{"id":7339,"date":"2011-01-22T12:01:08","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T16:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=7339"},"modified":"2011-01-22T13:07:16","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T17:07:16","slug":"how-big-government-fans-cast-their-arguments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/01\/22\/how-big-government-fans-cast-their-arguments\/","title":{"rendered":"How Big Government fans cast their arguments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/laliberty.tumblr.com\/post\/2866132376\/rhetorical-conventions-of-big-government-sympathizers\" target=\"_blank\">L.A. Liberty<\/a> rounds up the rhetorical conventions of Big Government sympathizers:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>With discussions of \u201crhetoric\u201d in the air, I thought it timely to propose what I have observed &mdash; from online discussions, family get-togethers, and everything in between &mdash; as the archetypal rhetorical conventions of big government sympathizers (i.e. the left, generally, though not exclusively):<\/p>\n<p>* <strong>deflections<\/strong> (altering or averting the basis of the discussion to a different but seemingly related topic), <br \/>\n* <strong>assertions of pathos<\/strong> (appeals to one\u2019s emotions, usually in the form of a sad hypothetical or a specific personal account, intended to either pity a concession or portray the opposition as a monster; this could also take the form of fear mongering), <br \/>\n* <strong>assertions of ethos<\/strong> (attempts to find hypocrisy in the opposition\u2019s position, either by alleging that a different position held by the opposition is counter to their opposition\u2019s current position, or by simply alleging \u201cYou would sing a different tune if it were you [or other person you care about] who needed [said government program]\u201d)<br \/>\n* <strong>ad hominem attacks<\/strong> (related to pathos, such an attack charges either the opposition or another person who shares the opposition\u2019s position in order to render an argument invalid, this often takes the form of accusations of racism, sexism, or some other form of bigotry), <br \/>\n* <strong>straw men<\/strong> (absurd conclusions, ostensibly based on the opposition\u2019s argument, created in order to be refuted)<br \/>\n<em>and perhaps most common of all\u2026<\/em> <br \/>\n* <strong>non-sequiturs<\/strong> (similar to straw men, these are failures in logic that assume incorrect conclusions; often a form of <em>reducto ad absurdum<\/em> based on incomplete or incorrect data)<\/p>\n<p>These conventions can be explained by what is arguably the greatest weakness of big government sympathizers: a lack of reasoned thought and creativity that is the result of their inability to look beyond the status quo. In other words, because government does it, they have a hard time envisioning how it could be done without government.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>L.A. Liberty rounds up the rhetorical conventions of Big Government sympathizers: With discussions of \u201crhetoric\u201d in the air, I thought it timely to propose what I have observed &mdash; from online discussions, family get-togethers, and everything in between &mdash; as the archetypal rhetorical conventions of big government sympathizers (i.e. the left, generally, though not exclusively): [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,53],"tags":[86,400,322],"class_list":["post-7339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-liberty","category-politics","tag-criticism","tag-language","tag-nannystate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1Un","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7341,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7339\/revisions\/7341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}