Response to autobiographical essays

I found it interesting that the only essay in which the author's initial feelings and emotions were fundamentally altered later in life was in "Surviving the Mustard Lid Day's." In this article, the author was upset over her abandoned mother and deceased father, struggling to find her way in the world while constantly arguing with her grandparents, who were raising her. She was always at odds with grandparents. Later, she came to understand the impact her grandparents had on her development. They nurtured her, raised her, and attempted to motive her, often in vain, to become a happy person. The moral of the story was that her grandparents made her who she is today and she would not be the person she is today without their encouragement and support. Enormously different perspective from her initial feelings and emotions.

In the remaining three articles there was not this dramatic modification in feeling or emotion. For example, in "A Few Words About Breasts," the author during and after adolescence still pitied her lack of breast size. The author in "The Androgynous Male," felt androgyny was a great attribute at the beginning, middle, and end of his article. And in "Minivan Motoring," the author always felt that "freedom" from riding old-school and run-down automobiles, like his minivan he was describing at the beginning of the article. There was no change from previous perception.

I feel that in an autobiographical narrative, this unpredictable thesis/revelation makes for great writing. In most cases, as a reader, I expected some sort of transformation from the author, and in most cases, I didn't get it. Whether the author later changes his initial perceptions or not, the element of surprise is still there as long as the writer does not make the revelation/conclusion obvious to the reader, as the authors in "A Few Words About Breasts," and "Minivan Motoring" did.

Research Topic

Was Richard Nixon a good president despite the Watergate Scandal?

-reduced tension between the U.S and U.S.S.R.
-opened dialogue with China
-ended the draft and brought U.S troops home from the Vietnam War
-reduced the number of nuclear weapons between U.S and U.S.S.R
-environmentalist
-cutback funding on health care, education, and social programs for the poor
-clandestinely bombed communists in Cambodia
-high inflation, unemployment rate, and oil prices
-supported a coup in Chile which brought General Augusto Pinochet, a ruthless dicatator, to power

Informal fallacy article

My informal fallacy article, posted below, is an editorial article published in the Washington Post on March 6, 2009. Charles Krauthammer is an eminent writer in the post and has written about politics for many years. The article in itself is not a rhetorical fallacy, however he writes, in his opinion, what seems to be a rhetorical fallacy on the part of Barack Obama. The attended audience are the readers of the Washington Post or those interested in politics and the world. The article touches on pathos because the state of the economy should be a vital concern among all americans and the new administration's actions (or lack of) is something we will take earnestly. Also, there is an appeal to logos when Krauthammer mentions Barack Obama's motivation to bring a better, more refined health care system and a reformation of energy and education. And finally, the purpose of the article was to more or less criticize Obama for telling the American people that universal health care, less of a reliance on foriegn oil, and easier access to college for students is the necessary cure for the financial crisis, something the the author views as a non-sequitur.

Most consider the causes of the financial causes, as Krauthammer alludes to in his article, to a lack of government regulations, greedy CEO's, and irresponsible lending and buying. And the new administration certainly agrees with the list. However, they seemingly only mention the necessity of education, energy, and heath-care reform--three items unrelated to the the cause of the financial debacle. According to the author, it appears that whenever talk occurs about repairing the markets, these are the only items conversed with the American public, causing many to worry about the future of the U.S economy. It is a non-sequitur, according to Krauthammer. The cures offered by the administration to rectify the financial crisis "do not follow" with the causes that got is in the mess in the first place. This rhetorical fallacy, although may certainly help the many Americans without health-care, will not however, abate the high unemployement rate until genuine actions are taken to address the financial crisis.

Informal fallacy article

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March 06, 2009

Deception at Core of Obama Plans

By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "$2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely.

Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle.

All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.

Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Ideas Critique

James M. Hulbert in "What do we produce in the knowledge factory and for whom? A Review Essay of The Knowledge. . ." supports Mark Edmundson's main point in his article, "On the Uses of a Liberal Education." They both view that American colleges have been corrupted by our culture. However James Hulbert goes a step further by blatantly criticizing corporations for creating this consumer-driven society which has now allegedly pervaded the educational realm. On the other hand, Edmundson is willing to admit his fallacies as a professor for succumbing to the consumerism of college and places the blame on several sources, parents and professors included.

