Rhetoric and sophistry

I took a course called "The Theory and Practice of Rhetoric" in my senior year in college. This course was offered by the Humanities Department on an experimental basis; the ten or so of us who opted for this elective course were the first (and probably the last) bunch of students to do so. We started out with Aristotle's syllogisms, learned about the various logical fallacies and argument techniques and came up with our own bits of "well-reasoned" arguments (short speeches, a term paper and so on). All in all, a very enjoyable way to earn the required humanities credits.

Anyway, this course came to mind when I was dwelling on the number of poorly argued, emotional articles that I come across in the course of my reading (both online and print). One has to be very discerning and discriminating to really understand the issues involved and not be swayed by the emotions or the faulty logic employed by these articles. Once you get into the habit of not taking everything you read at face value and looking at things critically, it's pretty astonishing how much crap passes for news and informed comment (no, this is not a dig at Juan Cole -- I have a lot of respect for his views and read his blog practically every day) these days.