[overhead]

Originally Posted by zukiphile

On the contrary, putting one's adversary on the defensive, leaving him dispirited, and breaking his will to continue the fight is very constructive if one's goal is to win the issue.

I agree, but IMO, you are not going to break the will of Sen. Feinstein or the Brady bunch via rational argument, irrational argument, emotional argument, logical argument, illogical argument etc. I am not really worried about the Peirs Morgan's of the world as I know I am not going to change their minds. I am concerned about those I can influence.

The trick here is to know one's audience. If one's audience is a court, he is more likely to be well served by a clear, compelling, and factually correct analysis. If one's audience is every American over the age of 18 who can fog mirror, one should maintain his fidelity to the truth, but persuasion will require more.

I agree. But, when speaking to those in the "middle", I do not think one should begin an argument or an attempt at persuasion with correcting terms that automatically puts them on the defensive or in any way makes them feel as though I think they are stupid, uninformed or silly. My opinion is correcting disputed terms definition tends to do that with many people. Of course, that is just my opinion.

The lesson I take away from public policy disputes over the last few decades is that most people, normal people, do not collect data and then employ a rigorously rational framework to that collected data. Instead, most people, and many courts intuit which result they like better, then formulate an apologetic for that result.

This is probably true, but I would still assert correcting terms is not going to sway that apologetic, political cheerleaders, mind.

This means that routinely the process of persuasion involves changing the intuition of your audience. For many of us, the best way to accomplish this is to take someone shooting so that they can learn that while arms deserve respect, they are not horrible and frightening to use.

For the public policy debate generally, this can mean that efficacy may be prioritized over perfect and exhaustive accuracy. LBJ's Daisy ad had virtually no public policy content and did not explicitly make any argument; however, it aroused and unreasoned fear that was far more effective politically than a merely correct argument.

I agree.

Very recently I had a discussion with a female friend about guns. She is what I would call a "political cheerleader" in that she essentially supports anything that the person she voted for suggests. I did not bother trying to correct her usage of the word "clip" or "assault weapon" as I knew that would not get me anywhere. Honestly, in the end, I gave up. Her argument was "I don't want to be shot in the head when I go out, I have a right not to worry about being shot in the head". I explained over and over again that the suggested laws would not lower that possibility. In the end, it did not change her mind, though my goal was not really to get her to immediately change her mind. My goal was to "plant a seed" in her brain that hopefully she will consider in the future. If I put her on the defensive or made her feel stupid I have zero chance of getting through to her. If i corrected her misunderstanding of "rights" or the gun terms she used it would have turned the discussion from a constructive to a debate. I did not want to do that. Hopefully I left her with the impression that we are not all "gun nuts" as the gun control folks suggest, we have reasoned arguments and are not just paranoid,scared or dangerous.

All of this is just my opinion, I understand others might feel differently and for all I know, I maybe wrong.