If there’s one thing I enjoy more than anything else, after pancakes and improvisational comedy, it’s a good, intelligent debate. That’s one of the reasons I love writing columns. Hell, it’s one of the reasons I’ve risen to be editor of this section. There is nothing wrong with criticism or argument, but two columns I’ve written this year have led to emails and comments that insult me personally and then treat the insult as an actual argument-winning point.

Debates are not won by insult or obfuscation and name-calling is not an argument. In logic these are known as arguments “ad hominem” or “poisoning the well.” Many of you reading this, I’m sure, will recognize what I’m talking about as the Chewbacca Defense.

An ad hominem argument is a fallacy where the debater uses a real or perceived characteristic of their opponent to attack their points. A person is perfectly entitled to believe that Sarah Palin is stupid, but to say that “Sarah Palin is stupid, therefore her position on taxes is wrong” is fallacious because it’s a personal attack on her instead of addressing her position.

The poisoning the well is an attack where a debater belittles an opponent in a way that makes the argument unfair, possibly by implying an ulterior motive for their position. I see this a lot among people who don’t believe in climate change: they say that the scientists shouldn’t be trusted because they get publication, grant money and fame from supporting climate change, therefore they’re not actually interested in truth, only the perks – which isn’t to say that the perks aren’t valid concerns, they just have nothing to do with weather the science is right or wrong. Economics is positively rife with poisoning the well – Marxists have been known to claim that capitalist economists are in bed with bankers, libertarians distrust economists employed by the government on first principles and Keynesians (or at least Paul Krugman) have ranted about how libertarians can’t be trusted because they hold favorable opinions of secession and are therefore neo-Confederates who want to re-enslave black people.

So I was pretty dismayed by some of the responses I got to a column I wrote at the end of January – “To tase or not to tase.”

Steve Tuttle, the Vice President of Communications of the company that makes Tasers (or someone posting as him), wrote “Dear Editor, I must admit I’m stunned how this story made it past [sic] any editing cycle. . . . What I question is how Mr. Robare’s story was not fact checked and how his over-the-top statements were approved . . . an editor could have addressed most of this garbage. . . . I truly don’t the full day [sic] it would take to provide the litany of data back to contradict Mr. Robare’s rubbish. . . . It appears that the editor didn’t even do cursory fact checking 101. I have to admit, journalism isn’t what it used to be . . . Now, it’s more like ‘welcome to the land of pump the out [sic] trash and don’t let any facts or science get in the way.’”

So Mister Vice President of Communications, Steve Tuttle, you insulted me in a public forum, questioned my integrity – which is the main value a journalist has, insultingly patronized me and outright refused to counter my points with any facts whatsoever. Way to go, sir. Way to go. The one thing you could have done to mitigate what in some European countries could be considered libel, you didn’t do. That says to me that you can’t refute my points, although I recognize that argumentation does not work that way.

I also got an email from Greg Meyer, a retired Los Angeles Police Department captain. He also refused to try and refute my points, but at least sent an interesting article on the issue of excited delirium, a medical condition frequently listed as the cause of death for people who have been tasered by police. It has happened so often that some civil rights activists wonder if it actually exists or if coroners concocted it to cover up for the police. The article was about the pathology of the condition, and so it only tangentially addressed those concerns.

But that can be seen on any news website. It’s more disturbing when those techniques are used on the floor of Congress. There might be relationships between members of Congress and certain big banks, and those congresspersons might vote for legislation that somehow favors the banks, but the mere existence of the relationship does not speak to the question of weather or not that legislation is good.

If the definitive philosophy of 20th century America was “Believe in yourself” then we are reaping what our parents sewed all those years ago. Many people have come to believe in only themselves. They have put themselves at the center of the universe and discovered that reality is now infinitely far away. I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but my generation’s stuck with the check.

Matthew M. Robare is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].