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GOPers Pound "Barocrates" Obama Of Celebrity, Too Smart, Too Handsome, Not Black Enough, Too Ciceronian - & Photographed By Roman Pillars Implying DEMOCRACY! How Awful! DEBATE TECHNIQUES
GOPers
Pounding Table!
Accuse “Barocrates”
Obama Of Celebrity,
Too Smart,
Too Handsome,
Not Black Enough,
Too Ciceronian - &
Photographed
Standing By Roman
Pillars Implying
DEMOCRACY!
How Awful!
DEBATING -
POLEMICS
TECHNIQUES
Overview
I considered inserting a picture of President Obama here, but you see him on TV everyday and there are caricatures later on – we don’t want him overexposed, now do we.
http://www.yourdictionary.com/polemics
http://www.answers.com/topic/apophasis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero
M a r c u s T u l l i u s C i c e r o ( p r o n o u n c e d / » s j s h r o ä / ; C l a s s i c a l L a t i n : [ » k i k e r o – ] ; J a n u a r y 3 , 1 0 6 B C D e c e m b e r 7 , 4 3 B C ) w a s a R o m a n p h i l o s o p h e r , s t a t e s m a n , l a w y e r , p o l i t i c a l t h e o r i s t , a n d R o m a n c o n s t i t u t i o n a l i s t . C i c e r o i s w i d e l y c o n s i d e r e d o n e o f R o m e ' s g r e a t e s t o r a t o r s a n d p r o s e s t y l i s t s . [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
C i c e r o i s g e n e r a l l y p e r c e i v e d t o b e o n e o f t h e m o s t v e r s a t i l e m i n d s o f a n c i e n t R o m e . H e i n t r o d u c e d t h e R o m a n s t o t h e c h i e f s c h o o l s o f G r e e k p h i l o s o p h y a n d c r e a t e d a L a t i n p h i l o s o p h i c a l v o c a b u l a r y , d i s t i n g u i s h i n g h i m s e l f a s a l i n g u i s t , t r a n s l a t o r , a n d p h i l o s o p h e r . A n i m p r e s s i v e o r a t o r a n d s u c c e s s f u l l a w y e r , C i c e r o p r o b a b l y t h o u g h t h i s p o l i t i c a l c a r e e r h i s m o s t i m p o r t a n t a c h i e v e m e n t . T o d a y , h e i s a p p r e c i a t e d p r i m a r i l y f o r h i s h u m a n i s m a n d p h i l o s o p h i c a l a n d p o l i t i c a l w r i t i n g s . H i s v o l u m i n o u s c o r r e s p o n d e n c e , m u c h o f i t a d d r e s s e d t o h i s f r i e n d A t t i c u s , h a s b e e n e s p e c i a l l y i n f l u e n t i a l , i n t r o d u c i n g t h e a r t o f r e f i n e d l e t t e r w r i t i n g t o E u r o p e a n c u l t u r e . C o r n e l i u s N e p o s , t h e 1 s t - c e n t u r y B C b i o g r a p h e r o f A t t i c u s , r e m a r k e d t h a t C i c e r o ' s l e t t e r s c o n t a i n e d s u c h a w e a l t h o f d e t a i l " c o n c e r n i n g t h e i n c l i n a t i o n s o f l e a d i n g m e n , t h e f a u l t s o f t h e g e n e r a l s , a n d t h e r e v o l u t i o n s i n t h e g o v e r n m e n t " t h a t t h e i r r e a d e r h a d l i t t l e n e e d f o r a h i s t o r y o f t h e p e r i o d . [ 3 ]
D u r i n g t h e c h a o t i c l a t t e r h a l f o f t h e f i r s t c e n t u r y B . C . m a r k e d b y c i v i l w a r s a n d t h e d i c t a t o r s h i p o f G a i u s J u l i u s C a e s a r , C i c e r o c h a m p i o n e d a r e t u r n t o t h e t r a d i t i o n a l r e p u b l i c a n g o v e r n m e n t . H o w e v e r , h i s c a r e e r a s a s t a t e s m a n w a s m a r k e d b y i n c o n s i s t e n c i e s a n d a t e n d e n c y t o s h i f t h i s p o s i t i o n i n r e s p o n s e t o c h a n g e s i n t h e p o l i t i c a l c l i m a t e . H i s i n d e c i s i o n m a y b e a t t r i b u t e d t o h i s s e n s i t i v e a n d i m p r e s s i o n a b l e p e r s o n a l i t y ; h e w a s p r o n e t o o v e r r e a c t i o n i n t h e f a c e o f p o l i t i c a l a n d p r i v a t e c h a n g e . " W o u l d t h a t h e h a d b e e n a b l e t o e n d u r e p r o s p e r i t y w i t h g r e a t e r s e l f - c o n t r o l a n d a d v e r s i t y w i t h m o r e f o r t i t u d e ! " w r o t e C . A s i n i u s P o l l i o , a c o n t e m p o r a r y R o m a n s t a t e s m a n a n d h i s t o r i a n . [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Early life
