This seems disingenuous to me. Already by calling what's essentially rhetoric "arguments", he's building a huge strawman.
You're being funny right? I mean it has to be intentional that you are opening this contrary reply with a statement in the form of what TFA calls "The worst argument int he world" .
In case you aren't, or other posters don't see it:
The term argument has a technical and colloquial meaning. Technical means it is a well thought out, logically built position in a debate. Colloquially it means roughly "a statement in opposition". Rhetoric as used above largely means "statements meant to sway a person to one position, based on a mixture of fact and emotional response". Of course this is regularly a big part of rhetoric, but it also is the act of clear communication via careful composition of words. My rhetoric classes in college never taught me to pander to emotion, but rather lay out my statements in a clear way to make my point - techniques that are required for both clear logical argument (technical sense) and populist panderings (the common connotation of statements like "mere rhetoric"). So how does the parent's statement follow the form of WAITW? Well it says that the "arguments" (second form) are mere rhetoric, therefore discussing how to deal with them with logic must also be mere rhetoric. It completely misses the part where these types of 'argument' are common to daily political discourse in the US and many other places as well, so learning to not make the argument and to counter it is productive in helping people understand the actual issues.
You're being funny right? I mean it has to be intentional that you are opening this contrary reply with a statement in the form of what TFA calls "The worst argument int he world" .
In case you aren't, or other posters don't see it:
The term argument has a technical and colloquial meaning. Technical means it is a well thought out, logically built position in a debate. Colloquially it means roughly "a statement in opposition". Rhetoric as used above largely means "statements meant to sway a person to one position, based on a mixture of fact and emotional response". Of course this is regularly a big part of rhetoric, but it also is the act of clear communication via careful composition of words. My rhetoric classes in college never taught me to pander to emotion, but rather lay out my statements in a clear way to make my point - techniques that are required for both clear logical argument (technical sense) and populist panderings (the common connotation of statements like "mere rhetoric"). So how does the parent's statement follow the form of WAITW? Well it says that the "arguments" (second form) are mere rhetoric, therefore discussing how to deal with them with logic must also be mere rhetoric. It completely misses the part where these types of 'argument' are common to daily political discourse in the US and many other places as well, so learning to not make the argument and to counter it is productive in helping people understand the actual issues.