The Use and Abuse of Science in Public Policy Debates Spring 2012 UGS303 SPRING 2012 Trish Roberts-Miller Lecture MW 10-11 PAR 201 63575/63580/63585 The Use and Abuse of Science in Public Policy Debates TRM Office Hours: MTW 1:30-3:00 and by appointment Email: redball@mindspring.com http://www.drw.utexas.edu/roberts-miller To access UT webspace: https://webspace.utexas.edu/xythoswfs/webui The goal of this course is … Continue reading “The Use and Abuse of Science in Public Policy Debates Syllabus Spring 2012”
Imagine this. You and I are house-mates having trouble making rent, and I say, “We should get a bunch of bunnies.” You say, “I think getting bunnies would be spending more money, when our whole problem is that we don’t have enough money.” And I say, “You just think we should get evicted?” And then … Continue reading “How to argue badly: assume that need = plan”
Deliberating reasonably and inclusively is difficult under conditions of war. Audiences do not demand reasonable policy argumentation, we tend to rely on in-group sources of information, and we tend to value loyalty more than rationality—so much so that we are prone to treat criticism or calls for deliberation as necessarily coming from bad motives (such … Continue reading “Pro- and Anti-Communist Demagoguery and the Politics of the Obvious”
There are five ways of imagining policy conflicts that make it likely we will see ourselves as having no option but some degree of aggression—that is, to see a policy disagreement as discursively insoluble. The first is believing that one is a voice crying in the wilderness, a prophet sent by God speaking an unpopular … Continue reading “[DRAFT] Part of the introduction for Deliberating War”
In a previous post about Thucydides’ description of the “Debate at Sparta,” I pointed out that the Corinthian speaker is in a vexed rhetorical situation. Corinth was at war with its former colony Corcyra, and they were fairly evenly matched. If Corinth could get Sparta to take its side, it could win. But there’s no … Continue reading “The “Debate at Sparta” and Identity Politics, Pt. II: Archidamus”
According to the Greek historian Thucydides, during the “Debate at Sparta” (431 BCE), an un-named Corinthian tried to persuade the city-state of Sparta to get involved in a fight Corinth was having with another city-state, Corcyra. Why? Corinth was fighting with Corcyra about yet another city-state, Potidea. Athens and Sparta were the dominant city-states in … Continue reading “What the 431 BCE “Debate at Sparta” can show us about “identity politics” v. “politics of identity””
The GOP has been setting fire to democratic norms since the 80s. That isn’t a hyperbolic insult I’m throwing at them. It’s what Gingrich said he wanted to do. He said, quite openly (and still says), that he wanted to make government dysfunctional so that people would vote for the anti-government party, which would be … Continue reading “What is happening with the GOP and the Speaker election isn’t just karma—it’s causality. And it’s bad for everyone.”
It’s common for people to talk about how, in our polarized world, everything gets politicized—whether you wear a mask, a red hat, if you have “impossible” burgers in your buffet. But that’s actually wrong. What’s wrong with our world right now is that everything gets depoliticized. Instead of deliberating, arguing, negotiating, and so on about … Continue reading “Trump, Toxic Populism, and Authoritarianism”
Genesis Apologetics (GA) is a group that advocates what’s called “Young Earth Creation.” That is, they argue that the earth was created thousands of years ago, and that a correct reading of Scripture requires that we believe that: “The genealogies in Genesis clearly map to Adam who was created by God out of dust just … Continue reading “Jesus doesn’t need liars”
[Another paper from the Rhetoric Society of America conference. For the conference, the paper is titled : “The ‘War on Christians’ and Preventive War.”] This panel came about because of our shared interest in the paradox that advocates of reactionary ideologies often use a rhetoric of return in service of radically new policies and practices. … Continue reading “How the pro-GOP media is using a rhetoric of war to radicalize its base”