Cicero was born in 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Rome. So, although a great master of Latin rhetoric and composition, Cicero was not "Roman" in the traditional sense, and was quite self-conscious of this for his entire life.
During this period in Roman history, if one was to be considered "cultured", it was necessary to be able to speak both Latin and Greek. The Roman upper class often preferred Greek to Latin in private correspondence, recognizing its more refined and precise expressions, and its greater subtlety and nuance, in part due to the greater range of Greek abstract nouns. Cicero, like most of his contemporaries, was therefore educated in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers, poets and historians. The most prominent teachers of oratory of that time were themselves Greek.[6] Cicero used his knowledge of Greek to translate many of the theoretical concepts of Greek philosophy into Latin, thus translating Greek philosophical works for a larger audience. It was precisely his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite.[7]
Cicero's father was a well-to-do equestrian (knight) with good connections in Rome. Though he was a semi-invalid who could not enter public life, he compensated for this by studying extensively. Although little is known about Cicero's mother, Helvia, it was common for the wives of important Roman citizens to be responsible for the management of the household. Cicero's brother Quintus wrote in a letter that she was a thrifty housewife.[8]
Cicero's cognomen, personal surname, is Latin for chickpea. Romans often chose down-to-earth personal surnames. Plutarch explains that the name was originally given to one of Cicero's ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose resembling a chickpea. Plutarch adds that Cicero was urged to change this deprecatory name when he entered politics, but refused, saying that he would make Cicero more glorious than Scaurus ("Swollen-ankled") and Catulus ("Puppy").[9]
According to Plutarch, Cicero was an extremely talented student, whose learning attracted attention from all over Rome,[10] affording him the opportunity to study Roman law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola.[11] Cicero's fellow students were Gaius Marius Minor, Servius Sulpicius Rufus (who became a famous lawyer, one of the few whom Cicero considered superior to himself in legal matters), and Titus Pomponius. The latter two became Cicero's friends for life, and Pomponius (who later received the cognomen "Atticus" for his philhellenism) would become Cicero's longtime chief emotional support and adviser.
In the late 90's and early 80's BC Cicero fell in love with philosophy, which was to have a great role in his life. He would eventually introduce Greek philosophy to the Romans and create a philosophical vocabulary for it in Latin. In 87 BC, Philo of Larissa, the head of the Academy that was founded by Plato in Athens about 300 years earlier, arrived in Rome. Cicero, "inspired by an extraordinary zeal for philosophy",[12] sat enthusiastically at his feet and absorbed Plato's philosophy, even calling Plato his god. He admired especially Plato's moral and political seriousness, but he also respected his breadth of imagination. Cicero nonetheless rejected Plato's theory of Ideas.
Tabacco: As do I!
