Objectives: They Say/I Say on student writing
- Recap (enthymeme, rhetorical triangle, artistic appeals, stasis theory)
- Introduce tools: counter-argument, counter-example, either/or (definition), tropes, fallacies
- Gauge impact of first chapter of
- Perform a close reading of assigned texts with intense reference to student responses
- (Review of first Rhetorical Challenge)
Rhetorical Toolbox II
What's in the Toolbox?
On Tap Today?
- Counter-argument and Counter-Example
- The Either/Or (definition)
- The "Framer's" Card
- Prediction Tropes (cause/consequence, evaluation)
- eutripismus (divided and conquer)
What are we working toward?
Drugs
Gore Vidal
Thesis: "It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost."
Strategies: Cause/Consequence, Resemblance, artistic appeals
Ethos: For the record, I have tried - once - almost every drug and liked none, disproving the popular Fu Manchu theory that a single whiff of opium will enslave the mind. Nevertheless many drugs are bad for certain people to take and they should be told why in a sensible way.
Ethos: In my opinion, the ethos in this reading is terrible. Although I agree women and men should do what they please without harm, I disagree with the author’s idea that addiction doesn’t necessarily follow from narcotics use because he has tried them only once. How am I to be persuaded by his other views then? He should have researched the addiction stats a little more closely or read something like A Million Little Pieces by James Frey before making this assumption.
Argument from Authority: Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each man has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbor's pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor's idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit).
Logos: Gore mentions the Bill of Rights of the pursuit of happiness to claim that the U.S was the creation of men who believe that each man has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbor's pursuit of happiness, therefore, if taking drugs makes a person happy, then he should not be infringed to use drugs. With this, Gore is using the artistic appeal logos, based on "logical" reasoning, and in this case, the pursuit of happiness.
Nostaglia: This is a startling notion to the current generation of Americans. They reflect a system of public education which has made the Bill of Rights, literally, unacceptable to a majority of high school graduates (see the annual Purdue reports) who now form the "silent majority" - a phrase which that underestimated wit Richard Nixon took from Homer who used it to describe the dead.
Ethos: In Vidal's "Drugs" he pushes the issue to a point to the reader that drugs or narcotics really aren't that bad, and how they should be legalized. Vidal works very hard by trying to compare the legalization of drugs to our American heritage and our rights. He takes it as far as our roots and how our founding fathers view our liberties.
Cause/Consequence: Now one can hear the warning rumble begin: if everyone is allowed to take drugs everyone will and the GNP will decrease, the Commies will stop us from making everyone free, and we shall end up a race of Zombies, passively murmuring "groovie" to one another. Alarming thought. Yet it seems most unlikely that any reasonably sane person will become a drug addict if he knows in advance what addiction is going to be like.
Is everyone reasonably sane? No. Some people will always become drug addicts just as some people will always become alcoholics, and it is just too bad. Every man, however, has the power (and should have the legal right) to kill himself if he chooses. But since most men don't, they won't be mainliners either. Nevertheless, forbidding people things they like or think they might enjoy only makes them want those things all the more. This psychological insight is, for some mysterious reason, perennially denied our governors.
Resemblance: Vidal...basically says that no matter what there will be people that are going to have addictions to these drugs just like some of the other people are addicted to alcohol or "alcoholics". Basically sayd that it will just be like other things. He is basically sayiong that the people should have the choice in order to take such things as drugs just like they do with alcohol.
Resemblance: Vidal states his ethos in that “Some people will always become drug addicts just as some people will always become alcoholics.” True, but being the audience my pathos is that I disagree with the analogy because he tries to use one of the stasis procedures to persuade us to think that drugs should be approved when in fact it is the total opposite. A person who has had one drink is not drunk and is ‘safer’ than a person who has one joint and is high. After one joint, a person has less control over their mind and is taken into a so called ‘space world.’ The affects of alcohol can be even more harmful than that of drugs but this is often dependent on the misuse rather than the use of alcohol.
