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More on Miers -- Ad Hominem is Improper

by John F. Tamburo, Editor in Chief, Publisher
Originally Posted: 10/11/2005 12:07:09 PM

Again, I find myself inspired to write by Rush Limbaugh.  He is decrying the Harriet Miers nomination supporters who accuse the nomination’s detractors of being sexist, and who are using other epithets to describe those detractors.  I personally confess to having labeled the detractions as "elitist."  However, I was speaking to the argument, and not the person.  Moreover, I spoke directly to Ann Coulter’s piece, where she decried Miers’ legal education.  My argument was directed not to the person of Ann Coulter, who is the inaugural member of our Conservative Commentators Hall of Fame and is a person who I deeply respect and admire.  I disagree with her in this matter and argued my position.  What is upsetting me now is the behavior of my fellow Miers defenders.  They are straying far from the proper arguments on position and into personal insults.

"There have been some stinging personal attacks upon the Miers detractors, such as George Will, Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer.  Since when have we Conservatives turned into cannibals?"

Our First Lady has openly wondered if the Miers opponents are "sexist."  Others have excoriated the "glass ceiling for conservative women."  There have been some stinging personal attacks upon the Miers detractors, such as George Will, Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer.  Since when have we Conservatives turned into cannibals?  We objected loudly when our reasoned disagreements with the Clinton administration resulted in ad hominem abusive attacks against the person of the dissident.  We stand enraged, and rightly so, as Tom DeLay is subject to kangaroo-court tactics by a politically-motivated law-hating menace to society.  Why?  The reason for the trumped up phony charges is, purely and simply, Mr. DeLay’s effective political skills.  Yet we now unsheath the long knives and go after our own.  That is the ledgerdomain of the Left.  They are the amoral ones who eat their own for failing to toe the line to the most extreme position of the base.

We need to stop this nonsense and now.  We need to redirect our disagreements to the arguments, and we need to keep ourselves away from the leftist tendencies to resort to abusive attacks, name-calling and other childish tactics, usually seen by those who have no intellectual position to advocate.

"What is equally disturbing as the use of ad hominem against those who disagree with us is the fact that we who support the Miers nomination have abundant fact-based arguments to support our position."

What is equally disturbing as the use of ad hominem against those who disagree with us is the fact that we who support the Miers nomination have abundant fact-based arguments to support our position.  Here are mine:

1. Miss Miers is conservative.  All indications are that she will be as conservative as, if not more conservative than, Justices Scalia and Thomas.
    
2. Miss Miers is a devout Christian.  That means that she has a solid moral foundation and will approach the law with honesty and clarity.  It also is a strong signal that she is a strong conservative.  There are virtually no devout Christians who would vote to uphold partial-birth infanticide or to strike the words "under God" from our Pledge of Allegiance.
    
3. I do trust our President.  His outstanding track record when it comes to judicial nominations has earned my trust.  In addition, Miss Miers’ close work with our President has given me additional confidence in his read of her judicial temprament.  Remember that Miss Miers’ job for our President was to help him make judicial picks.
    
   That means that it was Harriet Miers who recommended Charles Pickering, Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and Chief Justice Roberts to our President!  President Bush has little time to tie his own shoes, much less to memorize the entire roster of judges around the country.  His point-person on these nominees was Miss Miers.  When the leftists tried to stymie our President’s Constitutional prerogatives with a filibuster, it was Miers who suggested that these fine judges be renominated!  Were it not for Harriet Miers, we would not even know who Janice Rogers Brown is!
    
4. Harriet Miers’ personal life shows a strongly-grounded person who is not swayed by the sentiments of the day.  That is again also reflected in her devout faith.  I believe that she is highly unlikely to turn "soft" and move to the left as the pressures from the near-Communists in Washington mount.  And we all know that they will.  As the Supreme Court moves further to the right, the Left will go into a hysterical death-spasm of invective.  The leftist blogs will show their true colors and do for Miers what they have already done for our President:  call for her assassination.  Harriet Miers has the steel backbone to withstand that kind of mindlessness and still retain her bearings and be true to the Constitution.
    
5. I think that her lack of bench time may be a great advantage.  She will bring a brand new "Rehnquist perspective" to the court.  We conservatives decry judges (admittedly liberal ones) who allow the bench to make them megalomaniacs.  Well, here we stand with a nominee who is most assuredly not megalomaniacal.  By the way, nothing in this statement should be taken to state that any sitting Supreme Court justice is a megalomaniac or even close thereto.  I am not saying that.

These are the kinds of arguments we need to make to advocate our position.  Otherwise we are no better than the leftists who substitute ad hominem invective for actual debate.