Plato: No 1 Philosopher of All Time? Anti-Democracy, Bush-type Moral Restraints - Not On Tabacco’s List!
http://tabacco.blog-city.com/plato_no_1_philosopher_of_all_time_antidemocracy_bushtype_mo.htm
Consul
Cicero was elected Consul for the year 63 BC. His co-consul for the year, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, played a minor role. During his year in office he thwarted a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic, led by Lucius Sergius Catiline. Cicero procured a Senatus Consultum de Re Publica Defendenda (a declaration of martial law), and he drove Catiline from the city with four vehement speeches (the Catiline Orations), which to this day remain outstanding examples of his rhetorical style. The Orations listed Catiline and his followers' debaucheries, and denounced Catiline's senatorial sympathizers as roguish and dissolute debtors, clinging to Catiline as a final and desperate hope. Cicero demanded that Catiline and his followers leave the city. At the conclusion of his first speech, Catiline burst from the Temple of Jupiter Stator. In his following speeches Cicero did not directly address Catiline but instead addressed the Senate. By these speeches Cicero wanted to prepare the Senate for the worst possible case; he also delivered more evidence against Catiline.[citation needed]
Catiline fled and left behind his followers to start the revolution from within while Catiline assaulted the city with an army of "moral bankrupts and honest fanatics". Catiline had attempted to involve the Allobroges, a tribe of Transalpine Gaul, in their plot, but Cicero, working with the Gauls, was able to seize letters which incriminated the five conspirators and forced them to confess their crimes in front of the Senate.[25]
The Senate then deliberated upon the conspirators' punishment. As it was the dominant advisory body to the various legislative assemblies rather than a judicial body, there were limits to its power; however, martial law was in effect, and it was feared that simple house arrest or exile — the standard options — would not remove the threat to the state. At first most in the Senate spoke for the "extreme penalty"; many were then swayed by Julius Caesar, who decried the precedent it would set and argued in favor of life imprisonment in various Italian towns. Cato then rose in defence of the death penalty and all the Senate finally agreed on the matter. Cicero had the conspirators taken to the Tullianum, the notorious Roman prison, where they were strangled. Cicero himself accompanied the former consul Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, one of the conspirators, to the Tullianum. Cicero received the honorific "Pater Patriae" for his efforts to suppress the conspiracy, but lived thereafter in fear of trial or exile for having put Roman citizens to death without trial.
In Cicero’s day Intelligence, Rhetorical Excellence and Logic were not considered Anathema and Political Liability as they are today in the era of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin in which Mediocrity, Buffoonery and Hypocrisy are at their Zenith.
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krieger-Debate.html
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/57457.html
Roundup: Media's Take
Charlotte Higgins: Obama ... The new Cicero?
Source: Guardian (UK) (11-26-08)
[Charlotte Higgins is the author of It's All Greek To Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World.]
In the run-up to the US presidential election, the online magazine Slate ran a series of dictionary definitions of "Obamaisms". One ran thus:
"Barocrates (buh-ROH-cruh-teez) n. An obscure Greek philosopher, who pioneered a method of teaching in which sensitive topics are first posed as questions, then evaded."
There were other digs at Obama that alluded to ancient Greece and Rome. When he accepted the Democratic Party nomination, he did so before a stagey backdrop of doric columns. Republicans said this betrayed delusions of grandeur: this was a temple out of which Obama would emerge like a self-styled Greek god. (Steve Bell also discerned a Romanness in the image, and drew Obama for this paper as a toga-ed emperor.) In fact, the resonance of those pillars was much more complicated than the Republicans would have it. They recalled the White House, which itself summoned up visual echoes of the Roman republic, on whose constitution that of the US is based. They recalled the Lincoln Memorial, before which Martin Luther King delivered his "I have a dream" speech. They recalled the building on which the Lincoln Memorial is based - the Parthenon. By drawing us symbolically to Athens, we were located at the very birthplace of democracy.
Tabacco: Bell’s drawing is not the only “Obama in Toga” effort:
Here's the thing: to understand the next four years of American politics, you are going to need to understand something of the politics of ancient Greece and Rome.
