Gordon Fitch wrote:
>
> Dennis Perrin wrote:
> > > Who has "less banal content" -- your hero Milosevic?
>
> Dennis Robert Redmond:
> > (Ahem). We can do without this sort of ad hominem stuff.
>
> Ad tedium, you mean.
I think it worthwhile to distinguish between _ad hominem_ attacks and merely personal attacks, and I think DP's post is an instance of the latter. In my understanding, an _ad hominem_ attack tries to discredit a _position_ by discrediting the source of that position. P says "X is true"; P's opponent says, "P is a vile creature, therefore X is false." But DP never attacks any positions in his attacks on Yoshie, me (and I presume other critics of U.S. imperialism), he merely attacks us for holding positions which are (from his perspective) false by definition. So he's not guilty of ad hominem attacks. Gordon probably has it right.
Carrol