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The term for what you're doing in this argument is "tu quoque". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque Examples: "Y
by ccleve 14y ago
The term for what you're doing in this argument is "tu quoque". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Examples:
"Yes India's government is corrupt, but not all that much more corrupt than the US government."
"Contrast this to the genocide the US conducted against native Americans who were in the way."
"Consider how much effort is undertaken in the US to hide poverty from view."
"Yet fraud abounds at all levels of government."
Even if this stuff were true (and it mostly isn't), your arguments don't answer the author's points.
- grandalf 14y agoMy comparisons were not meant to logically refute the author's points. I intended to point out the absurdity of focusing one's indignation on problems in another country. Imagine if someone started expressing indignation about the bad breath of someone sitting on the other side of the room, when he himself had bad breath, though perhaps slightly fresher than the person whose breath he was outraged about. For some reason, we don't view indignant rants about foreign political systems with the same eye for absurdity that we view indignant rants about other things.