- McSpotlight -

Rhetoric does not an argument make!

Posted by: Stuart Gort ( USA ) on August 21, 1998 at 10:57:06:

In Reply to: Contradictions and insults do not an argument make posted by Mike on August 19, 1998 at 17:15:40:


: You should take your own advice and let animals live. That's the positive spin. The negative is, you should ignore the guy next door
: who beats his wife and kids -- "live and let live," as you put it. I think you'd be better off taking a stand on principle.

And in this you equate those who eat meat to those beat their wives
and children. It is right here where you disassociate yourself from
rational, intelligent, and thoughtful discourse and go down your lonely
road to social oblivion. If you think your viewpoint is valid, right,
and moral you are going to have to convince a very large majority.
You are either convinced that your opinion cannot prevail in the arena
of normal discourse (and have thus become a rhetorical terrorist) or
you aren't bright enough to figure out that you're alienating every
opposed mind with your rhetoric. Either way, you're not winning any
converts.

: I'm happy to say that while I've graduated from college and beyond, I'm still anti-establishment, if by establishment you mean broadly
accepted institutions like fast-food vendors which push garbage on
children, profit-driven corporations which exploit their workers and
destroy the environment, factory farms which abuse animals
horrendously, political systems controlled by the rich for the benefit
of the rich, or...but you don't get the picture.

Oh, we get the picture Mike. The question is: was the person painting
it shooting for the ordered realism of Da Vinci or for the jumbled
abstract of Picasso?

Stuart Gort


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