Political contestations and argumentum ad hominem

We live in contentious times, where the political landscape is so divided and political colors fly along a warpath. In these times, debates become normalized as part of the public discourse, in cyberspace, on TV, in blog columns and commentaries, even in living rooms and coffee shops.

 

The issues that swirl around our tumultuous political landscape are by no means petty, for they lie deep in the very soul of what constitutional democracy is all about, and it is here that the rule of law now hangs on the balance.  

 

When the Executive branch declares war on the Judiciary, while the Legislature waits on the wings to intervene, and when many of the legislators sitting there have axes to grind against the women and men in robes who have twice declared as unconstitutional some acts that benefited them, we have what could appear as a Judiciary in peril, for it is the weakest of the three branches. It doesn’t have an army like the Executive, nor the power of the purse of the Legislature. It can only count on defenders like myself whose only power lies in blogging, tweeting, posting, sharing and liking in social media, and the majesty of the Constitution, which has become an object of trashing lately by self-appointed legal experts.

 

There are those who argue that the Justices have set up for themselves a war with the Executive due to their judicial activism. But I believe that it is not judicial activism when the Court has merely relied on precedence. In fact, it is simply a conservative and restorative remedy against what I can call as Executive adventurism of taking shortcuts and justifying these as morally warranted, using the excuse that there should be room for administrative creativity since the public that needs vital government services can’t wait for the Constitution to be changed. Apologists of the President do not even stop to wonder how the construction of an Archive Building for the House of Representatives could constitute a vital government service. For them, the Constitution has become an inconvenience, and hence radical steps have to be taken to creatively go around it. The doctrine that they have invented to apply to justify such adventurism is one where the moral takes precedence over the constitutional.

 

Many things have already been said about the DAP controversy, and arguments have been thrown around, some civilly, others bordering on name-calling. Friends and colleagues have suddenly become enemies, even as enemies have found new common grounds. This only shows how deeply engaging, and for some, emotional, the debate has become.

 

As to whether the ordinary persons on the street can relate to these contestations, and really care about what seems to be a clash among elite political institutions remain to be seen. After all, this political drama competes for primetime coverage with news about Claudine Barretto once again showing her battered and bruised legs. And while watching the early evening news has enraged the public about the brownouts and the incapacity of our public institutions to quickly provide venues to recover from Glenda, has horrified them about the effects of the war in Gaza, and has appalled them about the downing of another Malaysian Airlines this time after being hit by a missile attack, the public continues to be mesmerized by the twists and turns of the soap operas that come after, eagerly anticipating when Milette Real will find out that her husband Anthony has another wife in Cebu.

 

Perhaps, ordinary Pinoys have indeed relocated their sources of sanity and their political bearings away from traditional political institutions that have always preoccupied the elites and into the domains where simulated realities rule. And perhaps, from a public now suffering from a life without reliable supply of electricity and water, the only feeling that could emerge is one of anger and frustration at the failure of the Government to provide basic services. 

 

To an angry, electricity-starved, and water-deprived public, issues of constitutionality of acts of the President may not even resonate.

 

But still, this is an issue that remains valid, even to someone like me who is trying to nuance my postmodern leanings with practical politics. After all, I am trying hard to get out of the relativist, state-hating confinement that one easily associates with postmodernists.  

 

After all, in its pure form, postmodernists do not believe in the state and its institutions, and would not care much about the clashes between the three branches of government. A typical postmodernist would not be preoccupied with judicial remedies and executive adventurism, and would even be pleased by the relative instability of state processes, as this only reveals the weakness of grand unifying narratives such as the Constitution and the rule of law.

 

But I am not going to let my postmodern leanings compromise my political obligation to speak out against unreasonable politics, or illegitimate use of power masked by the moralistic stance of someone who thinks that he is the messiah. I am not going to use postmodern theory to justify my celebration of the failure of the rule of law, for I know very well that when the state fails, and when the rule of law is compromised by Executive adventurism, that I could not use my postmodernism to shield myself, my family, my friends and my community from the ill-effects of a failed state.

 

This is precisely why I am enraged when some self-appointed legal experts are irresponsibly trashing the Constitution, and its protector, the Supreme Court, on the basis of flawed pseudo-legal doctrines. 

 

My discipline is Political Science. Much as I have serious problems with its statist orientation, at least in the way it is taught and practiced in the Philippines, I am also cognizant of some fundamental concepts that it holds as sacred, such as the principle of separation of powers, and the role which each branch of government should play. Anybody who would try to undermine these has to have a better logical reasoning or a powerful argument to convince me.  

 

Simply, I can appreciate any challenge to the fundamental precepts of constitutional democracy that is based on how it may undermine the autonomy of identities, and compromise the freedom to exercise fundamental rights and preferences. This is precisely why I laid my professional life on the chopping block when I fought for the Reproductive Health Law. This is precisely why I will offer the same level of commitment to fight for the Freedom of Information Act, and for future laws that would legalize medical marijuana, divorce and same sex marriages in the country.