Resemblance: It is a lucky thing for the American moralist that our country has always existed in a kind of time-vacuum: we have no public memory of anything that happened before last Tuesday. No one in Washington today recalls what happened during the years alcohol was forbidden to the people by a Congress that thought it had a divine mission to stamp out Demon Rum - launching, in the process, the greatest crime wave in the country's history, causing thousands of deaths from bad alcohol, and creating a general (and persisting) contempt among the citizenry for the laws of the United States.
The same thing is happening today. But the government has learned nothing from past attempts at prohibition, not to mention repression.
Resemblance: Gore Vidal’s “Drugs” mentions the history of when the popular drug alcohol was banned by the government during the colonial era. Shortly after the ban, crime rates involving alcohol skyrocketed as crime organizations profited from the consumer’s willingness to pay high prices for alcoholic beverages. Vidal makes the unstated assumption that if the ban on drugs ever disappears, then the crimes involving drugs would fade along with it. Vidal also makes the point that most drugs aren’t addictive, and that the human mind can fight temptation as long as the will of the mind is strong enough.
Last year when the supply of Mexican marijuana was slightly curtailed by the Feds, the pushers got the kids hooked on heroin and deaths increased dramatically, particularly in New York. Whose fault? Evil men like the Mafiosi? Permissive Dr. Spock? Wild-eyed Dr. Leary? No.
The Blame Game: The Government of the United States was responsible for those deaths. The bureaucratic machine has a vested interest in playing cops and robbers. Both the Bureau of Narcotics and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs because if drugs are sold at cost there would be no money in it for anyone.
Pathos: The pathos that was used in "Drugs" was directed towards our heritage and our liberties. Vidal indicated that it was our given right to do whatever we wanted as an adult and if taking drugs was part of our interest we should be able to do that. He stated a fact saying how the government cut off limitations of Mexican marijuana to our country which forced a handful of New York drug users to do other more harmful drugs which increased the number of deaths by a lot and the blame was to go straight to the U.S. government.
Cause/Consequence: If there was no money in it for the Mafia, there would be no friendly playground pushers, and addicts would not commit crimes to pay for the next fix. Finally, if there was no money in it, the Bureau of Narcotics would wither away, something they are not about to do without a struggle.
Cause/Consequence: By legalizing drugs, the price would go down as there would be no reason to smuggle them in from other countries which makes the price go up. Without illegal drugs crime would shrivel away as Vidal says “if there was no money in it for the Mafia, there would be no friendly playground pushers, and addicts would not commit crimes to pay for the next fix”.
Ominatio: Will anything sensible be done? Of course not. The American people are as devoted to the idea of sin and its punishment as they are to making money - and fighting drugs is nearly as big a business as pushing them. Since the combination of sin and money is irresistible (particularly to the professional politician), the situation will only grow worse.
Don't Legalize Drugs
by Theodore Dalrymple
Thesis: Drugs should not be legalized because...
Strategy: counter-argument & counter-example, definition, evaluation, anti-proposal, cataplexis, slippery slope
the Slippery Slope: There is a progression in the minds of men: first the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then it becomes an orthodoxy whose truth seems so obvious that no one remembers that anyone ever thought differently. This is just what is happening with the idea of legalizing drugs: it has reached the stage when with the idea of legalizing drugs: it has reached the stage when millions of thinking men are agreed that allowing people to take whatever they like is the obvious, indeed only, solution to the social problems that arise from the consumption of drugs.
The arguments in favor of legalizing the use of all narcotic and stimulant drugs are twofold: philosophical and pragmatic. Neither argument is negligible, but both are mistaken, I believe, and both miss the point.
eutripismus: strategically dividing a totality into parts
The Test Case: We are prepared to accept limitations to our freedoms for many reasons, not just that of public order. Take an extreme hypothetical case: public exhibitions of necrophilia are quite rightly not permitted, though on Mill’s principle they should be. A corpse has no interests and cannot be harmed, because it is no longer a person; and no member of the public is harmed if he has agreed to attend such an exhibition.
