Editing and Mitigated Anne Coulter Article
Upon reading Anne Coulter’s “Why Liberals Behave The Way
They Do,” I was almost astonished me how conservative and sensational her piece
was. Coulter’s vicious attacks and assertions about the Democratic party commits
a myriad of fallacies- which were utilized (most likely unbeknownst to Coulter)
because her argument does not rely on sound reason and justification. Instead,
she writes about an unbalanced focus on the wrong-doings of Democrats, and
needs to make fallacious points in order to create an argument. I noticed that Coulter
breaks Jones’ rules 1, 2, and 5 (among others) by failing to demonstrate/prove
her examples are correct, proposing straw man arguments, ad hominem attacks
and, most of all, straying off topic.
To that note, Coulter loses focus on the main point of her
essay, the Democratic mob mentality, to point out the shortcomings of the Democratic
Party. I feel that this is the reason Coulter relies on such heavy-handed
techniques to argue her point; she is unable to attach it to a larger value.
This gives her paper the feel and characteristics of a simple, embellished
list. She abuses the deductive reasoning scheme by not providing a conclusion.
Jones’ explains how the use of deductive reasoning can create a logical and
strong response in the audience. However, the lack of a valid conclusion (or
attachment to a meaning that is valuable to her audience) in Coulter’s piece renders
her text a simple hateful and reticent assertion.
Like Jones says, there is a large difference in being
logical and being truthful. Coulter is logical, meaning that her assertions
make sense, but are they truthful? That is one thing, among many others, that I
wanted to change about this text; its truthfulness. I wanted to be able to keep
her own position and deductive organization of her paper, but create a stases
shift- from causal to that of value. Much inspired by Kaufer, I also worked to
realize the overarching values that caused her to write the way she does. By
realizing her values, I would then be able to edit her paper with a sensibility
and soundness that it currently lacks. As a Democrat, this would prove
incredibly difficult for me.
Much of Coulter’s reasoning is derived from her diction. She
asserts that Democrats are always mob-like,
value rotten medical care, and that
liberals stare in blank incomprehension. The
use of these words harbors hatred, and although Coulter may feel a very strong
distrust towards Democrats, these words should not be used when trying to sway
an audience using ethical persuasion. My first edit was to comb the entire essay
and remove flagrant and irate adjectives used. Before I erased them from the
text, I judged whether or not the word held a purpose, other than to incite
anger. If it did, I simply changed it to a slightly more rational synonym. For
example, in the sentence “…Democratic voters simply by repeating
that Republicans are…” I replaced the word repeating
with the word saying. If I
was unable replace a word, I deleted it. I deleted the likes of the words disastrous,
bitter, squalor, hate and kill.
If the word necessitated deletion, it was often the case
that the entire sentence was fallacious as well. These statements required me
to editing not only for diction and syntax, but for overarching themes as well.
I worked to focus the text on understanding rather than accusing, and mobs
rather than democrats. Democrats then became examples, rather than the main
thesis. This changes Coulter’s text for the better because she writes as is only
members of the Democratic Party are prone to tradition and togetherness, not Republicans.
Republicans have, and will, foster a mob as well- and this is why I narrowed
the focus of her text on how mobs are negative for America, not simply the presence
of a Democratic society. As I tried to maintain Kaufer’s idea to identify an
overarching idea/value (not losing America’s integrity in the face of a mass
populace) in Coulter’s work, it became difficult. Coulter’s essay is inherently
conservative and I did not want to lose that.
I took the liberty to delete a passage from Le Bon, which
Coulter used out of context. “If "democracies possessed the
power they wield today at the time of the invention of mechanical looms or of
the introduction of steam-power and of railways, the realization of these
inventions would have been impossible." When placed in the context of
Coulter’s Republican rant, Le Bon’s words are given an entirely new meaning.
For a moment I desired to erase the entire paragraph about the industrial
revolution, but then decided it was possible to show an attachment to her
thesis about the mob mentality. I then wrote “Had a mob, tied to tradition,
tried to ruin those discoveries- where would we be today?” and used it in lieu
of Le Bon’s quote. I believe it maintains the same assertions, but focuses on
mobs rather than Democrats.
My main difficulty was trying to not defend democrats or
sounding too wishy-washy. You may notice that my edited version of Coulter’s
paper is significantly shorter than her
original version. That is because I rejected Coutler’s short, choppy,
journalistic/report format in favor of a narrative version (with longer
paragraph). This not only helped it all flow, but the audience could then
understand how all of the examples are interconnected. For example, one of
Coutler’s unedited paragraphs was “When Social Security was enacted in
1935, the average lifespan was 61.7 years. Today, it's almost 79 and rising.
But liberals believe the age at which people can begin collecting Social
Security must never, ever be changed, even to save Social Security itself.” After
editing, I combined the aforementioned statement with others similar to it to
not only give it some context, but attach value to it. The point of mentioning
Social Security was then to show how this stagnation can be attributed to mobs,
not about Democrats. I feel that the resulting edited text successfully shifted
stases (from causal to value) and helped give Coulter’s text an unblurred
focus.
WORKS CITED
Jones, Rebecca. “Finding the Good Argument, or Why Bother
with Logic?” Writing Spaces: Readings on
Writing, Volume 1. Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. West Lafayette,
IN: Parlor P, 2012. Available online via WAC Clearinghouse at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces1/.
Fahnestock, Jeanne and Marie Secor. "The Stases in
Scientific and Literary Argument." Written Communication 5.4 (Oct
1988): 427-443.
Kaufer, David S. “A Plan for Teaching the Devlopment of
Original Policy Arguments.” College
Composition and Communication 35.1 (Feb 1984): 57-70.
No comments:
Post a Comment