Guilt by association only works if someone is guilty of something.
Which is completely off the topic of the original post. But you guys don't seem to see the point of the OP.
Wrong, absolutely and completely wrong.
Number one, the word
guilt does
not mean "guilty of a culpable offence" in this context. It means the fallacy that, by association with that guy you were just talking to,
you take on his aspects.
I put this in a simple parable earlier--
You sit down in a room with Charles Manson.
You talk about fried chicken recipes. You give him a cooking tip, he gives you a cooking tip. That's it.
You get up, you leave.
I watch from a distance. I don't know what you talked about.
----- Shall I conclude you are now a mass murderer? No, I have no basis.
And number two, this fallacy is what the entire OP event is
built on. In this case, this woman who wrote Mike Rowe commits the fallacy. The fact that it IS a fallacy is what enables Mike Rowe to dismiss her concern, and he's correct to do so. In the comparative case, certain sides of the media (bloggers, commentators) commit the same fallacy vis à vis Ayers, Wright, and whoever else they might drag in. It's the same fallacy and it's equally illegitimate.
And I noted earlier, the irony is that Glenn Beck, the bystander-influence in the instant case, is himself guilty of the same fallacy, not only with Wright et al but scraping up an obscure figure nobody ever heard of (Saul Alinsky) to imply the same thing, and that's by no means an exhaustive list.
A fallacy is a fallacy. If it protects Rowe from illegitimate conclusions of who he can associate with (and it does), then it equally protects O'bama -- or anyone else for that matter.
As the OP asks:
if we dissociate with everyone because of their political affiliation, just where are we as a country?
And as Rowe put it in the article:
How are we ever going to accomplish anything in this incredibly divisive time if we associate only with people that we don’t disagree with?
They're both right. And you can't apply that standard here, and suddenly jerk it away there. That's trying to have it both ways, and that's dishonest.
The OP didn't print this (there's an allusion that I had to look up), but the same thing happened
in reverse when Rowe went on Bill Maher's TV show:
>> Truth is, every time I go on Fox, my liberal friends squeal. And every time I show up on MSNBC, my conservative pals whine. Not because they disagree with my position - everyone agrees that closing the skills gap is something that needs to happen. No, these days, people get bent simply if I appear on shows they don't like, or
sit too close to people they don't care for.
What's up with that? Is our country so divided that my mere proximity to the "other side" prompts otherwise sensible adults to scoop up their marbles and go home? <<
(emphasis added,
full page here, and worth a read)
while you read them, because it would be impossible to type what you just typed. I'm afraid it looks worse the longer you go on with it. I mean -- the words are right here above us. You didn't even notice the red bolded part.
