Nope, socialist Ed Cone can’t have his own fallacy — the one he drops here:
If the N&R is going to run columns from opinion mills like Civitas, as it did today, shouldn’t the identification at the bottom of the column be a little more explicit? A reader might think the Civitas Insitute [sic] is a neutral good-government group.
I’d like to see something like, "This guy gets paid by a conservative think-tank to promote a particular point of view," although I guess just inserting the words "a conservative organization" after "Civitas Institute" would work, too.
The Ed Cone fallacy has been taught in Logic 101 classes for years. It’s called the genetic fallacy, or at least ad hominem circumstantial. People might reasonably call Ed Cone a socialist, but they can’t call him a logician.
(Note: "The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance
where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone’s
origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any
difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring
the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context. The fallacy therefore fails to assess the claim on its merit.")
Cone reinforces your point with this comment:
“Max writes for Civitas (as I’m sure he meant to mention), where he no doubt has absolute freedom to publish any opinion, however heterodox, under the imprimatur of the organization.”
This is too funny!
Keep shining the light on his inanities.
“People might reasonably call Ed Cone a socialist, but they can’t call him a logician.”
Cone’s problem is that there are a growing number of us in the Greensboro blahgosphere who don’t acknowledge the logic of his omniscient infallalbility