Seeing It In Real Life

After reading chapters 15 and 16 of Thank You For Arguing, I discovered that what Heinrich’s says is true, and most importantly it is seen through out every day lives, we just don’t realize it.

Heinrich’s states, just like his old friend Aristotle, that the best way to win an argument, or better yet persuade others is to use the deliberative argument, or the future tense. But just using a deliberative argument doesn’t make you win, it’s a whole set of things. For example, using logos, ethos and fallacies such as the fallacy of power, help get the job done.

As I was watching the video of “Bill O Reilly vs. Jon Stewart Over Muslim Terrorism” I realized that just in the first thirty seconds these two men were using the tips that Heinrichs made. Bill O Reilly uses logos when Stewart gives the scenario of the one Muslim attack, which makes Stewart speechless. He couldn’t argue, because as Heinrichs says, he would be  “arguing the unarguable” and you cant do that. Facts are facts. Bill O Reilly made Stewart seem stupid because he was using a dumb argument. O Reilly says “I’m just doing the math here.” But later Stewart uses his future tense, that he is going to go on a mission to the Middle East, and that he is going to do good work there, so O Reilly can’t say much because he has no logos to use against Stewart. So since both of these men used rhetoric in a strategic way there wasn’t really a winner or a loser, instead it just ended in laughs, but they both were able to say their arguments.

Many times there will be people who know the same arguing techniques as you, but that just makes it more interesting because one has to strategically chose what tactic it is that one is going to use. Or one will be lucky and have an opponent who doesn’t know much about arguing and one will win. Either way one must always be prepared, and that is why I will continue to read Thank You For Arguing.