Both professors have reached the conclusion that a majority of college students are only seeking to obtain their degrees in order to kick off their careers without earnestly attempting to become an expert in their respective field. Their overall thesis is mostly true. Students are for the most part perversely quiet in the classroom, shy about going to professor's office hours, and they view eccentricity as abhorrent. However, for the sake of arguing against their thesis, Hulbert's adamant anti-corporation feelings revealed in the article could be, potentially to some at least, the precise problem of why students feel it unneccessary to speak up in class, not our consumerist society. If a student does not want to be ridiculed in front of an auditorium sized class, it may just be best to keep his/her mouth shut.

Also, the two authors provide no realistic solution to what they regard as an urgent problem in our colleges today. Closing down fraternities, clubs, and sports teams will not go too well for most people concerned in college affairs and modifying universities so that students will have no choices choosing classing, etc will also not fair well for the customer (student) who is paying the university a more than generous amount of tuition.

Rhetorical Critique

Although Mark Edmundson's article in "On the Uses of a Liberal Education" possesses a meritorious theme and deserves much attention, his argument is not without dispute. For one thing, he seems to ignore the fact the professors today are inexorably opposed to other opinions. This can partly explain why students are often afraid to speak up in class. If a professor is going to rebuke students in front of their peers, then why should they even have the nerve to speak their mind? It's one thing to challenge students and correct them when they are wrong, but there's a threshold, and professor's often cross it too much.

There are a few other points worthy of mention. Edmundson articulates in his article that students are too complacent, not willing to deviate from the norm, and are not pursuing a higher degree of knowledge. But isn't competition to get into colleges today a little more so than, say, forty years ago? Are students not expected to be brighter and smarter than when their parents went to college? Edmundson gets caught up in our consumer driven society and the effects it has played on college students but neglects to mention that education and intelligence in our college community has been unparalleled by any other generation. Where does this fit into the picture and how does it relate with his argument?

My final critique of his article is that he does not propose any solutions to our consumer, complacent college community. He mentions the word "solutions" in the very last page of his incessantly long article, but offers no true solutions, only criticizing our capitalist country, as most college professors have a tendency to do. Then in the second to last paragraph of the article he proposes closing down fraternities and banishing sports and clubs, as if this is a realistic response to what has allegedly become a consumer driven college community.

Summary of "On the Uses of Liberal Education"

Mark Edmundson in "On the Uses of a Liberal Education," examines college student's lack of intellectual curiosity and relates this to the consumer-driven society we live in. The multiple choices students have today in college have made the university a facile learning environment, resulting in complacent students. For example, he ridicules the fact that students have the ability to withdraw from classes with a month left in the semester and professors are making their classes interesting rather than languid, as he puts it, in order to meet the needs of the students. Pop culture has created a perfect, utopian world vision for students, who are now so concerned with their consummate personalities they lack the courage to challenge conventional thought, afraid of being debunked.

Along the same lines, passion has been nonexistent in the classroom, according to Edmundson. Students have been too focused on conforming to society--a society which dissuades eccentricity and imperfectness. This devoid of passion has led to the end of striving for genius, leading to uneducated and uncurious individuals. However, Edmundson notes that the problem does not just lie with the students but with the professors as well. Good professor evaluations, which are a criteria of whether professors recieve tenure or not, often require students to be "interested" in the class, forcing professors to, again, satisy the students rather than challenge them.

Response on Mark Edmundson's article

In a very persuasive article, Mark Edmundson criticizes college students for their lack of curiosity, courage to challenge professors, and inclination to accede to what he refers negatively as the "reigning generational style." According to Edmundson, college students are becoming increasingly devoid of intellectual curiosity--accepting professors arguments and biasas as universal truths. Further, he highlights what he believes has become a "consumer" college campus, noting the multiple avenues in which students can choose what works best for them--such as droping a class with a month left in the semester if they find it too challenging.

His second argument--"consumer" college campus--is in many ways representative of college today. Students have the means to recieve the professor they desire, a time of class that fits their schedule, and an extensive class selection from their respective major department. His first argument, however, although contains some validity, omits the fact that most professors today have such strong opinions, rightfully resulting in apprehensive students. Radical, closed-minded professors have little patience for students who think differently from them and its corollary is a fearful student who unregretfully does not seek to challenge other students and/or the professor.

Description/Reflection Exercise

Positive Effect: As I sit here in the library, observing other students, I realize how special it is to be apart of the JMU community. My fellow students, faculty, and staff all working diligently in an educational environment seeking to better our minds. Everyone is elated to be in the library and enthusiastic about the great learning opportunities we are privileged to have. With the prospect of snow on most people's mind, who are coveting a day off from classes and work, they are hoping for an extra day of respite. Nevertheless they are happy to be college students and willing to put in the work to accomplish something meaningful in their four years in Harrisonburg. And finally, I see groups working together efficiently and productively--learning about the importance in success of group activity.

