Blog Post #1

Part #1

When I was looking for an example of a fallacy I could blog about, I looked and looked but couldn't find anything. Then I remembered politics! Watch this ad for Ron Paul and look for the fallacies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNIeOB0whI

Several fallacies are committed, including but not limited to: straw people, stacking the deck, and lots of unsubstantiated claims and assertions. It is only a one-minute commercial which makes it tough, but political discussion and campaigning seems to be so full of rhetorical fallacy that it is not a good time trying to decide what candidates really stand for and believe and will do vs. what they are just saying to try and get elected.

Part #2

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

Well, for my rhetorical analysis of this excerpt from Henry V, I decided to color-code different lines to show ethos, logos, and pathos. Yellow highlighting signifies ethos. In these passages, King Henry is building his credibility by making it seem like he has the power to save or destroy the town. He also speaks of himself as being all that stands between the town and the "licentious wickedness" of blood-thirsty soldiers, making his demand for their surrender sound like an offer of mercy.

Red highlighting shows the parts of the speech where Henry uses pathos. His graphic descriptions of the violence that will happen are intended to intimidate the townspeople into surrender. No one wants those things to happen to them or their neighbors.

Blue highlighting is used on the parts of this speech where logos is present. Henry twists logic to shift the responsibility of potential destruction and bloodshed from himself to the people of the town with words like "when you yourselves are the cause..." This logic is based on his earlier assertion that he is there to offer the people mercy and implies that if they choose to keep fighting, anything bad that happens will be their fault. He also tells them that if they are going to accept his offer of surrender, they need to do it quickly because he will not be able to keep back his soldiers for long. This logic makes sense in the context of his speech, where he has framed the issues at hand (for example, the destruction of the town and his control of the soldiers) in a way that makes it make sense. The assumptions that his logic is based on are very subjective though.