Topic: WorldNetDaily
An ad hominem attack is a fallacious argument in which someone is personally attacked in order to try and discredit the argument the person is making, even if the two have nothing to do with each other. WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh provides a textbook example of an ad hominem attack -- in the service of right-wing legal group Liberty Counsel -- in a Feb. 26 article:
New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman boasts on his state website that he’s long advocated for abortion businesses and lately has opposed President Trump’s plan to ban visitors from certain terror-supporting nations.
He cites the many targets of his campaigns: corrupt politicians, companies that rip off New Yorkers, big banks, consumer fraud, lying, illegal tracking technology, drug trafficking rings, discrimination, hatred, and opponents of carbon credits and sanctuary cities.
But two legal teams point out that he doesn’t have the same concern for the law when the subjects are people who work for him.
Two teams defending individuals in a case Schneiderman is pursing against pro-life activists say the AG is going easy on people who take his side in the abortion debate.
For example, there’s Mary Lou Greenberg, which Liberty Counsel describes as a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which “openly admits” to be “organizing to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time.”
The group is “preparing to lead an actual revolution to bring about a radically new and better society: the New Socialist Republic in North America.”
“They don’t seek to win at the ballot box or to persuade Americans through peaceful speech on public sidewalks,” the report said. “Instead, Greenberg and her party have developed a specific, seven-point strategy for ‘How We Could Defeat them,’ which includes training a ‘revolutionary fighting force to start the all-out fight.'”
The party has prepared a “Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America” to replace the existing Constitution “after their bloody revolution has succeeded.”
“The 104-page manifesto purports to suspend due process until those who opposed the revolution are duly punished,” Liberty Counsel said.
Under existing federal law, a prison sentence of up to 20 years is issued to anyone who “knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States.”
However, and apparently most importantly, Greenberg runs an “escort program” at the Choices Women’s Medical Center abortion business in Queens.
Schneiderman called her to testify regarding the behavior of the pro-life activists.
Unruh is serving as the lazy stenographer for Liberty Counsel (he's basically rewriting a Liberty Counsel press release). So lazy, in fact, that he can't be bothered to contact either Greenberg to allow her to respond to the ad hominem attacks he's parroting; buried toward the end of the article is a claim that "Schneiderman’s office declined to respond to a WND request for comment on the allegations," but we suspect Unruh didn't put in much more than a token effort.
And so slavishly devoted is Unruh to sticking to the Liberty Counsel script that he doesn't even explain what this particular case is about beyond a direct quote straight from Liberty Counsel that makes a passing reference to one of the anti-abortion protesters who's apparently a defendant, Scott Fitchett Jr.
According to an actual news outlet, Fitchett and other anti-abortion protesters were accused of aggressively harassing and blocking patients trying to enter a New York City abortion clinic.
The fact that these anti-abortion groups are resorting to ad hominem attacks is arguably evidence that they can't really defend the behavior of the protesters. And the fact that WND unquestionably parroted the ad hominem attack is evidence that it hasn't yet earned the right to live in coming back from its financial problems.