There have been many controversial aspects to this presidential election, but one thing is uncontroversial: that Obama's skill as an orator has been one of the most important factors - perhaps the most important factor - in his victory. The sheer numbers of people who have heard him speak live set him apart from his rivals - and, indeed, recall the politics of ancient Athens, where the public speech given to ordinary voters was the motor of politics, and where the art of rhetoric matured alongside democracy.
Obama has bucked the trend of recent presidents - not excluding Bill Clinton - for dumbing down speeches. Elvin T Lim's book The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W Bush, submits presidential oratory to statistical analysis. He concludes that 100 years ago speeches were pitched at college reading level. Now they are at 8th grade. Obama's speeches, by contrast, flatter their audience. His best speeches are adroit literary creations, rich, like those doric columns, with allusion, his turn of phrase consciously evoking lines by Lincoln and King, by Woody Guthrie and Sam Cooke. Though he has speechwriters, he does much of the work himself. (Jon Favreau, the 27-year-old who heads Obama's speechwriting team, has said that his job is like being "Ted Williams's batting coach".) James Wood, professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard, has already performed a close-reading exercise on the victory speech for the New Yorker. Can you imagine the same being done of a George Bush speech?
More than once, the adjective that has been deployed to describe Obama's oratorical skill is "Ciceronian". Cicero, the outstanding Roman politician of the late republic, was certainly the greatest orator of his time, and one of the greatest in history. A fierce defender of the republican constitution, his criticism of Mark Antony got him murdered in 43BC.
During the Roman republic (and in ancient Athens) politics was oratory. In Athens, questions such as whether or not to declare war on an enemy state were decided by the entire electorate (or however many bothered to turn up) in open debate. Oratory was the supreme political skill, on whose mastery power depended. Unsurprisingly, then, oratory was highly organised and rigorously analysed. The Greeks and Romans, in short, knew all the rhetorical tricks, and they put a name to most of them.
It turns out that Obama knows them, too. One of the best known of Cicero's techniques is his use of series of three to emphasise points: the tricolon. (The most enduring example of a Latin tricolon is not Cicero's, but Caesar's "Veni, vidi, vici" - I came, I saw, I conquered.) Obama uses tricola freely. Here's an example: "Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy ..." In this passage, from the 2004 Democratic convention speech, Obama is also using the technique of "praeteritio" - drawing attention to a subject by not discussing it. (He is discounting the height of America's skyscrapers etc, but in so doing reminds us of their importance.)
One of my favourites among Obama's tricks was his use of the phrase "a young preacher from Georgia", when accepting the Democratic nomination this August; he did not name Martin Luther King. The term for the technique is "antonomasia". One example from Cicero is the way he refers to Phoenix, Achilles' mentor in the Iliad, as "senior magister" - "the aged teacher". In both cases, it sets up an intimacy between speaker and audience, the flattering idea that we all know what we are talking about without need for further exposition. It humanises the character - King was just an ordinary young man, once. Referring to Georgia by name localises the reference - Obama likes to use the specifics to American place to ground the winged sweep of his rhetoric - just as in his November 4 speech: "Our campaign ... began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston", which, of course, is also another tricolon.
Obama's favourite tricks of the trade, it appears, are the related anaphora and epiphora. Anaphora is the repetition of a phrase at the start of a sentence.
Tabacco: Horrors! Obama repeats phrases at start of sentences – horrors! Is he a “notorious thespian”! Hitler’s friend, Winston Churchill, used that villainous rhetorical trick!
Again, from November 4: "It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools ... It's the answer spoken by young and old ... It's the answer ..." Epiphora does the same, but at the end of a sentence. From the same speech (yet another tricolon): "She lives to see them stand out and speak up and reach for the ballot. Yes we can." The phrase "Yes we can" completes the next five paragraphs.
