[EM] Ad Hominem (Was: Giving `crutches to weak candidates')

[Alex Small]

Craig Carey said:
> The man-cow, Russ P., probably is reluctant to copy that page onto the
> black website that was translated into French.

If you're going to keep personally insulting people, especially people not
active on the list, and using insults unrelated to any of their statements
on voting, why are you here?

If nobody here every defines anything to your satisfaction, why are you here?

I don't know Russ P. personally, but I've looked at his web pages.  He
hasn't displayed any offensive traits (except perhaps his taste in color
schemes ;).

Now, I suppose one could say I was doing an ad hominem attack by playfully
mocking his color schemes, but there's a big difference between joking
about such a subjective matter and calling somebody offensive names
without any hint of good-natured humor.

There's also a big difference between saying "The people on the election
methods list are irrationally devoted to Approval Voting" (paraphrasing
Donald) and saying "Russ P. is a man cow."  (Craig)  Donald is making
clear that he considers our publicly stated positions irrational, as is
his right.  Craig is trying to be personally offensive.  Also, there's a
big difference between saying "Alan Natapoff seems to prefer the lottery
theory of elections" and implying that a hotmail.com user is automatically
beneath you.

So, Craig, if we lack any hint of intellectual rigor, if we are either
liars (me, you seem to think), users of inferior e-mail, or friends of
man-cows, why do you post here?



Alex


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