Keller @ Large: Both Candidates Guilty Of Guilt By Association
BOSTON (CBS) -- It's one of the worst logical fallacies there is--guilt by association, the claim that because you are associated with a group that is considered bad in some way, you also are bad.
Let's be honest, we all indulge in this at one time or another. What parent hasn't said "I don't want you hanging out with that crowd," even though your teen is blameless? What Red Sox fan hasn't passed on a possible friendship because that potential friend roots for the Yankees?
But whatever reluctance we have to engage in guilt by association seems to have disappeared during this campaign. Donald trump dove into the deep-end head-first in his announcement speech, smearing Mexican immigrants as drug-dealing criminals and rapists before adding, as an afterthought, that "some, I assume, are good people." He's pulled the same stunt with Muslims.
And Hillary Clinton's campaign has been guilty of guilt by association as well, smearing millions of Trump supporters as "deplorables" and extrapolating claims of racism and lawlessness from the actions of a handful of Trump backers.
This is unfair, divisive, and intellectually corrupt, but that's not the worst of it. Guilt by association is also un-American.
This is supposed to be the land of opportunity, not just to make money, but to reinvent yourself and overcome the rough edges of your past. We're the place where the colonists fled to escape religious persecution, where our most famous statue asks the old world to send their "wretched refuse."
Guilt by association is backward and ignorant, and our political class wonders why their wallowing in it makes them so unpopular.
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