Resemblance & Slippery Slope: Dalyrymple argues that if Americans are allowed to do drugs, then should they allow the participation of necrophilia also? This radical hypothesis implies that if the pursuit of happiness is to be taken seriously with drug use then it must also support the right to necrophilia as well.
Argument over Definition: The idea that freedom is merely the ability to act upon one’s whims is surely very thin and hardly begins to capture the complexities of human existence; a man whose appetite is his law strikes us not as liberated but enslaved.
Ethos: In the reading, Don’t Legalize Drugs, written by Theodore Dalrymple his artistic appeal is ethos by which he supports by persuading us to believe how much of an expert he really is. The Pursuit of Happiness is entitled to every American but it shouldn’t affect the happiness of others. If someone is addicted to drugs, are they truly happy?
Statement of the opponents' argument: The argument from pragmatics - many claim that the crimes that result from drugs would be eliminated if drugs were legalized.
Statement of opponents' argument: The argument from resemblance/logos - Moreover, since society already permits the use of some mind-altering substances known to be both addictive and harmful, such as alcohol and nicotine, in prohibiting others it appears hypocritical, arbitrary, and dictatorial. Its hypocrisy, as well as its patent failure to enforce its prohibitions successfully, leads inevitably to a decline in respect for the law as a whole. Thus things fall apart, and the center cannot hold.
(Counter)Argument from resemblance: It is of course true, but only trivially so, that the present illegality of drugs is the cause of the criminality surrounding their distribution. Likewise, it is the illegality of stealing cars that creates car thieves. In fact, the ultimate cause of all criminality is law. As far as I am aware, no one has ever suggested that law should therefore be abandoned. Moreover, the impossibility of winning the “war” against theft, burglary, robbery, and fraud has never been used as an argument that these categories of crime should be abandoned.
Arguments from examples and statistics: Amsterdam, content dealers, methadone programs, construction workers in Africa, methadone clinics in the US and London
Examples: The reading by Dalyrymple says interestingly that in an argument opposite his (such as Vidal’s reading), the view of less crime is often pushed as there aren’t many ways to glamorize legalizing drugs. Dalyrymple says that even in places where drugs have already been legalized (such as Amsterdam), crime runs rampant anyway. In Liverpool people are allowed heroin and some even methadone treatment but they still commit crime because they feel the need to feed their habits not because they “have” to. Dalyrymple also points out that if a vice is available or free most people won’t turn it down. In Africa, a group of British construction workers building a road were given the chance to buy extremely cheap alcohol. They spent the majority of the time they worked being hung over only to drink heavily again after working. When asked what they wanted to improve work conditions they asked for even cheaper alcohol.
Counter-Examples: Sure, I could start to talk about the therapeutic aspects of certain drugs. Like how LSD was used in rehabilitation for violent convicts and the success rate was 90%. I could mention the benefits of meta-programming one’s self under a hallucinogen. Or even the benefits of MDMA in couple’s therapy. Or even the spiritual aspect of mind-altering substances that Native Americans, sages in Latin America, Shamans, and the like have been using since the dawn of time.
The One Man/Mulitiple Men Argument: The problem of reducing the amount of crime committed by individual addicts is emphatically not the same as the problem of reducing the amount of crime committed by addicts as a whole. I can illustrate what I mean by an analogy: it is often claimed that prison does not work because many prisoners are recidivists who, by definition, failed to be deterred from further wrongdoing by their last prison sentence. But does any sensible person believe that the abolition of prisons in their entirety would not reduce the numbers of the law-abiding? The murder rate in New York and the rate of drunken driving in Britain have not been reduced by a sudden upsurge in the love of humanity, but by the effective threat of punishment. An institution such as prison can work for society even if it does not work for an individual.
