ACLU: August 2008 Archives

While spending some time at the ACLU site in the summer of '08, I excerpted this excellent example of effective political sophistry from their About page:

Majority power is limited by the Constitution's Bill of Rights, which consists of the original ten amendments ratified in 1791, plus the three post-Civil War amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th) and the 19th Amendment (women's suffrage), adopted in 1920.

The mission of the ACLU is to preserve all of these protections and guarantees:

Your First Amendment rights - freedom of speech, association and assembly; freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.

Your right to equal protection under the law - equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.

Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.

Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs

Consider their reference to our Bill of Rights (sophistry). The term "Bill of Rights" entered our collective mind circa 1790 with tremendous prestige and that august history is brought to the reader's mind; especially the reflexive defense of it.

By providing the date of ratification and other facts (sophistry), the reader is invited to accept their point of view as that of a knowledgeable, scholarly, historic authority.

They write:

Majority power is limited by the Constitution's Bill of Rights, which consists of the original ten amendments ratified in 1791, plus the three post-Civil War amendments ... adopted in ...

If they meant to describe how majority power is limited, they would have written:

Majority power is limited by the Constitution's Bill of Rights -- which consists of the original ten amendments ratified in 1791 -- plus the three post-Civil War amendments ...

Instead, they add 4 amendments to the Bill of Rights (sophistry), skipping forward over 70 years for their first addition, and almost 130 years for their last.

Next, the ACLU claims to be on a:

"... mission ... to preserve all of these protections and guarantees:"

Typically, the first thought to enter the reader's mind will be that the protections and guarantees the ACLU is referring to are those just mentioned in the previous text regarding the Bill of Rights.  Here, the implication is that all who support the Bill of Rights should support their champion, the ACLU (elementary sophistry).

Now, with the deft use of a colon (sophisticated sophistry), the reader expects to find an enumeration of "... all of [the] protections and guarantees..." acknowledged by our Bill of Rights.  Instead, the reader finds a 4 point summary of the ACLU's agenda, which the uneducated and unwary conclude is a complete list of our rights under the Bill of Rights.

If the ACLU's rhetoric is successful, they create another supporter - hopefully, dues-paying and card-carrying -- and gain the reader's acceptance as a worthy defender of the Bill of Rights and an authoritative interpreter of the Constitution.

Bumper Stickers that caught my eye:

"Friends don't let friends vote republican."

"Guns don't kill people. I do."