re: #192 iceweasel

Tell that to the 14 year old impregnated by her father and denied an abortion by him. Tell that to the 18 year old supporting herself and struggling to go to college. Tell that to the woman trapped in an abusive marriage and trying to leave, whose husband flushed all her birth control pills down the toilet and has raped her every night since, deliberately to impregnate her.

There’s a quote (the origin is muddled, usually attributed to Elanor Roosevelt) that goes like this:

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

Whenever I see someone attempting to reduce something to human interest stories, I immediately become suspicious. I consider it a solid indicator that their position cannot stand on reason, so they are attempting to appeal to emotion instead.

“Oh, you think the US invasion of Iraq was overall a positive development in the region? Well, tell that to the poor woman who lost her house and her children and her husband and all her immediate family and her childhood best friend and also she was horribly disfigured by a US bomb that missed its target?!”

The fact that this might have actually happened doesn’t make it any less specious when used as an argument.

(This does not necessarily mean I am opposed to the position you are taking; just disapproval of the means you’ve chosen to use to argue it. It’s a technique that I think is depressingly common on both sides of many debates, not just you and not just on this topic.)