PPESSAY

I Know You Are But What Am I

The inherent fallaciousness of the right’s fallacy defense

You may have noticed a common theme among Republicans, particularly the more vocal trolls on social media. That is the intentional misuse of the ad hominem fallacy as a defense against anyone who accuses them of disinformation. You know it by the more simple term the use, which is the accusation that liberals resort to “name calling” because they can’t back up their own arguments. The old I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I defense.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles, many claiming to be authoritative, and even scientific, that attempt to explain the idea that liberals are not just morally bankrupt, but ill-informed, and so will resort to name calling, whenever logic fails to win the argument.

This is an interesting twist, seeing that they’re using one presumptive logical fallacy, to try to distract from all the other fallacious arguments they’re making.

The Ad Hominem Fallacy, Latin for ‘to the person’, is short for argumentum ad hominem, and refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument…