(10:31 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

Rhetorical Strategy

1. Obsessive focus on minor details -- normally these details are basically rhetorical, such as an overblown analogy. The conversation must be put completely on hold until it is acknowledged by all that these minor slips thoroughly discredit everything the person is saying, such that the argument has to begin again from scratch.
   
2. A deep concern that politicians' motives must never be questioned -- For example, Bush's policies lead to death and destruction on a massive scale, but the really important issue is that everyone start from the premise that Bush basically means well.
   
3. A total disregard for context or history -- It's as if the world were created anew every day and peopled with a frightening race of absolutely autonomous individuals who are (or should be) impervious to social conditioning and the effects of history. More than that, every point must be proven from scratch -- for instance, even at this late date, one might hear complaints that people are just assuming that the Iraq War was a disastrous mistake rather than arguing for it, as if all of us had been cryogenically frozen for the past four years and were just now hearing about this "Iraq War" thing for the first time.
   
4. Giving advice on what would actually be convincing -- this is closely related to the above. The conservative interlocutor, ever willing to be convinced, generously supplies the arguments that would convince him, if they were offered. Since he would have already convinced himself if he found such arguments truly convincing, this is yet another red herring, meant to give him control of the terms of debate. If his opponent argues the point on the conservative's terms, it will lead to a complete loss of any substance.
   
5. Being "willing to be convinced" -- but only if the conservative's opponent can provide a thorough, definitive, and bulletproof argument on the spot. The existence of vast libraries of literature is most often disregarded (the only exception in the history of arguments being baa's decision to read The Second Sex in this thread) -- in any case, it's the duty of the conservative's interlocutor to supply the conservative with the perfect book, totally representative of all work on the topic, reasonably short, not overly academic, hopefully with pictures.... Most people seriously studying a topic read many books and articles, but the conservative reserves the right to make a definitive decision after reading a single book, preferably of fewer than 200 pages.

1. Radical abstraction -- every fact and person is to be treated in almost complete isolation, with a huge burden of proof on the one who presumes to recognize a pattern
   
2. The "blank slate" -- the topic at hand is to be treated as though no one in the history of humanity had ever discussed it before this discrete occasion.
   
3. The pose of open-mindedness -- but his finger is poised on the garage door opener of his mind. It's not his fault if his opponent can't do a competent job of convincing him before he has to reclose it.

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