I Became a Conservative
kengine296.substack.com
kengine296.substack.com
So, the whole post is just a fictional conservative "Hey, let's make up a story about a leftist SJW female who suddenly became conservative". But they didn't get it right.
Not as a slight, but this reads to me as someone who grew up conservative (written), and so understands liberal policy through a conservative lens. I suspect that it's very difficult to impossible to approach any viewpoint through an opposing lens, and actually come out on the other side as that viewpoint. So I'm mostly just dubious of the claim that they became a "liberal" in the first place.
But it does serve as a reminder that when people want others to feel guilt to very, very carefully consider whether and how much guilt to actually place. Guilt is a terribly powerful emotion (whole religions run off it-“original sin”) and shouldn’t be wielded too broadly and too irredeemably. It probably shouldn’t be held against people’s kids/family/friends except in very important scenarios (like organized crime), for instance. It probably shouldn’t become something like a prejudicial “scarlet letter” too easily. Etc. and people should generally be given a way back to society and not discarded as trash. (Which maybe that’s what “original sin” does for those religions in a way?)
The dogma is more about being compassionate for others and recognizing that they may have had more struggles than you and they certainly have had their own life that has led them to where they are.
The times that I have seen this dogma well-enacted it's been about listening to people, and it has not been limited to recognizing this only for people of different races/creeds/colors, but also for people who are acting in a racist way. It's definitely very hard to navigate well, but it has been convincingly correct to me when I saw it happen.
If the next generation ought feel zero guilt about the past, then the right way to do this is to relegate racial history to graduate studies or strike it from history altogether. Historical atrocities are a serious affront to national pride. Part of why Shinzo Abe was so controversial was because he wanted to strike some matters from history; this is a thing at least because of a shared acute sense of pain that results from this knowledge.
I think this is also part of why race in school curriculum is such a big deal right now in conservative politics. The magnitude of "white guilt" surely cannot be because Democrats are talking about it on CNN; it's because every child learns about it in school. There's no cure for this pain quite like not knowing at all.
Sorry, but she’ll be suckered by another grifter selling another pipe dream next week.
I have been more frustrated in the past talking to people like this who agree with me, than anyone who disagrees with me. Because they don't have a reason they believe what they do.
> (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
Since the position she is maintaining is “why I’m a conservative“ I don’t feel like my analysis of her judgement is attacking her _rather_ than her position. Her position is about who she is. An analysis of that position must then address _who_ she is.
You are attacking her, and not her argument with that comment. The rest is about her argument, but that's an ad hominem attack.
I responded because I agree that it's not a well-thought position, but I don't think this betrays anything about her intelligence, which you are attacking with that comment.
The blog post, however, is about the author. So, while I did call her stupid, that wasn’t avoiding the argument. I was addressing her point by saying that she’s not a conservative anymore than she was a liberal. She’s just easily swayed by faulty logic.
I just think this instance is interesting because it does look like I am guilty of a logical fallacy. But, given that the subject is the author, I don’t think I have committed a logical fallacy.
And, to be even more difficult, I think the author is stupid because she fell for the logical fallacy of an ad hominem attack.
Ad Hominem comes from latin "To the person." It is when you attack the person rather than their argument. When you call the author stupid, you're ignoring her argument and attacking her person/character. You could call the argument stupid (and then hopefully go on to elaborate why you think it's stupid), and that would avoid it. But as long as you're commenting on the writer's intelligence, you're guilty of an ad hominem fallacy. It's also subjective and not rigorous. There's no way to measure "stupid".
The fact the writer is writing about her own experiences doesn't make it okay to insult them. It just means you have to separate why their experiences don't justify their beliefs.
> So, saying it’s ok for cops to murder George Floyd because Candice Owens convinced me he wasn’t a good guy is an example of an ad hominem attack.
I think you're talking about the Candace Owens bit as being ad hominem? The tricky piece of this, is that 'bad' is so vague that it could be properly labeling an outlook from our legal system or it could be, as you say, an ad hominem attack. It doesn't matter what George's character was because he should be innocent until proven guilty. But at the point he's guilty, he might be considered "bad". None of that is justification for what happened to him, so I think you might be correct that it's an ad hominem, but it's murky at best.
"Easily swayed by faulty logic" is a much better statement about the author, that I would agree with. It's also not an ad hominem, because it doesn't denigrate the author's character, because the same could be true of people who fall for phishing scams. There's nothing inherently character assassinating about having faulty logic. Whereas "stupid" is a subjective pejorative.
I’d suggest I can at least identify one when I see it. For instance I’ve just quoted one ;)