[_jal]

Insofar as a political party is benefiting from the bad actions of members, I'm not going to feel bad about it at this point.

If you look at individual actions only, it is easy to write things off. But I am not a prosecutor, and when we cross some critical mass of "isolated incidents", I start thinking the "bad apples" have spoiled the whole barrel, to actually use that cliche correctly for a change.

I'm sure there's a member or three of the Penn State frathouse recently in the news who weren't culpable in that kid's death, too.

[criddell]

I'm not a fan of the bad apples argument. The same reasoning is used by some to defend attacks on Muslims.

[acdha]

There's a fairly key difference in the levels of opposition: you can easily find Muslims criticizing every extremist attack, rejecting the theology used to justify them, setting up education programs to reduce future recruitment, and working with law enforcement.

I think the strongest form of the bad apple argument comes not from the presence of a problem but rather the strength of counter-efforts.

[_jal]

I probably wasn't clear. I'm not either. What I was alluding to was how common we hear a corruption of the phrase as a defense. "Just a few bad apples." Somehow the cautionary part of the cliche is disappeared.