 

But I will not allow anyone to trash the very foundation of my discipline if only to provide flawed legal justification for an act of a President that has nothing to do with the autonomy of identities, nor the freedom to exercise fundamental rights and preferences. I will take it as a personal attack when somebody erroneously forces the Constitution to submit to a mere Executive Order, particularly when the cited portions of the latter have already been ruled as unconstitutional by the Court, if only to provide justification to another unconstitutional act by the President. And I will demand accountability from someone who uses such line of argument to defend acts that have suspicious ends, such as the possible bribery of legislators to remove a sitting Chief Justice.

 

And asking someone who deploys such flawed arguments to account for her motive is not argumentum ad hominem in its pure form. Argumentum ad hominem is a fallacy that one commits when the logic of an argument is demeaned, and instead what is given credence is the character of the person who speaks it.

 

But one has to be also mindful of how citing the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem to demean the argument of another could also be problematic.

 

First, to accuse someone who predicates the exposition of the fundamental flaw of an argument with a demand to the person who professes such argument to account for her motive or agenda as guilty of committing the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem is, well, also fallacious.

 

The contentious debates surrounding the DAP is a divisive issue where people who come out to participate in the public discourse are people who carry their own political or personal agenda. Asking someone to account for motive in such a highly politicized, and divisive issue, is a valid political demand. Political discourse is always articulated by a human agency, and any attempt to decouple what is said and argued from the personal or political agenda of the person who speaks, or tweets and posts, and re-tweets and re-posts, and likes and follows is simply another fallacy, for it attempts to remove the element of authorship from the argument.

 

Arguments are not composed simply of words that mechanically take shape using their own internal logic alone. Even as one can analyze their grammar and syntax, and even their internal logic, one has also to take into consideration the contexts upon which they are said, from where they are being said, and why they are being said by whom. These are necessary to locate them in the broader political terrain. This is the sense from where critical readings are made—to go beyond the symbols and signs, and to venture into their origins and sources. In Sociology, this is referred to as what constitutes sociology of knowledge. In constructivist social theory, this is what gives light to the emergence of intersubjective meanings, where the acts of human agency contribute to the development of communities.

 

Thus, when I asked Raissa Robles to account for her agenda, I was not attacking her character. And when I suggested that the reason why she is bold to push for a flawed legal doctrine that is anathema to the very foundation of the hierarchy of laws, inconsistent with established principles of statutory construction, and blatantly disregarding the doctrine of the separation of powers, is precisely because she wants to lay the ground for a judicially-sanctioned escape route for the President and Butch Abad, I was not calling her names.

 

I would have been guilty of committing the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem if I called her crazy, or in the payroll of Malacanang. The fact is, I did not.

 

I admit that I suggested that she is acting like an apologist of Malacañang. But for the life of me, I could not understand why being an apologist, i.e. a defender, of a President that is being idolized as the paragon of morality and virtue could be taken as a character flaw.

 

On the contrary, people who accuse me of committing the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem are in fact the ones guilty of demeaning my arguments not on the basis of my exposition of the flaws of Ms. Robles’ arguments, but simply on the basis that I allegedly committed such fallacy. 

 

And this brings me to the second point. It is now somewhat obvious that accusing someone of committing the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem may in fact be a device that is used to delegitimize valid criticism.

 

And what is even funny is that some of those who demean the discourse of the cyber-critics of this administration as guilty of the fallacy are the very same people who deny Senators Enrile, Estrada and Revilla any space for logical defense simply because, well, they are Senators Enrile, Estrada and Revilla. And these are also the very same people who would deny Imelda Marcos, or any Marcos or anyone associated with Marcos, the capability to make solidly grounded political arguments simply because, well, they come from a Marcos or someone tainted by such a name.

 

And these are the very same people who would take hook, line and sinker any argument coming from the President simply because he is presumed to be moral. Now, pray tell, isn’t this also some kind of argumentum ad hominem, except of the affirmative kind?

 

A third point is worth offering, if only to put into context the cultural element by which arguments are personified. I would like to believe that to an ordinary Pinoy, the logic of an argument is not independent of the person saying it. Hence, the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem is simply an alien animal to the discourse of the everyday and the ordinary. Here, what drive the construction of social order are the affinities that dictate the flow of public discourse. One can even ask if there is any direct translation of the term in any of the Filipino languages. I don’t think there is any. The closest is “pamemersonal” which is in fact drawn from a colonial root word.

 

I am not about to pass judgment on the ethical or moral implications of this predisposition of the ordinary to privilege the “hominem” when they are involved in “argumentum.”

 

But perhaps, one has to truly reflect on who really benefits when this fallacy is cited against someone who utters a political position. It would also be even interesting to inquire into the genealogy of when this practice of deploying the fallacy to demean the argument of someone began in our country. I would suspect that it came through the channels of colonization, and is therefore of Western and elitist progeny. In doing so, it is critical to ask as to who is enabled, and who is silenced when one uses the commission of this fallacy as a device to negate the potency of an utterance.

 

This is a valid point of inquiry, considering that we now live in an era where ideologies are no longer read in books, but are lived in everyday lives. In this context, ideologies take shape in speech and utterances. And calling to task someone for their agenda or motive is no longer seen as assailing the character of a person, for that character is now embedded in speech acts that embody biases and ideological preferences. 

 

Having said these, I will continue to demand from people who join the public sphere and mouth controversial arguments to account for their agenda.

 

And by the force of my politics, I will resist anyone who will suggest that in doing so, I am committing the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. 

 

The author is a former dean of De La Salle University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of this website.