The Argument from Perspective/Ethos: Only someone who has not been assaulted by drug takers rendered psychotic by their drug could view with equanimity the prospect of the further spread of the abuse of stimulants.
The Loaded Question: In claiming that prohibition, not the drugs themselves, is the problem, Nadelmann and many others—even policemen—have said that “the war on drugs is lost.” But to demand a yes or no answer to the question “Is the war against drugs being won?” is like demanding a yes or no answer to the question “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” Never can an unimaginative and fundamentally stupid metaphor have exerted a more baleful effect upon proper thought.
Resemblance: Let us ask whether medicine is winning the war against death. The answer is obviously no, it isn’t winning: the one fundamental rule of human existence remains, unfortunately, one man one death. And this is despite the fact that 14 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States (to say nothing of the efforts of other countries) goes into the fight against death. Was ever a war more expensively lost? Let us then abolish medical schools, hospitals, and departments of public health. If every man has to die, it doesn’t matter very much when he does so.
If the war against drugs is lost, then so are the wars against theft, speeding, incest, fraud, rape, murder, arson, and illegal parking. Few, if any, such wars are winnable. So let us all do anything we choose.
Dalyrymple also makes the terrible mistake of comparing the legalization of drugs to illegal parking, incest and rape, among other things. This type of argument only appeals emotionally to people who are exceptionally fearful of social barbarism which would hardly arise if some of these so-called “wars” were abandoned.
The Anti-Proposal: Even the legalizers’ argument that permitting the purchase and use of drugs as freely as Milton Friedman suggests will necessarily result in less governmental and other official interference in our lives doesn’t stand up. To the contrary, if the use of narcotics and stimulants were to become virtually universal, as is by no means impossible, the number of situations in which compulsory checks upon people would have to be carried out, for reasons of public safety, would increase enormously. Pharmacies, banks, schools, hospitals—indeed, all organizations dealing with the public—might feel obliged to check regularly and randomly on the drug consumption of their employees. The general use of such drugs would increase the locus standi of innumerable agencies, public and private, to interfere in our lives; and freedom from interference, far from having increased, would have drastically shrunk.
QuoteOfTheDay: Also, don’t like drugs? Don’t want them in the world at all. Okay, fine. But you better throw out just about all your music. I’m not going to even go into how much of the most amazing music was inspired by drugs. - StTykonFendersonJackson
The Colbert Report
8/11/2007, 14:50
- Are you too hopped up on the screamers to sit down right now?
- We lead the world in locking up our population; half of all the arrests in this country are from marijuana
- We should treat marijuana like alcohol
- The only thing keeping me from getting high right now is that it’s against the law
- Your problem is you blame laws for criminals
- If the country decides to make it illegal, we keep it illegal
- You’re Al Capone’s best friend.
- Why don’t you go to Europe?
- You get your money from George Soros…you’re socialist my friend
- You’re a socialist, yes or no?