Negative Effect: Sitting in the library, reluctantly on this Wednesday, I witness the many students and faculty grudgingly working to get through the week. Happy at least it's not Monday, but depressed it's not Friday. Most are dreading the potential of having Saturday classes if the likelihood of snow remains strong. How bad will our weekend be if it is spent in auditoriums listening to mundane lectures? The bland and dull atmosphere is contagious, almost as if everyone detests JMU for no apparent reason. Most people can't wait for spring break, or spring in general.

Self Reflection: This assignment has allowed me to present two different perspectives, or biases, to the reader reflecting the general attitude in Carrier Library. Like an editorial writer in a prolific newspaper, I reveal only one side of the debate, omitting others, and leaving the reader to seek the truth on his own accord or side with my argument. This type of writing is very effective because it is evocative. A reader who completely disagrees with my perspective will have an emotion and a response to my writing; likewise, a reader who agrees will continue to read because he shares the same values and arguments I am proposing. This, in my opinion, is an effective writing style because it does not just merely present the facts, but it rather persuades the reader to believe the author's argument while acknowledging his rationality, or lack of it.

Brief Encounter Article

The first ten days
Brief encounter
Jan 29th 2009From The Economist print edition
Barack Obama’s bipartisan honeymoon has ended even sooner than anyone expected
AP
EVERY incoming American president promises that he will reach across the aisle. Senators and congressmen, Republican and Democrat alike, join in the hymn to the virtues of bipartisan effort. This time was no different: everyone applauded when Barack Obama said from the steps of the Capitol that “the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.” But, as usual, the stale political arguments have begun all over again.
Mr Obama set a cracking pace in his first days in office. He signed a lot of admirable orders, such as one closing Guantánamo within a year and others pushing for more fuel-efficient cars and ending the prohibition on sending aid to international organisations that provide abortion. He has buttered up the Republican minority in Congress, and they have gushed about how nice it is to work with him. Nonetheless, the first big partisan row of the new administration has already begun.

It concerns the new president’s plans for the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan”, the largest economic stimulus package ever devised: no less than $819 billion over the next two years in a bid to buoy up the shrinking economy and prevent the loss of millions of jobs. Many Republicans are worried about the hole this will make in the nation’s accounts. They note that plenty of pork has crept into the bill, and that it will be impossible to spend that much that fast. It also contains some protectionist nasties in the shape of “Buy American” provisions. The bill, they say, is just a sneaky way of achieving standard Democratic big-government aims.
A bit rich, the Democrats retort, coming from the party that inherited a healthy surplus from Bill Clinton and turned it, thanks to tax cuts unmatched by savings, into a fair-sized deficit even before the recession began to bite. And besides, what else do the Republicans have to offer as a solution to the mess their president created? (Not very much, is the sad truth.)
Visible party lines
On January 28th the stimulus bill passed in the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote. In principle, that means that it could die in the Senate next week, since the Democrats are currently two votes short of a filibuster-proof majority there. That seems unlikely: the Republicans will not want to be blamed for the recession. But it signals an early end to bipartisanship and bodes ill for the future of more difficult legislation, which will require a lot more co-operation.
Whom to blame for the breakdown? The stimulus row apart, the Republicans can claim to have behaved reasonably well, confirming Mr Obama’s appointments without much fuss, though they did try, unsuccessfully, to vote down his new treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, for failing to pay his taxes on time. Mr Obama, for his part, has offered a lot of fine words about bipartisanship but has not produced very much of it, preferring instead to deliver on cherished Democratic aims. The same holds for the stimulus plan. True, the package contains a large dollop of tax cuts: some $275 billion of the $819 billion comes in this form. But most of that was proposed long ago by Mr Obama on the campaign trail, and so can hardly represent an attempt to forge post-election consensus. The Republicans have been given little say in drafting the plan, and the Democratic majority has taken advantage of the rules of procedure to frustrate their attempts to amend it.
On the other hand, Mr Obama has been careful to drop a few of the least stimulative and most contentious items. And no one doubts that some form of big stimulus is urgently needed. The Republicans could equally be accused of playing a cynical game, voting against a package they know will pass in order to appear thrifty yet not risk being accused of sabotage. In other words: it’s politics as usual.

