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Leftists Love Arguing Beside the Point or Ignoring the Issue

Last night, while studying fallacies, a realization arose that leftists have not made a truthful argument in my lifetime. They love arguing beside the point or ignoring the issue as well as all twelve other fallacies. They are “drunk with words” while making the fallacious point.


Chapter 9 Fallacies

The Proper attitude in argument is expressed by Socrates:

What sort of man am I? I am one of those who would be glad to be refuted when saying a thing that is untrue, glad also to refute another if he said something inexact, not less glad to be refuted than to do it, since I deem it the greater blessing, in proportion as it is a greater good, to be released from that which is the greatest evil than to release another from it.

—Plato, Gorgias

In so far as an argument is fallacious, it is not logical. But as logic is concerned with truth, it is incidentally concerned with the negation of truth, namely errors—falsity and fallacies.
A fallacy is a violation of logical principle disguised under an appearance of validity; it is an error in process. Falsity is an error in fact. Fallacy arises from an erroneous relation of propositions; falsity, from an erroneous relation of terms. A premise may be false; reasoning may be fallacious.
To discover a fallacy is to discover the reason why the mind was deceived into regarding error as truth. To classify fallacies is to attempt to find common ground for such deception. But a given argument may be fallacious for more reasons than one, and hence it may exemplify more than one fallacy. Consequently, a classification of fallacies is neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive.
A fallacy is either formal or material or both simultaneously.

Formal fallacies arise from the violation of rules governing the formal relations of propositions and have been treated where these formal relations have been treated. The fallacies of opposition are violations of the rules of opposition; the commonest one is to assume of contraries that when one is false the other is true instead of unknown. The fallacies of education are two: illicit obversion and illicit conversion. The fallacies of the syllogistic relation are: undistributed middle term; illicit process of the major term or of the minor term; four terms; four propositions; two negative premises; two partial premises; merely seeming mediated opposition; sublating the antecedent or positing the consequent in the minor premise of a mixed hypothetical syllogism; simultaneously positing and sublating both alternatives of a disjunction; imperfect disjunction; the dilemmatic fallacy.

Material fallacies have their root in the matter—in the terms, in the ideas, and in the symbols by which the ideas are communicated. They vitiate an argument that may be formally correct.
Aristotle grouped them in two classes: six fallacies in dictione, occasioned by a hidden assumption not conveyed in the language, and seven fallacies extra dictionem, characterized by a hidden false assumption not warranted by the language in which the ideas are expressed.
They were devices used in oral controversy in Athens by the Sophists, who sought not truth but victory over their opponents by these merely apparent refutations. These fallacies continue to be used, however, to deceive others and sometimes even to deceive the one using them.


Fallacies In Dictione

Not going to address these fallacies, yet they are equivocation, amphiboly, composition, division, accent, and verbal form.

Fallacies Extra Dictionem

Common to the seven fallacies extra dictionem is a hidden false assumption not warranted by the language in which the ideas are expressed. The fallacies extra dictionem are fallacy of accident, confusion of absolute and qualified statements, fallacy of consequent, arguing beside the point, false cause, begging the question, and complex question.

Following is arguing beside the point. It is highly recommended all fallacies are studied.

Arguing Beside the point or Ignoring the issue or Ignoratio elenchi

This fallacy arises from falsely assuming that the point at issue has been disproved when one merely resembling it has been disproved; the point really at issue is consequently ignored.
Ignoratio elenchi means ignorance of the nature of refutation. To refute an opponent, one must prove the contradictory of his statement, and this is done only when the same predicate—not merely the name but the reality—is denied of the same subject in the same respect, relation, manner, and time in which it was asserted. To establish some other conclusion is to dodge the issue and to argue beside the point.
One might think he has refuted the proposition: “The president of the United States governs the whole country” when, by citing the results of an election, he has established the proposition: “The President of the United States was not elected by the majority of Americans. He has not, however, denied the same predicate as was affirmed in the proposition he attempted to refute. Authority to govern comes from the vote of the Electoral College, not a majority vote in the election.
One also ignores the issue and argues beside the point, when accused of dishonesty, one replies that many others are doing the same thing, falsely assuming that when the number of dishonest people is very large, ipso faction, each ceases to be dishonest.
An argument that deals with the point at issue is argumentum ad rem (literally an “argument to the thing”). Arguments that evade the issue are given special names to signify on which irrelevant grounds they are based: argumentum ad hominem, argumentum ad populum, argumentum ad misericordiam, argumentum ad baculum, argumentum ad ignorantiam, and argumentum ad verecundiam.

