Bernard Chapin: The Straw Men of the Left

"When I was a lad my father gave me one piece of advice concerning politics: 'Son, the Democratic Party cares about the poor whereas the Republican Party cares only for the rich.' I believed him as would most five-year-olds. Luckily, later in life upon meeting actual conservatives and studying their works, I developed second thoughts. Firsthand experience with the welfare state moved me even further to the right. Unfortunately, my dad — while in countless ways a more knowledgeable man than I — knew nothing about politics. However, his take on Republicans was fairly typical. The quip regarding the GOP being disinterested in 'the poor' is but a leftist straw man posing as a legitimate argument. It is full of emotion but signifies dysfunction alone. Moreover, it is a fallacy, and this particular brand of irrationality occurs when one ignores another’s 'actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of that position' in its stead."