Personally I find his failure to read the 2nd as a metaphor troubling. Guns are a metaphor in the constitution and in society. It's important to have a society in which guns aren't used, and without guns, how would you know.
But that's just me. My feeling about society peaks when I start thinking that 'sex, drugs, rock'n'roll' high school's cool.
Martin
On Jul 12, 2004, at 2:12 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Rhetoric and poetics are certainly different, as you say, but
> rhetoric, in the Aristotelian tradition, means an art of persuasion
> that simultaneously employs three different appeals to the audience:
> ethos (appeal of the speaker's character), pathos (appeal to the
> emotion of the audience), and logos (appeal based upon reason). While
> Aristotle intended his treatise on rhetoric for politics proper, it is
> also possible to employ his tools for analysis of political art like
> Fahrenheit 9/11, which its director designed as a means of political
> persuasion (trying to achieve a contradictory goal of persuading as
> many viewers as possible to elect John Kerry and ending the occupation
> of Iraq) and which viewers -- both those who evaluate it positively
> and negatively, whatever their respective political perspectives
> (Republican, Democratic, Independent, whatever) are -- regard as such.