"You can't criticize Roger Ebert's views because he has cancer, or the Jersey Girls' positions because their husbands died on 9/11, or Cindy Sheehan's assertions because her son was killed in Iraq, her husband left her, and she lost her job."
But such politically incorrect 'insensitivity' is precisely what we need more of. We need to be so 'insensitive' as to hold people responsible for what they say despite their troubles. We all have troubles. (But not all of us trumpet them or try to cash in on them.) When PC-heads object, as above, they make a mistake similar to the one made by perpetrators of the genetic fallacy, namely, they confuse the message with the messenger, the proposition with the proponent, the belief with the believer.
If Sheehan's views have merit they have merit independently of any connection to her febrile psyche. And the same holds in the more likely case of their demerit. They cannot be refuted by setting forth their origin in said psyche. Nor do they gain credibility by being expressed by someone who has been having a very hard time of it recently. Nor are her views insulated from criticism by the fact that they come from a very troubled woman.
Origin and validity. Don't confuse them.
Related Posts (on one page):
- On Ann Coulter
- Something Like the Genetic Fallacy
I'm convinced that the main reason Kerry got the nomination for president is because the extremist Dems knew that their anti-American foreign policy was a serious liability, but they thought no one was allowed to point out how anti-American Kerry is because he won three Purple Band-Aids in Vietnam (and that's also why they hated the Swift Boaters so much, because those guys broke the rule).
It's suggested that Sheehan, for example, might be "a very troubled woman." If her troubles affect her judgment, then even if we utterly reject her ideas and the judgments they express, we might be well advised to deal sympathetically and relatively gently with the troubled person. Responsibility, in the robust moral sense, is not separable from the capacity for clear, critical thinking.
Glad we agree, although I woudn't call Murtha a coward.
The case of McCain is troubling. If he gets the Repub nod, he will make a big noise about his war record and people will hesitate to call him on his patriotism. But what sort of patriot is he now, when it matters, given the refusal of this ARIZONA senator to take a firm stand against illegal immigration?
I agree that Sheehan deserves our compassion and that her holding of the views she holds can be partially excused given the horrible events that have occurred in her life.
But my main point is that views of people like her are not insulated from criticism by the fact that they emanate from a troubled psyche. I am rejecting this pattern of reasoning that liberals are making increasing us of:
Person P has suffered grievously.
P has gone public and made statement S
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S cannot be questioned, criticized, evaluated because to do so shows insensitivity to P's suffering.
Such reasoning is obviously confused.
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.