The argumentum ad hominem in reverse

Van Wijk writes:

As I posted at Barely a Blog, Carrie Prejean recently defended herself by invoking her grandfather’s service in WWII. It gave me the idea for a new logical fallacy, the appeal to the veteran. It would be argumentum ad militis (argument to the soldier), with a subset being argumentum ad pedes (argument to the infantry, for intra-service arguments). I wish I knew the Latin word for “veteran.”

Do you know if this is already a recognized fallacy? Or do you think perhaps it’s just a subset of the appeal to authority?

LA replies:

I don’t think it’s an appeal to authority. It’s an appeal to identity or personal history or ancestry. It’s not saying, “My position is right, because X authority backs it up.” It’s saying: “My position can’t be wrong or objectionable, because of who I am or what group I belong to.” Or it’s saying: “This group cannot be criticized, because (a) some members of this group have served in the armed forces; or (b) this group has been victimized/discriminated against in the past.”

A variant on it is: “How can you talk about restricting Hispanic immigration? Hispanics have served well in our armed forces.”

Or, “How can you say that my position is anti-Semitic? I’m Jewish.”

In reality, a Jew can take an anti-Semitic position just as much as a non-Jew can. What determines whether or not his position is anti-Semitic is not his identity or background, but what he says.

By the way, I have never used my Jewish background to defend myself from a suspicion of anti-Semitism. To do that would be to say that I, because of my Jewish background, have a right to criticize Jews, but non-Jews don’t. Yet people use unprincipled arguments like this all the time.

We could accumulate a list of such arguments, and identify the principle they have in common. Since it has something to do with not looking at the argument, but at the person, it’s sort of an ad hominem argument in reverse, as you suggested. Instead of: “Your position is wrong because of something about you personally,” it’s: “My position cannot be wrong, because of something about me personally.”

Thus an ordinary argumentum ad hominem would be:

“You don’t have the right to criticize affirmative action, since you benefited from it,” or: “You don’t have the right to criticize immigration, because you are descended from immigrants.”

An argumentum ad hominem in reverse would be:

“My open borders position is right, and no one can challenge it, because I am descended from immigrants.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 16, 2009 12:22 AM | Send