Can this be successfully memed? "Women can't fight the invader, so they will f**k him instead."

What does charity require?

I have no reason that even for Christians the liberal assumption that all people are equally rational is true, or that all Christians are capable of dialectic, as opposed to being accustomed to rhetoric. Are we required by charity to maintain the pretense that Christians are? Or should we instead relate to them according to how they actually are?

Charity is not opposed to justice.

Effective Persuasion or Overkill by the NRA?

Doing more harm than good for the cause?

Liberal Assumptions

About the ability of people to reason about ethics and politics.

What may be needed in political discourse is not dialectic, but rhetoric.

Bishop Robert Barron and others (like Robert George) don't understand this. They live in a fantasy world, believing that their model of political life is actually true. Their stance is also evidence of the "nice guy" mentality and the desire to be "moderate."

Thomas Aquinas and the Art of Making a Public Argument by Bishop Robert Barron
Let's revisit a time when people knew how to have a public argument about the most hotly-contested matters: the High Middle Ages.



Scott Adams on Donald Trump, Mindset, and How to Win at Life: Part 1 and Part 2

Over-Edumacated

Is it possible to be over-educated when real knowledge is concerned? (Perhaps if it is not appropriate to one's calling, in which case it is tied to the vice of curiositas.) Some prefer a variation in order to emphasize that it isn't true education; is that effective rhetoric? Or would over-credentialed or over-certificated be better? What would be most effective against the modern Uhmerican woman who thinks she is all that because of the degrees she has?

Vox Day on 4GW and the Use of Rhetoric to Cover Up a Lack of a Proper Rebuttal

The Facets of False Rhetoric

One More for the Medieval Geek

The classical trivium: the place of Thomas Nashe in the learning of his time by Marshall McLuhan (his Ph.D. dissertation)

Someone posted a link to an essay which referenced McLuhan in its discussion of the trivium and how various authors differed as to the importance of rhetoric. I wasn't sure if I could find the link again, but I did - Thinking Trivially about Radical Orthodoxy. I had forgotten McLuhan had converted to Catholicism.

eighth day books blog

BookTV: Kevin Gutzman, "James Madison and the Making of America"

YT

Full lecture

Dr. Kevin Gutzman Interview at LibertyFest West


Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Ph.D. on "James Madison and the Making of America"


Something older: Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution and American History

Related:
On political rhetoric and what changes in rhetoric reveal: Breaking the Chains of Ignorance and Despotism by Kevin Gutzman

More on rhetoric: The Rhetoric of Alexander Hamilton by Forrest McDonald

Even if Hamilton was a skilled rhetorician does that make his political thinking right?

The Art of Manliness: Classical Rhetoric 101: The Five Canons of Rhetoric-Delivery

Art of Manliness: Classical Rhetoric 101: The Five Canons of Rhetoric- Memory

The method of loci memory technique was first described in written form in a Roman treatise on rhetoric called ad Herennium, but it also made appearances in treatises by Cicero and Quintilian. It’s an extremely effective mnemonic device and is still used by memory champions like Joshua Foer, author of the recent book, Moonwalking With Einstein.

To use the method of loci, the speaker concentrates on the layout of a building or home that he’s familiar with. He then takes a mental walk through each room in the building and commits an engaging visual representation of a part of his speech to each room. So, for example, let’s say the first part of your speech is about the history of the Third Punic War. You can imagine Hannibal and Scipio Africanus duking it out in your living room. You could get more specific and put different parts of the battles of the Third Punic War into different rooms. The method of loci memory technique is powerful because it’s so flexible.

When you deliver your speech, you mentally walk through your “memory house” in order to retrieve the information you’re supposed to deliver. Some wordsmiths believe that the common English phrase “in the first place” came from the method of loci technique. A speaker using the technique might say, “In the first place,” in reference to the fact that the first part of his speech was in the first place or loci in his memory house. Fascinating, isn’t it?

This reminds me of what Jonathan Spence wrote on the same sort of mnemonic techniques in The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci.

The original post has links to the previous parts in the series.

When does the use of rhetoric cross the line?

Perhaps in a mass democracy the use of rhetoric to generate results is unavoidable, but if the use of the associations of a word, instead of its proper meaning, destroys clarity of discourse and good deliberation, it not only maintains the "citizens" in a juvenile state, but can promote it so that they can be manipulated. The reinforcement of bad mental habits is detrimental to the health of the community.

There is a place for rhetoric in political deliberation, as Aristotle points out, and it is a necessary art for the statesman. Rhetoric, like any art, can be used for good or ill, and we should not be surprised if it is employed in order to maintain political power. (In the Gorgias and Phaedrus, Plato too seems to admit that there is a difference between bad rhetoric, as practiced by people such as the sophists, and good rhetoric, which is employed by philosophers. Plato does not condemn outright all rhetoric as being false and unworthy of the philosopher.)

Still, the current misuse of rhetoric is alarming and yet not unexpected. It is a consequence of the centralization of political power and the dominance of the National Government, and serves an indication that the form of government is not really proportioned to the size of the country. Moreover, it is often used when liberals attack traditionalists and traditional mores to discredit them. We can see examples of this in the enforcement of PCness, or the discrediting of the foes of modern liberal Western democracy. (Related to this is the constant appeal to rights and freedom, without any questioning of what these terms mean and how they are related to the good life.)

Judging from blogs alone there is an increased polarization so that rational discourse between the two sides is no longer possible. From my own personal experience, controversy is avoided among friends who do not share the same beliefs and worldview -- do those who have a different sort of relationship, work colleagues for example, manage to share differences in opinion on certain topics and remain civil? (For example, health care reform.) Probably, since they need to continue working together. But the same may not be true regarding matters relating to PC orthodoxy feminism, race, homosexuality. If the split "spills over" into the real world, and if both sides are able to preserve their beliefs (rather than one side's children being converted by the other), then what will the result, other than fragmentation (peaceful or violent)? The use of rhetoric to stigmatize the opposition and exile it from political discourse, and the adoption of these sound bytes by the masses, can only serve to further the divide.

I should see what Aristotle says about using emotionally-colored words. Are there any fallacies related to the substitution of a word's associations for its proper meaning? (Using the terminology of modern logic, we are talking about the difference between intension and extension, and to use the terms of semiotics, denotation versus connotation.)

Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory

English translation by Rev. John Selby Watson; Quintilian - Institutio Oratoria

Latin:
The Latin Library (alt: Quintilian)
LacusCurtius • Quintilian — Institutio Oratoria



(a Renaissance depiction of an ancient Roman?)

On Marcus Fabius Quintilian:
Quintilian - Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
wiki
Quintilian
The Quintilian Page
Quintilian on Rhetoric
Ancient History Sourcebook: Quintilian: The Ideal Education, c. 90 CE
The Classics Pages - Quintilian on Education
Quintilian and the Rhetorical Révolution of the Middle Ages
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Classical Latin Literature in the Church