David Cohen’s appeal to authority

David Cohen is (allegedly) a Constitutional law professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, the very city where the Declaration of Independence was penned in the days leading to July 4th, 1776, Why someone would pay this man to teach law students about the Constitution is beyond me, because the drastic solution he proposes won't solve the problem he thinks is epidemic -- gun violence. In a recent op-ed published in Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Cohen argued for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment on the grounds that the Founding Fathers "got it wrong" when they granted ordinary citizens the right to bear arms (radical liberals: 'bear arms' means the right to own a gun.) Mr. Cohen began his embarrassing article with the somewhat pompous declaration, "I teach the Constitution for a living." This statement is intended to imply to Mr. Cohen's audience that he possesses superior knowledge about the Constitution, even to the Founding Fathers (implied by his "correcting" them and identifying things he claims were mistakes in the original document, and only in his own mind, of course) -- an appeal to establish his opinion as authority - which by doing with his very first words, commits a logical fallacy. Mr. Cohen continues: "I revere the document when it is used to further social justice and make our country a more inclusive one. I admire the Founders for establishing a representative democracy that has survived for over two centuries. But sometimes we just have to acknowledge that the Founders and the Constitution are wrong. What is this nonsense about social justice? … [Read more...]