Who's Ad Hominuming Who?

Jefferson Davis - Democrat

A recent Facebook post comment complained that an association the post was attempting to make between the KKK and the Democrat Party was unfair. The comment was, perhaps unintentionally, illuminating. The outraged individual (who claims to vote Republican) resorted to a defense in Latin, calling the whole thing an ad hominum attack. It sounds bad if you don't know what "ad hominum" means. The commentator mispelled it by the way calling it an "ad hominium" attack.  What our outraged friend said was, "Such ad hominium arguments leave anyone open to the charge of racism."

Seems like sauce for the gander to me. Just ask any conservative or Republican about ad hominum attacks and charges of racism. We got those thrown at us every day. Ad hominum refers to a claim or argument that is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. In this case the ad hominum argument says:

1. The KKK was started by Democrats
2. The KKK is racist
3. Therefore all Democrats are racists

(obviously a fallacious argument)

or

1. Democrats belonged to the KKK
2. The KKK hates black people
3. Therefore all Democrats hate black people

(also untrue since some Democrats ARE black).

or you could make this argument by introducing new information

1. The KKK was started by Democrats
2. The Jim Crow laws were written by Democrats
3. Segregation laws were enacted by Democrats
4. Historically, Democrats voted against virtually every law designed to provide women and minorities voting rights, the right to vote, civil rights and equal protection under the law.
5. The Democrat Party has never apologized for it's history of racism, lynchings, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, and racial segregation laws that imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life.
6. The Democrat party has NEVER apologized for its history of virulent racism and its role in starting the Civil War.
7. Therefore what would you conclude if this were the history of the Republican Party we were talking about?

James Earl Ray - Registered Democrat

And yet this is the history of the Democrat Party. Incredibly, though, the charge of racism is constantly being leveled at Republicans who have always voted almost 100% for every single piece of civil rights legislation ever put forward and who fought and died on the side of freeing the slaves in the Civil War. The Republican Party was even the political party of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King till his assassination by James Earl Ray, A Democrat. 

Does it make sense then that it's Republicans that get the racist label?

The Democrats were asked by one of their own to make a full apology for the party's long history of racism at its convention next time up. They rejected the idea. It's in the past, I suppose and who cares about that? 

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda director once said that if you tell a lie often enough, people will come to believe it.

Looks like he was right!

© 2014 by Tom King