Argumentum Ad Hominem
The argumentum ad hominem (literally, an “argument to the man”) fallacy confuses the point at issue with the people concerned. Attacks on the character and conduct of people and personal abuse or praise are substituted for reasoning on the point at issue. Argumentum ad hominem seeks to persuade by unsound ethos. In rhetoric ethos means establishing the speaker or writer as one worthy of making an argument.

Example: Argumentum ad hominem

To argue that, because a certain lawyer has defrauded his relatives by getting a larger share of the inheritance than was really intended by the testator, that lawyer’s arguments alleging that a certain bank official is an embezzler are worthless.

It is, however, legitimate to argue that, because a witness is known to have lied in court, his present testimony ought not be readily accepted.

Leftists cannot resist this fallacy

Argumentum Ad Populum
The argumentum ad populum fallacy arises from substituting an appeal to the passions and predjudices of the people for logical reasoning on the point at issue, for example, the appeal of race hatred by persecutors of Jews.

The rest of the world

Argumentum Ad Misericordiam
The argumentum ad misericordiam (literally , an “argument to pity”) fallacy replaces reason with a plea for sympathy. It is used by many criminal lawyers to divert the jurors’ minds from the real question---guilty or not guilty---by moving them to pity and to a favorable verdict because the defendant is, for instance, a beautiful woman or a single parent. A scofflaw might argue that he should not receive a parking ticket because he was donating blood while the car was parked illegally. A classic example of argumentum ad misericordiam is that the defendant who murdered his mother and father should receive sympathy because he is an orphan.

Gitmo and the recent Supreme Court ruling. The Navy officer hooked and caught 5 court justices on this one

Argumentum Ad Baculum
Argumentum ad baculum is the appeal to the “big stick.” The issue is ignored in an attempt to inspire fear of the consequences of adopting a proposed opinion or program, or of allowing a movement branded as dangerous to gain strength. The threat of social ostracism or loss of a position might be used to deter a person from exposing fraud in the work place. A bully might persuade by threatening violence.

Iran, North Korea and all other terrorist nations and peoples

Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam
Argumentum ad ignoratiam is the use of an argument that sounds convincing to others because they are ignorant of the weakness of the argument and of the facts that stand against it.

Examples: Argumentium ad ignorantiam
A theory, such as evolution, is declared worthless because it has not been proved.
No one has ever proved that aliens exist; therefore aliens do not exist.
No one has ever proved that aliens do not exist; therefore aliens exist.

Argumentum ad populum, ad misericordiam, ad baculum and ad ignorantiam also demonstrate an unsound use of pathos. Pathos is a term used in rhetoric to mean that a speaker or a writer tries to establish empathy with the audience.

What Chomsky and Zinn rely upon

Argumentum Ad Verecundiam
Argumentum ad verecundiam is an appeal to the prestige or respect in which a proponent of an argument is held as a guarantee of the truth of the argument. This is unwarranted when reasoning about an issue is required and only the authority of its upholders or opponents is given consideration. It is perfectly legitimate to supplement reasoning with authority (argumentum ad auctoritatem), but it is fallacious to substitute authority for reasoning in matters capable of being understood by reason. This fallacy is particularly pernicious when the authority cited is not an authority on the matter undr discussion. For example, celebrity endorsement of consumers products or political causes constitutes argumentum ad verecundiam.

Barbara Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Matt Damon, and the rest of Hollywood


Sister Mirium Joseph, C.S.C., Ph.D, The Trivium, pp.187-188, pp.202-204
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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy

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