Add an Epithet

I have been accused of being a birther. My accusers never seem to understand the established fact that the current President has a long-form birth certificate which he has never revealed to the public. I don’t agree with their high opinion of Barry, so they apparently feel a need to call me bad names.

Funny thing is, I’m not insulted. Others who challenge the facts of Barry’s birth seem more concerned with the conclusions and fallout should we eventually discover that Barack is exactly as African as he seems. I’m not jumping to those conclusions. I want better facts first.

My accusers are making a classic logical error. They assume that every member of a group is exactly alike. If they see a gray cat, they then insist every other cat must also be gray. It’s the Fallacy of Division. Some cats are gray and some birthers are nuts. But that tells us nothing about any specific cat or any specific birther.

But if they like calling me names, I guess that’s O.K. It’s not hurting me.

In the spirit of charity, I offer another epithet to my weak-thinking opponents. ”Tenther.” If I don’t seem to be sufficiently put out after being called a birther, a racist, a fascist, or whatever else, why not accuse me of supporting the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution?

Millhiser is full of scorn for people who think that the Tenth Amendment might actually mean something — that it might prevent the federal government from exercising powers not specifically delegated to it. Millhiser expresses this scorn by dismissing limited-government advocates as “tenthers” (in an explicit attempt to associate them with truthers and birthers):

These efforts are all part of a movement whose members are convinced that the 10th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits spending programs and regulations disfavored by conservatives. Indeed, while “birther” conspiracy theorists dominate the airwaves with tales of a mystical Kenyan baby smuggled into Hawaii just days after his birth, these “tenther” constitutionalists offer a theory that is no less radical but infinitely more dangerous.

Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the “True Constitution,” exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government’s powers beyond recognition.

In other words, if you believe in limited government, constrained by the enumerated powers of the constitution, you are part of the lunatic fringe. The only “normal” viewpoint is the one that Congress can do pretty much whatever it wants. Note that the New Republic has also picked up on the “tenther” slur.

Yup. That’s me, just a fringe crackpot who clings to the crazy idea that words have meaning.

Tenther. Add it to my resumé.

H/T: Coyote