http://www.topplebush.com/oped2528.shtml"While logic might reduce the options to those three, the callers to the program seemed unconstrained by logic. Almost without exception, they chose to engage in the ad hominem attack--to ignore the message and attack the messenger--a form of argument regarded by philosophers as one of the logical fallacies. They seemed to believe that because I could be labeled a "liberal," anything I said --even statements of established fact-- could simply be dismissed or ignored.
"It's just you Bush-bashers can't stand it that we got a Republican president and a Republican Congress. And so you're just using anything you can to strike back!"
I'd respond with things like, "Well, that Republican, Bob Barr, is saying the same thing I am. So what would you say to him if he presented you with this worrisome evidence that this president might be violating the Constitution?"
Since they didn't have a good response to that, they'd just change the subject. My guess is that if Bob Barr had been there, saying what I was saying, they'd have found some label for him that enabled them to dismiss his points as well.
The forces now ruling America have already taught their followers to discredit all the possible alternative sources of thought. Not only have "liberals" been demonized (liberals have become the new "communists"), but also discredited are all media that are not propaganda mouthpieces of the regime (there is no notion of journalism as a noble, truth-seeking profession). And likewise they've cast science as an enemy, and with it all other forms of expertise-based knowledge. "
This is an article from last year but I don't know how many saw it at the time. Very interesting.
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