[tomcatfish]

Second on this. One of the ways that people tend to construct arguments against a group (from my experience in the midwestern US) is to show contradiction in the other side's argument. This would be a legitimate argument if done fairly, but it seems people always take an unfair route by synthesizing across a group using two opposing inner-sects. My father is often guilty of this, he will talk about "liberals" and I have to remind him that it's more than a little ridiculous to merge an entire political party (in the US, basically) into one viewpoint, treating a one-off statement by a high-schooler with the same value as the running candidate.