Word: argumentative
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...flat, and crowded as the Minnesota State Fair, Friedman’s readership should be forewarned that his latest book is not hot (in the Paris Hilton sense of the word), that it’s uneven, and that it’s empty. Friedman’s argument is ice cold because his call-to-arms is rather unoriginal, as is the way he argues it. His thesis is something we’ve heard many times before: “everybody, in time, is going to be forced to pay the true cost of the energy they...
...Earth has infinite resources with a belief in the infallibility of economic growth. Clearly the two overlap, but the recognition that our natural resources are very, very limited does not necessarily mean that economic growth should stagnate. There’s something almost Malthusian about Stoll’s argument, and indeed his brief history of Malthus is not decidedly dismissive of Malthus’s infamous “trap.” Innovation is usually heralded as the solution to the problem of limited resources; after all, if Malthus could have foreseen the genetic engineering that was employed...
...main factors are the financial crisis and the presidential debates. When Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 14, McCain still led the national polls by about two points. For McCain, the subsequent fallout proved to be a triple whammy, reminding voters about the benefits of government regulation (a traditionally Democratic argument), highlighting the failure of leadership of the current White House and accelerating the nation's collective sense that it has been heading in the wrong direction...
Today the debate about the legitimacy of government's role is largely ended. What argument remains focuses on the efficacy and fairness of various policy choices, not on the idea of intervention itself. Public opinion is far from unanimous about what should be done, but it is virtually unanimous that something must be done. That represents a seismic shift in popular attitudes...
...wants government to do the job. I want you, Joe, to do the job," referring to a plumber Barack Obama had met on the campaign trail. The job, in this case, was finding health insurance. And in years past, McCain would have had the better of this argument - it is the classic division between liberals and conservatives. But 2008 has proved to be a new and frightening moment for the American electorate, and having the government help in finding, and funding, health care doesn't sound like such a bad idea anymore. McCain had a feisty debate, with some high...