Monday, August 13, 2012

Accusing while practicing…

Joe Biden recently accused “the right” of ads promoted by right wing ideologues.  See HERE.

Bill O’Reilly often complains of “ideologues”, both right and left.

Those who defend the perverse behaviors of themselves or others accuse others of “judging.”

How ironic.  Biden is demonstrating that he is an ideologue, too, by maintaining the ideology that accuses others of being ideologues.

O’Reilly is being an “anti-ideologue” ideologue by accusing everyone else of being an ideologue. 

And the perverts are judging their “accusers” of being judgmental.   Here is where the old playground mantra “if I am, what does that make you” gains some credibility.

What do these three examples have in common?  They are all guilty of being exactly what they are accusing the other of being guilty of.

Instead of focusing on the issues, e.g. the value and benefits of varying political philosophies or moral standards, the accuser attacks with some inane, broad-brush personal attack using words like “ideologue” or “judgmental.”  These words easily bounce right back and apply to the accuser.  I think this is what intellectuals call ‘ad hominem’ attacks: 

1. appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason.

2. attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.

From Dictionary.com

Such attacks are a specialty of the left and progressives.  To avoid revealing the true agenda of their own position as well as avoid  discussion of the broader values at stake, they resort to words like, “ideologue”, “killing grandma”, and “insensitive” that attempt to personally discredit their opposition.  Sure, others do this occasionally to some degree, too.  But the true experts at it come from the left. 

Can I be so judgmental as to suggest that they are “leftist ideologues?”

No comments: