responding to ad hominem person attacks

Jason Johnson jason.johnson.081 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 16 12:10:03 UTC 2007


What what does the rest of the group think about what happened?

The way I personally saw it was:  One person leans over to another one
and wispers in his ear "hey man, are you trolling with this or
something?" and the person smiles, walks over to CNN and repeats
everything the person said and gives their scathing rebuttal.

In my opinion, I don't see any grounds for it being an issue of "self
defense" because no threat was made, and no slander was done sinse it
was sent to the person in private.

I find it questional behavior.  If the person has been sending this
sort of thing over and over then I can see giving a warning of "hey,
if you send me another message I'm forwarding it to the mail list to
let others know what you're doing", but to do it instantly at the
first very minor offense (it's questionable in my mind if it was an
offense at all) seems quite over the top to me.

Ironically, such behavior is more likely to "bully" and scare people
away from talking to you in general, which is what ad hominem is all
about, no? :)

On 9/15/07, Peter William Lount <peter at smalltalk.org> wrote:
> Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> >>>>>> "Peter" == Peter William Lount <peter at smalltalk.org> writes:
> >>>>>>
> >
> > Peter> People have the right to defend their person and this right even allows
> > Peter> them to make private communications public!
> >
> > Not in violation of federal law.  I don't care how you feel.  You don't get to
> > violate the law no matter how you "feel".
> >
> >
> Hi Mr. Schwartz,
>
> As you know good sir I believe you are mistaken. I was well within the
> rights of a citizen of Canada to defend one's person.
>
> I've moved on and I think the group has as well. Thank you good sir.
>
> All the best,
>
> Peter
>
>
>



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