Rhetoric 101

One of the things debaters learn is to limit the scope of our claims. If we argue narrow positions, we can more often escape without challenge, then keep widening the positions we want to defend. It would be a poor tactic, for example, to argue that a politician is mentally ill and should be locked up because the potholes on Oakdale Drive were two weeks late getting filled. It would also be foolish for someone on the other side to argue that people complaining about potholes are selfish racists who don't care if people in poor neighborhoods get fed as long as their own street is smooth. Whoever sticks closest to the potholes -- why or why not it's important to fill them in light of the city's other obligations, why or why not the delay was justified -- has the best chance of winning the argument in the only way that matters: winning converts. The more extreme the claim, the easier it is to pick it apart with exceptions: "Yes, but what about . . ."? Killing is always wrong. "Yes, but what about self-defense?" Welfare creates dependency and can never be justified. "Yes, but wouldn't you feed a starving child?"

Which brings us to President Bush and his press spokesman, Tony Snow. The president, as he seems to want to do on many issues, has tried to carve out a nuanced position. Embryonic stem-cell research on existing lines is still OK, but not on new lines. It's OK for private entities to conduct the research, but that doesn't mean the federal government has to fund it. Then along comes Tony Snow, presumably speaking for the president (he hasn't distanced himself from the comments yet) and says bluntly that Bush thinks destroying embryos is murder:

Bush's logic for the veto escapes any rational explanation. His press secretary Tony Snow said, “The simple answer is he thinks murder is wrong.”

But then Snow went on to note that stem cell research would carry on without federal funding. So, I guess murder is OK as long as you don't fund it with federal dollars.

"Murder" is not a nuanced position, and, as the commentator just quoted figured out, the claim is easy to pick apart -- and not with things the president had not thought about, the usual pitfall in argumentation, with things the president himself has said. Murder can't be right, no matter who pays for it. And if destroying the embryos is murder, shouldn't the operators of the fertility clinics themselves be charged with it?

Those on the other side aren't always nuanced, either, as the quoted writer himself demonstrates:

In wartime, we accept that innocent people will die in order to benefit the greater good. Bush and his base have no problem with that logic. Can't we use the same logic here, that unwanted, frozen embryos can be used to help cure these terrible diseases, for the benefit of millions?

And remember John Edwards, who said during the presidential campaign that if he and John Kerry were elected, stem-cell research would proceed and people like Christopher Reeves would be able to get out of their wheelchairs? Since research was proceeding, and since there have as yet been no concrete results from embryonic research (as there have been for adult stem-cell research), that was an exaggerated claim just begging to be picked apart.