I’m going to take a moment to be grateful that he cannot vote in my country. You, sir, are more then welcome to deal with this wingnut – we have enough of our own in the U.S.

And since then, I’ve clearly constantly been exposed to incorrect uses of the term, which confoozled (to use the technical term) me further.

Now I finally understand.

Now that I think of it, the reason for most of this misuse can probably be narrowed further:

“I need something to bolster my argument, which is weak. I’ve got it! I’ll use this Latin phrase I don’t fully understand to give myself apparent weight, thus cowing people who don’t understand it either and making myself seem important!”

The example I was given in class was saying something like, “You know who else was a vegitarian? Adolph Hitler.”

That would be an association fallacy. In fact, Hitler’s vegetarianism is the first example given on the fallacy’s Wikipedia entry.

An ad hominem would be something like “My opponent thinks that we shouldn’t raze this forest, but that’s the sort of crazy thing he would think, being a vegetarian.” It works both ways though. “Hitler’s a vegetarian, so perhaps this ‘final solution’ thing isn’t so wrong after all…”

The example I was given in class was saying something like, “You know who else was a vegitarian? Adolph Hitler.”

I don’t think that’s an ad hominem, actually. I believe an ad hominem is an attempt to bring up an unrelated trait of the person making the argument. In the case you quoted, it seems like whether vegetarianism is good or not is the topic of debate. An ad hominem in that case might be saying “You can’t be right because you’re a Nazi!”

Or, if you were arguing with the person, you might say “You’re a vegetarian, therefore you’re wrong.” What they eat has no relation to the subject, so if you bring it up as an attempt to “prove” them wrong, that would be ad hominem.

There is no real logical point being made either way about vegetarinism in the statement, only that the idea is associated with someone who killed 6 million Jews, and you, by extention as a vegetarian, are like him. Course, anything involving Hitler is kind of passe when it comes to logic statements or arguments, but I digress…

Don’t argue Law with a Law Student.

;p

Who’s REALLY the hack here?

That would appear to be Cosmo, for continually accusing you of resorting to ad hominems despite a stunning ignorance of what that actually means.

I will probably bookmark this to whip it out later.

You know, for when my lil’ ol’ liberal mind gets all confuzzled in the future…

It’s conflating correlation with causation, really. If you’re a racist, callous, douche who cheery-picks or misrepresents facts to support your otherwise insupportable arguments, then that makes you an asshole. The same conditions also make your position on any given issue is likely to be a wrong one. Being an asshole isn’t the *reason* you’re wrong, but your asshole quotient can strongly correlate with your dumb-ass argument quotient, because they are both based on the same underlying ultimate cause.

…Actually, no, I don’t. I love being that guy!

Anyway, Steyn’s “EVIL STAN LEE WAS AN EVIL DEMOCRAT” thing kind of hilariously omits the fact that Kirby was a lifelong FDR Democrat himself. It’s particularly annoying because I agree with some of what he’s saying about Lee and Kirby apportioning the credit.