That "Yes we can" refrain might more readily summon up the call-and-response preaching of the American church than classical rhetoric. And, of course, Obama has been influenced by his time in the congregations of powerfully effective preachers. But James Davidson, reader in ancient history at the University of Warwick, points out that preaching itself originates in ancient Greece. "The tradition of classical oratory was central to the early church, when rhetoric was one of the most important parts of education. Through sermons, the church captured the rhetorical tradition of the ancients. America has preserved that, particularly in the black church."
It is not just in the intricacies of speechifying that Obama recalls Cicero. Like Cicero, Obama is a lawyer. Like Cicero, Obama is a writer of enormous accomplishment - Dreams From My Father, Obama's first book, will surely enter the American literary canon. Like Cicero, Obama is a "novus homo" - the Latin phrase means "new man" in the sense of self-made. Like Cicero, Obama entered politics without family backing (compare Clinton) or a military record (compare John McCain). Roman tradition dictated you had both. The compensatory talent Obama shares with Cicero, says Catherine Steel, professor of classics at the University of Glasgow, is a skill at "setting up a genealogy of forebears - not biological forebears but intellectual forebears. For Cicero it was Licinius Crassus, Scipio Aemilianus and Cato the Elder. For Obama it is Lincoln, Roosevelt and King."..
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Posted on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 4:42 AM | Comments
Tabacco cannot overstate how important the following Post is to the intellectually curious. Republican Leaders need not read this because they already know the Art.
If you look carefully, you will note the Article was written by CHRISTIAN orthodoxy. I feel very brave today! While I have not read it before writing this paragraph, I have hopes it will be unbiased and accurate. I may intersperse comments to the effect that religious leaders are more often than not the perpetrators of this or that debating “trick”. Already, I feel somewhat sure the writer will use the Bible as his source, axioms and proof, which is in itself a Circular Argument. But let’s see how far from Hypocrisy the author dares to tread.
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Debating is one method for bringing out truth. Many subjects have more than one aspect, each one of them claiming to be true. Similarly, many schools of thought might exist about a complex subject. In all such matters, an open debate is one method for establishing the truth.
Trials in Courts are a special form of debate. While ordinary debates are not often controlled by any rules except common courtesy, the debates that take place in a Court Of Law are regulated by certain strict rules and codes of conduct. Further, while the public (mob mentality) might be the subjective arbiter in a common debate, a highly learned and objective judge is the arbiter in a Court Of Law. The public might side with
the erring party because of their bias, subjectivity, mob mentality, or even plain selfishness. However, Judges are expected to be people above all these considerations.
Unfortunately, common debates cannot take place in a Court Of Law. Nor can such debates avail the services of learned Judge, or the regulated atmosphere of a Court Of Law. Thus debating and winning in a public debate becomes very difficult. Often truth becomes a casualty and the crafty party wins even if he is a liar. Yet there is no way for
a Christian Apologist to avoid debates altogether.
The best strategy for the apologist in such a situation would be to understand the tricks that dishonest debaters use. They can then spot these dishonest tricks and attempt to counter and expose them. They can also learn to avoid those situations in which no amount of debating would be profitable. For a better understanding of this subject we would discuss this subject under the following headings in this and the following chapters:
1-The Existence Of Tricks And The Reasons
2-Multiple Meanings And Dishonest Tricks
3-The Debaters' Tricks
4-Anatomy Of A Twisted Argument
Analyzing Debates
6-How To Counter Twisted Arguments
7-Precautions
We discuss each point in detail in the chapters that follow.
Almost till the last century most of the public debates were held in an atmosphere of inquiry and mutual respect. However, both of these attitudes are gone at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Deceptive tricks for winning the debate by hook or by crook have now replaced logic and honest inquiry. There are several reasons for this, and an understanding of these reasons can help the apologist from getting into unnecessary situations.
Tabacco: All this intro has made me suspicious; but let’s proceed!
The Difference Between Straight And Crooked Thinking: Straight thinking analyzes problems carefully, logically, without bias, and without subjectivity. It takes all data into consideration, and objectively applies logical analysis to it. Crooked thinking, on the other hand, avoids all the principles of sound evaluation. The basic purpose is to establish what one wants to, without regard to truth and objectivity.
