Arguments I hate, pt. 1: hypothetical hypocrisy

One of the exasperating things about reading political blogs is the low level of argumentation that we find. There is too much name-calling and cheap-shots, and not enough thinking of high quality. This is a point that I suspect most bloggers agree with, although most of us find it easier to identify posts that offend against this when they are made by the other side. Such is human nature.

It struck me thta it would be helpful to create a taxonomy of false arguments that we all (left, right, and center) might try to avoid.

With this in mind, I offer the first 'argument I hate', which I dub 'hypothetical hypocrisy'. This argument begins with a political or moral position of its target; a hypothetical situation is concocted into wihch the target is placed; the target is imagined to act against their original position and is condemned for hypocrisy.

A classic example of this came a couple weeks ago when Laurie Hawn, conservative candidate in Edmonton-Centre, wrote a post with the title 'A conflict hypocrisies', which included this swipe at Jack Layton:

Okay everyone, hands up all who think that Canada's federal socialist leader, Jack Layton, would put himself at the back of the queue if he (or his wife) needed an MRI. I didn't think so.

The original post was worded slightly differently, causing a controversy about name-calling, but let's leave that aside, and whether it is true (which it probably isn't: Layton's wife is undergoing cancer treatment and apparently gets no special consideration). What is noteworthy is the unfairness of the argument. Layton is placed in a hypothetical situation, imagined to have acted hypocritically, then condemned for hypothetical hyprocrisy. In essence, it is as if I said 'X says theft is wrong; but if his family were starving, surely he would steal; therefore x is a hypocrite'.

This argument comes in various forms, and I invite people to include examples (left, right, and center) in the comments.