- Logos, cause/consequence: Bush is sending more soldiers into Iraq because with more soldiers there they'll be able to protect themselves better. More manpower equals more men. The world wanted him to do something about the situation so he did. When pressured he comes up with a solution which he thinks suits the situation. - LadyAshley
- Refutation, counter-argument, ethos, cause/consequence, pathos: George W. Bush is often regarded as an ignorant or stupid man. If he is so stupid, how did he get into Yale, one of the most prestigious universities in the country? Bush has been called a coward but he was in the Texas National Guard. How can a dumb and cowardly man become president? He did not elect himself, but was elected by the people of this fine country who must have seen something admirable in him. The war in Iraq was originally set to disarm weapons of mass destruction, get rid of Saddam Hussein to make a dent in terrorism and to free the people of Iraq. There were no weapons found so that mission ceased and Hussein was recently hung. As a result, people see no more reason for the soldiers of America to be there anymore and people are antsy to get their loved ones home. However peace has not been achieved yet and Bush needs more men in Iraq to help aid in the peace spreading to make this final mission complete. - UnionJill
- Ethos, Pathos: President Bush has created a society and built a future of security, prosperity, and opportunity for all Americans. Since September 11th 2001, he has taken many steps to protect our homeland and create a world free of terror. Many citizens were crushed by this and tried to grieve for their friends and family and thought invading Iraq was the next best thing. President Bush has his own ideas and plans for the war, but he is also very grateful for the service and sacrifice that our soldiers and families have been through. The President is confident that by helping build a free and secure society that it will help us succeed and make the world a better place to live. He is committed to making sure that we are the best prepared, best educated, and skilled in our workforce through respect and support. He was re-elected for a second term and ensures us that the next generation will be able to look forward to even better days ahead and that our nation will heal after the war. His goal is to promote reliable, affordable, and conservative ways for this place to grow while helping other countries. He truly has a vision for America since his beginning and we, the citizens, should follow his lead. - PomPon
- Ethos, Accusation, Either/Or: President Bush's decision to send over 20,000 troops acroos seas into the Middle East has really caused a great deal of controversy throughout the U.S. The aspect of this that really scratches my head is how our country totally and always forgets about the past. It happens with present day voting turnouts. There have been thousands and thousands of men who have died in our past history to protect our freedoms and rights and one of our riches heritages and roots is our right to vote. The fact that people don't even care or turnout to vote for anything at all is a joke to me. The same thing has kind of happened in the War on Terror. Six years ago terrorists shocked the world and gave the U.S. a huge setback and made us face a lot of adversity. We were very vulnerable at that time and upset. Everyone in this country wanted to go to war and stop this terrorism for good so it never happens again. Even though things are still murky in the Middle East we have made a lot of progress. We just ridiculed the French for being cowards and then we come right back at our government and gripe about how we need to bring our troops back. But I believe President Bush sees through the murkiness. He knows that we are potentially very close to stopping terror and can make the world a much safer place with the newly stable governed Iraq that were trying to accomplish. People criticize President Bush all the time but you have to admit he has a lot of courgage and a little pioneer character to him. He has kept to his plan and showed great leadership and confidence to lead this country. I believe he is trying to finish what he started and not get caught off guard. He's doing a great job of staying the course and I respect that. - Zack9
- Ethos: One thing you must respect about Bush is his determination: he does not crumble and conform to the pressures of the public. The public’s disproval of Bush generally stems from the war on Iraq, which in my opinion was necessary to the Iraqi people. Everyone knows that Hussein was an evil dictator and for the United States to place the control of an entire country into his hands was unreasonable; War was necessary to abdicate such a man and it proved effective as shortly after his capture, Hussein was tried and executed. My real issue here is that when people talk of Bush, the war in Iraq is always mentioned but is that all there is to talk about? - SolAce
- Ethos, the Framers' card: I also agree with Zack when he says America is easy to forget their heritage, and most of all their history. It may be unpopular, his decision to send more troops, but there are many presidents in the past that have gone against the wishes of the public and that decision ended up being the best for the country. We have put faces of such presdients on a mountain, the same ones who have lead the nation in places that it didn't want to go at the time. I'm not saying for sure that he is doing the right thing but I do know that the public is three things fickle, near-sighted, and critical. So let's not be too quick to judge his decisions because he didn't become president by being a blundering fool but we voted him in for being the best man to lead the nation, even when the nation isn't behind him. - Jim
Assignment for Thursday
- Review the assignment instructions for ProjectOne (bring any questions about the project with you to class).
- Read Ruth Shalit's Return of the Hidden Persuaders part one and part two, Thomas Frank's Why Johnny Can't Dissent, and Chapters 3 ("Finding Arguments") and 6 ("Analyzing Visual Arguments") in Good Reasons (30-51; 90-100). Afterward, complete your ThirdResponse before 9 AM, Thursday, January 18
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