Tabacco: Sounds to me he is describing the type of baseless arguments he himself will expound. Watch for the use of the Bible as Proof and unquestioned Source!
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Almost all propaganda by consumer organizations, politicians, deviant movements, and deviant writers fall into this category. Their thinking and reasoning is crooked, benefiting only them. On the other hand, most evaluations in science, history, or archaeology are more straightforward. They often bring out the objective truth, benefiting everyone. Yet there are a lot of people who prefer crooked thinking, and the reasons are given below.
The Importance Of Winning The Case: Even till the end of the nineteenth century, the general attitude of people was that of inquiry. They wanted to investigate and find the truth. People understood that they would have to tolerate diverse viewpoints on some subjects, and that this was part of the social life.
However, the twentieth century became a period where ideas were used for dominating the world. The most notable example are Evolutionism and Marxism.
Tabacco: At this point I am beginning to doubt there will be any instructional matter whatsoever. Religious Leaders are prone to preface what they will and then say nothing but filler. I fear we will both be disappointed by what follows. I await an explanation of why Evolutionism or Marxism are used for domination of the world whereas Christianity, Dominionism, Creationism, Intelligent Design & democracy are not!
I apologize profusely! I was not seeking to unmask but to point out Hypocrisy. It seems I will be required to do both.
Many people have been able to control business, organizations, people, or even entire countries using these ideologies. Thus establishing one's ideas became a tool for gaining control over people. Further, technological developments made Mass Media Communication very cheap and economical in this century. Thus for the first time ideas could be used to control not just a few people, but million of them at the same time.
In this milieu winning a debate became essential for obtaining prestige and power. Since many kinds of ideas still compete with each other, it became all the more important for position and power-hungry people to win their side of the argument at all costs.
The Complexity Of Induction And Deduction: While some people found it necessary to win arguments at any cost, the subjects discussed in the twentieth century became more and more complex. For example, the idea of Evolution was only a philosophical one before the time of Darwin. However, starting from Darwin, the subject became a mixture of philosophy, biology, palaeontology, genetics, biochemistry, probability mathematics, information theory, thermodynamics, and numerous other subjects. The mutual interaction of these subjects made it all the more complex.
In such milieu the propagandists found it very difficult to discuss these complex issues in a systematic manner. Inductive and deductive logical thinking are not easy anyway.
Tabacco: Particularly when one is filibustering instead of instructing!
Thus they realized that instead of a step-by-step logical analysis of the problem it would be far better to launch into a debate using twisted arguments. Further, logical thinking on complex issues is all the more difficult for the public. Thus the public also began to favour rhetoric over reason. This added to the discovery and deployment of dishonest debating techniques for suppressing truth.
Tabacco: Wait until you read the following bit of garbage! If you win, you are either correct or your opponent is incompetent. Why would anyone wish to reverse that! If this were economics, he'd be talking Socialism. Ayn Rand would certainly take exception with this voodoo! I don't particularly agree with Dame Rand generally; but on this issue we concur!
The Ability Of Some People To Argue And Win: Arguing and winning requires great skill, knowledge, insight, and patience. These things do not come easily, and most people are simply not fit for this kind of mental deliberation. Consequently, in any debate some people win most of the time, even if they are on the side of the error.
The observation that some people can always persuasively argue and win motivated many people to investigate the causes of such victory. This in turn resulted in the development of dishonest tricks for arguing and winning the case. The rise of dishonest lawyers, politicians, dictators, propagandists, and such biased people has also contributed to the rise in twisted thinking. So much so that many groups even publish books on how to argue and win the case.
The Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, Marxists, and even Atheists have published such handbooks. Prometheus Press, the largest atheist publishing house in the world, have published The Atheist Debater's Handbook. Their Encyclopedia Of Biblical
Tabacco: At the end of Page 3, I feel it is a good opportunity to scan the rest of this Article to see if there is any information my Readers can actually use and any real teaching to be found. At this point I see nothing but worthless verbiage, innuendo and castigation without any supporting evidence. Leaving the disparagement itself to the Reader’s own prejudices and biases is an old Republican-Sophist Trick!
If I find any worthwhile instruction, I may skip forward; if I find none, I will return to this point, erase the rest and leave it to the Reader to visit the URL at the beginning of this Article should he or she so desire. Don’t go anywhere; I shall return!
I have returned! I found something of minimal value so I skip to Chapter 4:
In practical life the debaters present their cases with so many twists and tricks that people would think that the opponents of the Bible have dozens (if not hundreds) of tricks at their disposal. Thus often it looks like a formidable task to handle those hundreds of arguments. However, these multitudes of arguments are a manifestation of just a handfuls of basic techniques, and one has to master only these basic categories to fight back effectively.
All the approaches used by them can be divided into the following six basic categories. Since each category of technique can be adapted in many ways, the total range of arguments looks numerous and formidable. This means that the apologist does not have to master hundreds of debating techniques. Rather if he manages just the six basic approaches, he can begin to counter debates effectively. These six approaches are given below:
1-Provocation/Emotional Manipulation
2-Generalization/Misguiding
3-Deceit/Outright Cheating
4-Sidetracking/Diverting
5-Creating Delusion/Confusion
6-Irrelevance/Idiocy
We will study each one of these in detail. Since each approach can be used in a variety of ways, we will furnish some examples of this wide variety also. However, it must be noticed that these are only a limited number of examples chosen from a large variety that exist and that build upon the six basic approaches.
Tabacco: I just erased 36 more pages of drivel. If you wish to continue, go to the URL above. Good luck!
I will now have to seek an alternative instructional Article to substitute here, which contains a minimal amount of pedanticism – good luck to Tabacco!
Tabacco thought he was pedantic at times. This stuff is too pedantic for even him. However, if you read the right hand side only, it will not be a complete waste of time.
I give up! Thank God Obama does not speak like these scribes write! Yet it is Obama, who is criticized for his rhetorical qualities. (See how that “cat” Tabacco lands on his feet! – Smile)
I’ve searched and come up empty – except for the definitions here and the following bit of advice:
Type “sophistry” on my Main Page in the Search window and peruse those Posts. Or you can just continue to read Tabacco and see how I expose the Charlatans’ Sophistic Tricks.
Thank God Demosthenes did not live in present times as a Democrat or he would certainly be crucified for placing marbles in his mouth to facilitate articulate speaking!
If you took a class in Debating, as Tabacco did in the 9th grade, shame on you! Should you someday run for president, you would have an unfair advantage over Mediocrities like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. That’s unfair! And you would not want to take unfair advantage of Mental Retards such as they, now would you!
In conclusion, the lesson to be learned here is
That’s quite a lesson!
There are other Rhetorical Devices as listed in the chart that follows. However, only Republicans would refer to them as “devious” or “trickery”.
A beautician learns techniques to make one’s hair more attractive. Actors learn techniques to improve their performances. Politicians study legislative history to borrow and replicate good laws. Divinity graduates repeat aphorisms and parables they have learned to educate their parishioners.
Only Democrats, specifically President Barack Obama, are castigated for being too famous, too smart, too handsome and too rhetorical. No Republican criticized Ronald Reagan for being an actor. No Republican criticized Sarah Palin for being a Beauty contestant. These Pejoratives are cast disingenuously and only toward Democrats. If nothing else, the Republicans certainly have no compunction about making fools of themselves.
Can the GOPer charge against President Obama of “Notorious Thespian” be far behind!
PS. I knew that taking 4 years of Latin would come in handy one day! “Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est…” – That’s from my 50-year-old memory, so don’t shoot me if it is off slightly!
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
Tabacco is not a blogger, who thinks; I am a Thinker, who blogs.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization) – Think Tank For Other 95% Of World