Rhetorical Analysis

In a "Brief Encounter," the unidentified author writes to readers of the Economist, admonishing them about talk that is not backed up by action. According to the author, Barrack Obama's first ten days in office have been very partisan and one-sided, contrary to his bipartisan campaign rhetoric when he once remarked, "the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply." The author, however, using a myriad of logos, cites frequent action taken by Barrack Obama underscoring the lack of Republican popularity thus far. For example, in paragraph five, he comments about how the stimulus bill passed the House of Representatives without one Republican vote on January 28th. This article also addresses pathos because the author is rather critical of Obama, whose popularity is through the roof.

Despite his obvious criticism of Obama, he does not omit counterexamples. He cites Republican shortcomings, for example, in paragraph 4, where he castigates them for turning a surplus created by the Democrats into a deficit within a few years. Also, in the last paragraph, where he reiterates his thesis, he comments about how the Republicans will vote against the stimulus package they know will pass--commensurate to the partisan politics of the last twenty years. Therefore House Republicans are acting just as obstinate, however, the only difference is they didn't run a campaign based on a platform of bipartisan consensus.

This is a typical closed essay where the thesis was stated at the beginning, particulars were mentioned in the middle paragraphs, and the thesis was reiterated at the very end. The audience is those who read the Economist, particularly those interested in politics. His purpose was to inform the reader about the reality of what has thus transpired in our country's capital since Barrack Obama was elected as our 44th president. The thesis is that politics has been very partisan since January 20th despite Obama's rhetoric promising the American people otherwise.

Angle of Vision

"Angle of Vision" writing has been an integral part of American literature and culture--embodying the spirit of freedom of expression and individual thought. One of the best examples of this, especially in the last several years, is American politics. There are few other topics that generate such heated discourse. Every political or intellectual critique and analysis is opinionated and is written from an "Angle of Vision."

Take the Iraq War for example. A neoconservative op-ed in the Washington Post may support the controversial belief that Saddam Hussein had WMD and was in touch with senior al-Qaida leadership daily--justifying the war. The next day, a journalist may write an article explaining that there was never WMD and the intelligence was incorrect. And maybe even the next day, a human rights group writes about the innocent who have been killed, raped, and kidnapped. Different "Angles of Vision" on the same issue.

Believing/Doubting Game Exercise

Believing: Privatizing executions can be beneficial in a variety of ways. First, it would be one less decision the federal government has to make and dwell over. Government is indeed inefficient at times; And, privatizing executions would put the people in charge, thus more personal freedom. Private executions in public settings, like Shea Stadium, would evoke greater witnesses to the execution ceremonies--which would help discourage further murderers. People would then understand the potential embarrasment and humiliation one would encounter if committed a murder. Placing these criminals on the spotlight would, in short, abate the number of overall murderers in this country and help diminish America's leading role in the world of executing human beings.

Doubting: Privatizing executions would not solve the most indispensable problem today with capital punishment. The controversial and argumentative injustice of executing minorities disproportionaly and/or the imperfectness in our legal system leading to the executions of innocent individuals, most would agree, is the greater issue at hand. Arthur Miller's argument does nothing to address these problems. Also, public executions, in places like Shea Stadium, is quite inhumane. This is not the 17th century where we blatantly execute people publicly, leaving grotesque corpses lying for five year old children to see. And what about the issue of sanity? Most murderers today suffer from mental instability--they will pride themselves and feel satisfaction from incuring an execution in a public setting.

Avaricious Christmas

This article, titled Avaricious Christmas, I believe portrays a well-written editorial with a provocative and tense thesis. Her first sentence of the article states the obvious: "Christmas season is known as the most wonderful time of the year, at least to some." She then later poses the surprising portion of her thesis that is not as universally well-known: "And for those who work in retail, Christmas is the equivalent to a painful trip to the dentist." This surprising and tense sentence in the opening of her article will keep the readers hooked to the article because the reader will now possess the desire to fully understand what event or events transpired to cause retail workers to dislike Christmas. The event was the death of an employee after Christmas shoppers stampeded her to the ground in the final shopping days of Christmas 2008. Most readers of this article cannot relate to retail workers who detest Christmas, which will result in interested readers determined to find the particular details of why this is the authors opinion.

About me

I'm a freshman here at James Madison University. I am from Arlington, Virginia, which is just a few minutes from D.C. However, I have lived in several different states in my life because my dad was in the military. I am a history and Political Science major and I live in Eagle dormitory. I am a member of the international fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta, or Fiji, as we are sometimes referred as. I enjoy reading non-fiction, especially books on international relations and war. My hobbies consist of running, working out, and spending time with my family and friends.