Argument Information

I'm fairly comfortable with the knowledge I've gained regarding arguments up to this point. I hadn't previously known about pathos, logos, and ethos so that definitely helped me and I suppose we could perhaps delve into some more famous examples of these. I guess I would just be interested in seeing examples of historic/classic conflicts and what the traditional arguments for each viewpoint have been. Seeing how an argument in a broader spectrum might help in arguing more narrow points. In sociology we learned that for a social movement to work you have to step outside of the situation and see yourself within history and I think this could be applied here. If we look at overall themes it will help with the detailed points within the argument.

Last Argument

The last time I argued it was over who was responsible for the failure of the economic crisis/ bailout package. The person I was arguing with claimed it was the Democratic congress not being able to get things accomplished once again. I was able to respond with the statistics showing the House Republicans overwhelmingly voting no on the package. While the effectiveness for the package was debatable, the responsibility for its failure to pass was not. I don't believe I used an fallacies in my argument as it was simply referencing factual statistics.

Fallacy Ad Hominem

Being a close follower of the presidential race, I have run into the ad hominem fallacy quite often. When a candidate has no response to the other candidates questions, positions, etc. they often settle for attacking that candidates character in some way. For example, the current economic crisis has seen a sharp jump in polling favoring Sen. Barack Obama. Rather than responding to the crisis with a plan of their own, Sen. McCain's campaign has gone on the offensive trying to bring up Sen. Obama's distant relationships with negative figures. Another example would be person A saying, "We shouldn't go into Iraq as there is not enough evidence to wage a war," while person B would respond by saying, "You're not patriotic."

Personal Essay Experience

I must admit, I actually enjoyed this assignment. My favorite part of the essay was remembering all of the events with the campaign this year. I probably could have written 10 pages about my experiences. The toughest part of the essay was trying to fit all the details in to the story without going past the maximum page limit.