Dan Brooks is no gentleman, but his fear of eye contact allows him to safely transcribe the remarks of Colonel Rawlins Birch, one of our nation’s most respected and sudden plutocrats. This week, the Colonel considers the gentlemanly resolution of logical disputes.
Before America was given over to the mollycoddles and self-esteemists, disagreements of logic were easily resolved. The Gentleman of means could simply issue a pithy rejoinder—“No, you have impregnated your daughter!”—and lay about him with his riding crop, after which his interlocutor would be jailed or deported, depending on his degree of Chinesery. Disagreement resolved.
Alas, such halcyon days are behind us, forgotten like so many Chinese biological daughters. The contemporary gentleman is confronted with just as many fops, wags, and mountebanks, but he cannot simply order his driver to cut the nostril of every impertinent serving girl in Perkins.
No, he must apply to his disputes the rigid iron prybar of logic, instead of the rigid iron prybar of a prybar. To that end, the gentleman should familiarize himself with a few basic techniques of argumentation.
A gentleman of logic questions the character of a fop
The ad hominem argument
“Ad hominem” literally means “at the man,” but this is misleading, since it works on women, too. As any rhetorician will tell you, the soundness of an argument rests primarily on the reputation of the person advancing it. Thus when Jesus argued that we should give our money to the unwashed poor, he met with great success—he now owns several buildings—yet when the President suggests same, he is ridiculed. The difference? The President is black. Consider the following exchange:
Local wag: Spare some change so a veteran can get a meal?
Gentleman: Your frock coat smells of Thunderbird and you live in a dumpster.
Local wag: I can’t feel my hands.
Winner of logical disagreement: Gentleman.
The sort of thing that affects women and children
The appeal to sentiment
Normally, the dignified Gentleman will have no truck with unseemly displays of what certain women call “feelings.” This rule, however, should be followed in the same way that one makes it a rule not to handle obstetricians’ forceps: except when you need to move something young and distasteful. A well-timed appeal to sentiment can extract the Gentleman from many a difficult situation:
Irish serving-wench: I’m afraid I must request twenty dollars for the upkeep of the child conceived during our minutes of lovemaking.
Gentleman: Dear Lord, your mother and a kitten are trapped in a burning building directly behind you!
Wench: What?
Gentleman: [Vanishes.]
The teleological argument
Nobody knows what this is. It works on philosophy graduate students, but so will inevitable economic reality, so it’s probably not worth your time.
Another disingenuous mountebank saved by the word of God
The appeal to the Bible
Particularly if you find yourself in an argument with an old person or homosexual, you can often win a logical dispute by invoking the authority of Scripture. Fortunately for the argumentative Gentleman, the Bible is extremely long, and no one—with the possible exception of old Catholic homosexuals—has read the whole thing. You should therefore feel free to make up whatever sounds good:
Political opponent: In order to fund our continuing wars against the Mohametan, we must tax income generated by the sale of fruit-flavored cigarettes to children.
Gentleman: As the Lord said in Davidians 4:20, speaketh not into the mouth of a child, nor place bread in a microphone, for that is abomination.
Opponent: That’s not in the Bible.
Gentleman: Maybe not yours, Muslim.
Winner of logical dispute/presidential election: Gentleman.
Dan Brooks writes about politics, consumer culture and lying at Combat!
