Rainy day calls for bloggin' from home

1. In Corbett and Eberly’s chapter about citizen criticism, they say that in a democracy, the function of rhetoric depends on whether citizens see themselves as having some sort of power, or none at all within their society. Though I think all of the terms introduced in Lazare’s essay can align with Corbett and Eberly’s text, the ones that do so the most explicitly are:

-partisan viewpoint: a viewpoint that sides with a particular party or ideology (Lazare 125).

-primary certitude: a psychological term for the midset of people who are fixed in absolute beliefs so dogmatically, without recognizing their own bias, that they cannot bear to have their beliefs questioned (Lazare 126).

-stack the deck: presenting only arguments in support of your own position, while ignoring or distorting arguments on the other side” (Lazare 130).

The case/resolution I chose is Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow,” as it is the one I am most familiar and comfortable with. The terms from Lazare can be found in this article, since it is about the idea that racism is still very much present in our lives, but now as a caste system, instead of how it was in the Civil War era. The development of the article was visible in Lazare’s terms because they displayed the viewpoint of a particular person, or groups of people, within the same side or “party.” They cannot see the bias in their viewpoint, and presented only their side of the spectrum.

3. With plenty of readings related to citizen criticism, by now I have a fairly good idea of what it menas to be a citizen critic. Nonetheless, Corbett and Eberly’s The Elements of Reasoning; Becoming a Citizen Critic informs us of citizen criticism, and how it can affect the public sphere of discourse. In their words, “becoming a citizen critic is a matter of habit; like reasoning itself, it is a matter of habitual practice” (Corbett/Eberly 122). The article further goes on to inform us how to actually be a citizen critic, without necessarily attacking the author, or relying on the Ad Hominem phenomenon to criticize. The article discusses the idea of “pandering” which can be summarized into using “emotional appeals as diversionary tactics or scare tactics” (Corbett/Eberly 127).

Corbett, Edward P. J., and Rosa A. Eberly. The Elements of Reasoning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000. Print.

Lazere, Donald. “Viewpoint, Bias, and Fairness: From Cocksure Ignorance to Thoughtful Uncertainty.” In Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric. Boulder, CO: Paradigm P, 2005. 125-38. Print.