack on that person’s arguments.
Therefore, if you can’t demonstrate that your opponent is trying to counter your argument by attacking you, you can’t demonstrate that he is resorting to ad hominem. If your opponent’s sarcasm is not an attempt to counter your argument, but merely an attempt to insult you (or amuse the bystanders), then it is not part of an ad hominem argument.
The point is that each argument must be evaluated in its own right.
“Don’t be ridiculous” is ad hominem because the phrase is an attempt to counter the argument by asserting that I am ridiculous.
Are those fighting words which prejudge the Nazis and the Klan? With a few exceptions such as Oskar Schindler, these groups do have a history on which we can make such judgments of the groups if not the individuals. But according to your definition of hate speech, we are not to prejudge political groups. I will certainly continue to pass judgment on their agendas. To do otherwise is madness!
With that in mind, look at the one criticism you made of my own Twain-based hyperbolic statement:
Where is the prejudice in that statement? There is no stereotyping. No broad brushstrokes. No generalization are made. Those particular individuals would be the last people that I would remove from a burning building. I base that statement on considerable knowledge of the power that they have and what they do with that power. In my honest opinion, I would be doing a disservice to my country if I rescued them before I rescued everyone else.
Further, your grasp of Judeo-Christian teachings falls short. That’s for another time.
I would really like to get to your questions, but we can’t just skim over your assumptions and errors.
How is the following covered in the scaling system?
If someone claims to be a Non Bigoted Person because they have no prejudice towards people of another ethnicity, race, gays, women, minority religions, gender orientation or religious upbringing.
Would you agree that the Non Bigoted Person Claimant truly is a Non Bigoted Person and not prejudiced?
If you find that the Non Bigoted Person Claimant has, on principle, deliberately excluded from consideration as a relevant or valid factor any reference to another person’s:
current religious beliefs, if not a minority religion; current political beliefs, if different to those held by the Non Bigoted Person Claimant.
In this instance, would you consider the claims of the Non Bigoted Person Claimant to be a Non Bigoted Person valid?
In judging the validity of a Non Bigoted Person Claimant’s claims, should one take note of the omissions made by the Non Bigoted Person Claimant as well as the inclusions when deciding if the Non Bigoted Person Claimant really is a Non Bigoted Person?
Opinions and positions can not be given human characteristics since they are not human. I think everyone knows you are talking about the holder of those opinions. The premise is not faulty, hate is always a sign of ignorance or lack of information about the subject or the person. Everyone is entitled to their opinion without being personally attacked on this board, which happens regularly. Those who do hate are projecting. I admire the OP, but I wonder if it can be understood.
When you call a racist evil you are becoming the very thing you accuse the racist of doing, hating others. Hating is never right in any circumstances. First it has little effect of the hated person, but has a detrimental effect on the hater, not very wise. The saying “if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen” was never meant to justify personal attacks. Take a good look at yourself, you may be part of the problem.
The scaling system is a measure of the manifestation of prejudice. Nothing in the following is a manifestation - a perceptible, outward, or visible expression of prejudice. I can be bigoted and prejudice but if I do not express that in action you would not know it.
No I could not agree because the person could be bigoted and prejudiced toward other people not in the list, democrats and republicans and theists and atheists and young and old and rich and poor for example. The point of this thread is the manifestation of prejudice in words and actions on the GD. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it must be a duck.
Absolutly! Hate cannot be sustained. Hate is not convincing. Victory in WWII could not have been obtained if the appeal to go to arms was based on “hate the Germans” The appeals that worked were:
heroism and defiance – Wake Island
anger and rage & desire for revenge – Bataan
Alamo – Sahara
liberator - Joan of Paris
fight against dictatorship - Arise, My Love
The appeal that won the day was an appeal to the work ethic, the can do attitude, and finishing the job
we won’t come back til it’s over Over There - Yankee Doodle Dandy
See Losing the War - Early World War II Films
I should note that all the films dispelled the fear and the sorrow and the gloom in the early days of the war.
The point of the political debate of the threads is to alter a political position. Using fighting words which appear as manifestation of prejudice against the people in opposition does not convince. Fighting words should target the enemy. The enemy is ignorance and the problems which face America.
Yes, do not prejudge political groups unless you are willing to accept the consequences of the prejudice, pogroms and the night of the long knives.
Yes, pass judgment on their agendas.
You prejudge these people as not being worth saving until last on all personal attributes that they have.
The word prejudice refers to prejudgment: making a decision before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case or event.
It is relevant that Bush signed NCLB, Chaney opposed federal gay marriage ban, Charles Manson has been given due process, and Rush Limbaugh fights ignorance and is truth/lie detector. It is also relevant that they all have family’s to support, contributions to be made in the future and are Americans.
As you say your statement is hyperbole - is not meant to be taken literally. But even in this hyperbole , No direct harm may be intended (you would save them), but harm is done through isolation.
Scale 2 Avoidance
Allow me to rewrite your hyperbole to indicate your judgment of their agendas
“I would still save the patriot act and Bush tax cut if a building were on fire, but they would be the last ones – right after death penalty for murder and the freedom of speech.”
