For the next week or two, WC will be revisiting earlier posts to Wickersham’s Conscience. For most readers, these older essays will be new. For those who have read them, well, WC thinks they are good enough to be worth reading again. This post, in particular, is one every reader needs to understand.
Former New York Times reporter Andy Revkin’s innovative Dot Earth blog is one of the best assemblies of climate and population data on the Web. I’m a big fan, and comment there from time to time. Revkin spoke recently to the Woodrow Wilson Center on the impact of population growth on climate change. He suggested, as a thought experiment, financially rewarding families who have fewer children.
Rush Limbaugh, never one to debate the merits of an issue when he can make a personal attack instead, called Revkin an “environmental wacko” and a “jihad guy.”
This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?
Limbaugh’s attack on Revkin is a classic example of the ad hominem fallacy.
The ad hominem fallacy was described – probably not for the first time – by Aristotle. It’s a logical fallacy. Essentially, instead of attacking or debating the issue, the speaker attacks the person raising the issue. It’s an attack on the messenger instead of the message.
For example, if I were to say in response to Limbaugh’s statement that you should ignore him because he is a ex-junkie, a pompous, pill-popping, obese idiot, I’d be engaging the in ad hominem fallacy myself. It’s undeniably entertaining, and the statements may even be true, but it is irrelevant to the issues under discussion. It’s a change of focus that abandons the primary topic. It’s admittedly entertaining, and since Limbaugh is in the business of being entertaining, it suits him well. But don’t mistake it for debate. Or intelligence. Or logic. Or useful political discourse.
Revkin’s correct response should be to point to the fallacy. In a lot of ways, a debater who resorts to the ad hominem fallacy is admitting he or she has no logical response to the primary argument of his or her opponent. The planet is undeniably badly over-populated. By all science tells us, the earth cannot sustain 9 billion people for long. Limbaugh couldn’t rebut the point. So he attacked Revkin instead.
It’s always tempting to respond to an ad hominem attack by defending the speaker. The personal attacks are almost always unfair. I believe Revkin to be about as fair and balanced a newsreporter as there is. And certainly much better informed than Limbaugh. But if you defend the individual, you are falling for the fallacy. Interestingly, NPR makes this mistake. The speaker is not the issue; the issue is the issue. The best response is always to drag the focus back to the topic, away from the speaker.
So long as we let the Glen Beck’s and Rush Limbaugh’s of the world get away with the fallacy, they will use it. And political discourse will continue to suffer as a result. We have to call it out each time it happens.
Wickersham's Conscience 
“He suggested, as a thought experiment, financially rewarding families who have fewer children.”
This is a non-starter, as it is an incorrect premise and does not hold up to statistical scrutiny. You can say two indivduals each pay a 29% tax rate, Married couples pay 25% and for each child you pay an ADDITIONAL 4%. That is the only way you can properly set an incentive / dis-incentive. Even though they are effectively the same thing.
I’ve always said, you should tax people MORE based on the number of children they have. And by extension, married couples (who are not separated) SHOULD get a decent tax break. (Note I said couples, not husband and wife.) But these ideas have all manner of ethical and religious implications which, admittedly, should absolutely not matter one iota to our Government. But regardless, all of that diverts from the issue. If the ‘issue’ is energy use, pollution, and population impact then the Gov’t may set all manner of ‘incentives’ for the right thing or at the very least, dis-incentives for the wrong thing. But that assumes the Gov’t is capable of developing and assuming a unified position on issues of religious morality. I think that is asking them to engage in a higher level of cognizant exercise than most of our elected officials are capable of achieving.
Which is why you must stick to the ‘basis’ of the situation and the options. For instance, to achieve the same thing as above without ANY moral discussion whatsoever the clear path SHOULD be something like this – The GAO has determined that our Gov’t effectively subsidizes fuel to the tune of $5.00 per gallon. Therefore, we will start decreasing the subsidies, and increasing the tax until the ‘actual’ cost of fuel is realized. When (not if) gasoline hits $6-$8 per gallon, use will drop and alternatives will come online. But if we (our Gov’t) can’t even address the issue of the mathematically calculated subsidy, then we have no hope of addressing any sort of moral discussion on the issue – let alone advancing a morality based treatment of even the worst symptoms…..
Also, thanks for the link to the Dot Earth blog. I skimmed over it and it looks interesting enough to follow.
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This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?
Limbaugh’s argument, in the example quoted above, is not an example of argumentum ad hominem. Mr. Limbaugh does not argue that Revkin’s argument (views on population, pollution,the environment, climate change, etc.) is wrong because of some feature or attitude or personal attribute of Mr. Revkin. Nor does Mr. Limbaugh’s argument disassemble or reduce or amount to such an attack. If it does, please show me how so.
I have no doubt Mr. Limbaugh poorly represents Mr. Revkin’s arguments. Mr. Limbaugh rarely if ever gives a fair or solid representation of his opponents’ thoughts. In this instance, that means Mr. Limbaugh engages in the straw man fallacy. Not the ad hominem fallacy.
Maybe you think in this example we have a blending of straw man and ad hominem? Mr. Revkin would have to be stupid to think what Mr. Limbaugh seems to think Mr. Revkin thinks.
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WC has a separate post on the straw man argument. But zoussef gets a gold star for recognizing Limbaugh’s compund fallacy.
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