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November 13, 2005

Confused Americans for Truth - Ad Hominem Tu Quoque

by Ferdinand T Cat

I received the following comment from someone named "Steve" on my most recent article about the Paris riots.

"By our standards, certain aspects of the decree-- (clip) -- would be considered a police state,"

HA HA ... you forget how much "your standards" have slipped. The french haven't passed laws allowing torture or put people in jail for years without due process (guantonomo) or built secret jails in old french colonies.

Unfortunately the US has eroded much (all?) of its moral superiority globally. The chinese for example laugh whenever the US pushes it on human rights abuses. Unfortunate.

I started to assemble some facts to refute the torture contention, but then I realized I was looking at the comment in the wrong way. The Chinese to whom Steve refers are engaging in a form of ad hominem tu quoque, seeking to justify the beam in their eye by pointing out the mote in our own. I can understand why the Chinese government is doing this: they want to continue robbing their people blind. The question is, what does the vast machinery of the Left gain by using America's failures to justify the tyrants and fascists of the world?

This habit of giving aid and comfort to tyrannical regimes by condemning America was the subject of Ann Coulter's book Treason, and her conclusion was that liberals simply hated America.

Another theory is that liberals dislike the use of military force. By focusing on problems at home, they seek to keep us out of military entanglements abroad. Unfortunately, that doesn't explain Bill Clinton's military's adventures in Bosnia, Kosovo, and even Iraq. Indeed, Kerry's support of the Clinton's Iraq invasion was used to discredit his anti-war stance during the 2004 election.

But whatever the explanation, the fact is that condemning America when we're talking about France doesn't help the people of France, any more than condemning France when we're talking about Iraq will help defeat terrorism. By allowing liberals to do this ad hominem tu quoque thing, we're letting them turn our focus to the past when we need to keep our eyes on the future.

This focus on the future is extremely important! If conservatives aren't all about dragging liberals kicking and screaming into the future, then doing a political humor blog is going to be a lot harder. I would hate that.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Trackposted to Cao's Blog, Euphoric Reality, Political Teen, The Tar Pit, Jo's Cafe, Basil's Blog, bRight and Early, and the complete set atheists who sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

# At Sun 7:42 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (3) | More Confused Americans for Truth

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Tracked on November 15, 2005 12:46 PM

Comments

Pretty deep for a cat, Ferdy. I should've spent more on Molly's education.


Posted by: MarkT at November 14, 2005 5:05 AM

Guys, what's wrong with VERY MILDLY "torturing" your enemies? Any third-world police station does much worse, and the second (commi) did worse than that. Israel sanctions pressure to military suspects. Hey, you want information from them!

Danny
www.SamsonBlinded.org


Posted by: Danny at November 14, 2005 7:15 AM

The Defense Department's position is that terrorists do not have Fifth Amendment rights because they're military prisoners, and the Geneva Convention doesn't apply because terrorists are not soldiers. Therefore, it's permissible to force them to answer questions so long as the prisoners are not physically harmed.

This is why the recent Senate resolution against torture was completely meaningless. If we want to force the military to stop playing the Barney song at high volume, we need to broaden the Army's definition of "torture".

There are people on the Left who understand this and are trying to change the way we do things in order to keep us off a slippery slope into tyranny. Such people have a legitimate point, and you can expect them to debate you fairly.

Steve is not in that category.


Posted by: Ferdy [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 15, 2005 4:56 AM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

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