Wrong, It was the least powerful. Because it would require the soldier to morally judge his actions which would just get in the way of as Admiral Halsey said “do your job well.”
I don’t hate a cat or dog to euthanize it. I don’t hate the convicted felon to inject the lethal dose. I don’t hate the fly to swat it with a newspaper. I don’t hate. **Don’t you just hate yourself **when I am right and you are wrong?
Do you really mean “night of the long knives”? That was an internal purge of the Nazi party, hardly the result of someone prejudging a polical group. The few non-Nazi caught up in the purge were personal enemies of Hitler’s. Perhaps you meant “Krystallnacht” … ?
Also, one thing you seem to be ignoring is that fact that political parties are not merely a collection of policy positions. They also represent ideological stances. From those ideological stances it is perfectly reasonable to extrapolate their future behavior and prejudge them accordingly.
Some of us don’t merely disagree with Republican policies. We also disagree with Republican principles.
You’re ignoring the evidence. Admiral Halsey intentionally incited race hatred against the Japanese as a motivational tool for the sailors under his command. This is a well-documented fact.
Merely asserting that you’re right is meaningless. Arguments are won with evidence. I’ve given you concrete evidence that at least one senior American commander considered hating the enemy a key element to achieving victory in World War II. Halsey personally loathed the Japanese and frequently and aggressively encouraged his subordinates to feel the same way.
I showed the falsehood of your claim on the evidence you provided. You have provided only one piece of concrete evidence and I did not ignore it and successfully refuted it!
Don’t you just hate yourself for not winning on the fist kickoff!
Refutation would be providing evidence that Halsey didn’t really hate the Japanese. Or that even though he hated the Japanese he kept those feelings to himself. Or that his campaign to make American soldiers and sailors hate the Japanese didn’t work. Or that it did work but historians have since discovered that it was damaging to the war effort.
Any of those approaches would constitute refutation. But merely repeating “Nuh-uh!” over and over again is just wankery.
Prejudgment is not perfectly reasonable because it blinds you to changes in in those ideological stances when they occur. What you describe is Cognitive Prejudice refers to what people believe is true. The future is no here yet so you have a belief now. The blindness works both ways. You become blind to ideological stances of your preferred party as well as those of the your not preferred party.
You use the pronouns ‘us’ and ‘we’ indicating you are part of a group. Prejudice can be explained as the effect of group interaction. When we are identified with a group, we show some general characteristics including ethnocentrism, ingroup favoritism, intergroup differentiation and so on, which contribute to prejudice.
The point of the thread is that debates are littered with manifestation of prejudice which is not constructive.
Believe me, when the Republicans change their ideology, I’ll notice.
What you call prejudice, I call accountablity. If holders of a particular ideology regularly arrive at positions I find objectionable I see nothing wrong in indicting the ideology as a whole.
“Prejudice” is a loaded term in this context. Racial prejudice is bad because it involves ascribing characteristics to an individual based upon a group stereotype. However it is NOT prejudice to acknowledge a characteristic that actually defines group membership. For example, it is not prejudiced to point out that African Americans tend to have darker skin than European Americans.
Similarly it’s not “ideological prejudice” to acknowledge the attitutes that make someone a “liberal” or a “conservative” in the first place. Republicans are Republicans because of their ideals – otherwise they’d be Democrats, or Libertarians, or Anarchists, or whatever. So prejudging them on their ideals is perfectly acceptable.
I don’t know what the Admiral put on a billboard, but I do know that any teacher of fighting skills or martial arts will tell you that hating your enemy will get you killed. Hate slows both mental and physical action by dividing your focus on the job at hand. I have no doubt leaders whipped up their followers with a call to hate. Smart people just don’t hate. I think the OP is about hate on this board and not anywhere else, here it becomes an expression of frustration, an inability to counter opinions and claims with other opinions and claims. Hate is an inappropriate response to discussions and debates, it shows the hater is ill prepared to discuss the subject.
Enough of this already! Those kinds of things just aren’t going to happen in this day and age in the US. By failing to acknowledge the political evolution that has taken place since then, you are doing a disservice.
Hate can cloud your judgement. But it can also spur you to action.
In any case the question isn’t SHOULD Halsey have incited hatred in his troops, but DID he? The answer is: Yes, he did. A significant fraction of our leaders during World War II believed that encouraging our soldiers and sailors to hate the Japs and the Krauts was strategically important to winning the war. (Halsey wasn’t alone in this. He is an extreme example, but he was never told to desist from whipping up his subordinates in this fashion.) If you think they were mistaken in their judgement then you need to provide evidence for situations where excessive hatred of the enemy resulted in defeat on the battlefield.
I listed ½ dozen pieces of evidence that hate was not used as motivation and contradicted successfully one piece of evidence that you offered. I offer my anecdotal evidence. Having 8 years associated with the military I was never taught to hate my enemy nor use hate as a motivator.
The contents of the Admiral Halsey archive is not on line.
But something can appear relevant about the character and still not invalidate the argument. Like the example I used about social graces. Just because someone chooses to be an asshole, doesn’t mean they don’t know how to act properly.