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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ProDeath who wrote (8727)	8/26/2009 6:03:28 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

The suggestion that to do so is an ad hominem attack presupposes that the positions taken by the named parties would defame them if they were publicly associated with said positions, No, it only presupposes either an implication or assertion that because of the people making the arguments the arguments are wrong (or right), or should receive no attention (or should be put in front of any other arguments and generally deferred to). Ad-hominem in simple but broad terms, is making the argument about the person. X is right (or more commonly wrong) because Y says it is. It can be ad-hominem abusive ("he's a bastard so he's wrong") or ad-hominem circumstantial ("he's a doctor so of course he's going to care about issues of doctor's pay and there is no need to take him seriously on the issue"). OTOH you can have the abuse without the ad-hominem. In direct terms "he's a bastard" isn't at all ad-hominem, its just making a statement about someone. OTOH if that's said in response to the presentation of someone's argument, the usual intent is to imply that the argument is wrong or should be discounted because the person is a bastard. That idea is ad-hominem, but if its only meant as an insult, with no further implication than it isn't ad-hominem. so at most only the rest were pressured or paid off. "only the rest" would be a vast majority.