Rhetorical Argumentation

Argument of the Week:

Alan Dershowitz:

“We have to understand who our enemies are. And our enemy now is Canada [because of its] recognition of a non-existent entity [Palestine] and not doing enough to combat antisemitism.”

ArgofWk:
Trump warning Hamas
They got very rambunctious, and they did things that they shouldn't be doing, and if they keep doing it, then we're going to go in and straighten it out, and it'll happen very quickly and pretty violently...They have to be good, and if they're not, they'll be eradicated.

AofW:
Leo Feler chief economist, Numerator:
People are still consuming the basics, but they’re cutting back on all this extra stuff they were able to do coming out of the pandemic. It’s just more precarious because if we’ve already trimmed all the fat, the only thing left to trim are the essentials.

AofW:
Jason P. Houser, former Chief of staff Immigration and Customs Enforcement:
When law enforcement is forced into partisan roles, it stops serving the public. And when the public loses trust in law enforcement, the whole system begins to fail. The blueprint is: Create chaos. Blame the chaos.

Arg of Week: Oct 5.
Eline Van der Velden
“To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work... Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that shows the power of creativity.”

AofW:
Zelensky:
“It’s only a matter of time before drones are fighting drones, attacking critical infrastructure and targeting people all by themselves...
Dear leaders, we are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history, because this time it includes artificial intelligence"

Argument of the Week: Sept. 21.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz:
"We shouldn't be threatening government power to force him off air. It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."

Argument of the Week

AofW:
Trump disagrees with Florida ending vaccine mandates:

“Look, you have vaccines that work [polio; COVID]. They just pure and simple work. They’re not controversial at all, and I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it, and they endanger other people,”

AofW:
CTV News,
Pierre Poilievre:
“if someone enters your home illegally and uninvited, and two, you reasonably believe they are a threat to your family then it is assumed that all the force you use against that person is reasonable and legal. That is the test that our bill will bring in."

Argument of the Week:
Trump:
“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia."

Argument of the Week:
Adam Aleksic, NYT:
"Trumpisms"--linguistic coinages of President Trump [have] become ingrained in our collective vocabulary. Since they became popular as memes during his first presidential campaign, we have begun using them.

AofW
Home Secretary Cooper on the 'One in, One Out’ :
“we’re not setting the numbers in advance, firstly because there is no fixed number in terms of the overall number of people to come through this system, and secondly because we’re not going to provide (gangs) with that operational information.”

AofW:
BBC
[After sacking of Erika McEntarfer] former Treasury Secretary Summers: "Firing the head of a key government agency because you don't like the numbers they report, which come from surveys using long established procedures, is what happens in authoritarian countries, not democratic ones."

AofW:
Justice Maria Carroccia:
"The case on its facts does not raise issues of the reformulation of the legal concept of consent. In this case, I have found actual consent not vitiated by fear. I do not find the evidence of E.M. to be either credible or reliable.”

AofW:
Diane Abbott
"Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street,.. But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they're black."

AofW
Simon Garfield:
Wikipedia is now the only serious player in the game. Britannica still exists online, but in April, 2025, it attracted just over 60 million visitors, compared with Wikipedia’s 4.55 billion. For this reason alone, Wikipedia carries immense responsibility alongside its influence.

Arg of Week: July 6
Elon Musk:
“It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS, that we live in a one-party country — the PORKY PIG PARTY!! Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people”

AofW:
Maureen Dowd
When it comes to the Middle East, presidents can't resist indulging in a gasconade. Unlike Iraq, Iran was actually making progress on its nuclear program. President Trump did not need to warp intelligence to justify his decision. But he did anyway, to satisfy his unquenchable ego.

Arg of the Week:
Mark Kingwell, Philosopher:
The love of wisdom can't really be taught, for its a turning of the soul toward the beautiful and good. You can't justify the value of that turning to someone who has not yet felt the necessary shift in value. That's the paradox of all philosophy.

Arg of Week: June 15
Omar Wasow, Berkeley (NYT):
“I am struck, in some ways, by the scriptedness of it all. Protests are an act of storytelling, at their most powerful when they draw on mythology in our culture, and what happens on the ground matters in shifting politics.”

Arg of Week
Erica York,Tax Foundation, a non-partisan group:
[Raising government revenue through tariffs is] “heavily weighted with negative trade-offs...over the long term we’re going to be less productive, we’re going to be less innovative, and we’re going to be poorer than we otherwise would be.”

Argument for the Week:
Steve Madden:
"The notion is we've lost jobs to China, and we have. But we've picked up other jobs that we would not have had — better jobs, many better jobs — as a result of our relationship with China. Many more than we would have if they were in a factory making socks."

Argument of the Week:

Ex-prosecutor Andrew Weissmann:
“This is sort of remarkable, the United States government repeatedly being found to have violated the First Amendment in really significant ways — attacking a major firm, a series of major law firms and Harvard University.”

Arg of Week
Globe:
When Mr. Trump dismisses an international border as “artificial,” he is diminishing the pain and sacrifice of people in so many nations over so many centuries...
And when he does it with regard to the U.S.-Canada frontier, he is dismissing the accomplishment that it represents.

Argument of the Week:

Steve Bannon:

"Remember, President Trump was not shy about taking a shot at Pope Francis.
So if this Pope - which he will do - tries to come between President Trump and his implementation of the mass deportation programme, I would stand by."

Arg of Week:
Kristin J. Forbes, M.I.T.
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm about Europe” [and more momentum behind the euro.] This feels like it does have more legs because it is a combination of a stronger, more unified Europe. At the same time, there are more problems emerging with U.S. dollar assets.”

Arg of Week
Danish writer Jacob Riis:
I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

Argument of Week
UK Supreme Court
we conclude that Guidance issued by the Scottish Government is incorrect. A person with a GRC in the female gender does not come within the definition of “woman”. ...the definition of “woman” is limited to biological women and does not include trans women with a GRC

Argument of the Week,
Stanley McChrystal, author of forthcoming “On Character: Choices That Define a Life”
When our leaders abandon character...when those at the top abandon the standards that hold society together, the rest of us, knowingly or not, follow suit...We cannot afford to let this stand.