Rhetoric, argumentation, and propaganda

Ever wonder why the good guys always seem to be at the rhetorical disadvantage.  We mean well but find ourselves cast as oppressors.  That is because our opponents use rhetorical and advertizing techniques to change the subject and shade the meanings of words.  For example, pro-abortion groups have taken to calling for the right to fund "women's reproductive health."  Thus those who opposed them are against women and their health.  Pro-life activists are cast as attempting to deny women health coverage.

I saw an good exposition of the techniques used by progressive social activists on The Abundant Life with Johnnette Benkovic, a program seen on EWTN.  The guest, Paul Rondeau, a professor of marketing at Regent University, explained many of these techniques and how the progressive movement uses them to influence opinion and silence opposition.  Another example is the program of "desensitize, jam and convert" whereby we are exposed to certain ideas so often and so ubiquitously that we become desensitized to the idea.  Thus the media present to us many images of "normal" homosexual lifestyles including on such innocuous programs as HGTV's House Hunters.  After a while we see these couples as just another "lifestyle."  "Jamming" refers to linking legitimate points of view with the most extreme negative attitudes.  Thus if you are against hate speech codes you ar a homophobe and in the same class as those who assault and murder homosexuals.  This technique is used to quiet opposition.  No one wants to be cast as a racist or hatemonger.  Conversion comes when they portray people happily living with the ideas that they aimed to put across.

A copy of the program can be purchased at the Living His Life Abundantly web site. Some of these techniques are discussed here on the Christians Thinking site.

Knowing the techniques is the first step to countering and exposing them.  Having the courage to speak the truth unmasks these techniques and will ultimately defeat them.  In the end, reality will defeat them.  The progressive movement believes that words and language have no meaning; that is words do not refer to anything real.  This argument was made clear by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.  Words and language do not refer to anything in the real world they are simply exercises in power.  The world is fully malleable by the manipulation of language.  Thus they can take the position that gender is a "socially constructed" concept.  There is no male and female, only things we call male and female and these concepts have been imposed on us by the existing power structure.  We have the power to create whole different concepts of gender by changing the language.  In the end, though, language refers to actual characteristics of reality.  Those who deny reality are, in the end, going to smash into it.