Word: speaker
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Speaker 1: "Public education is one of the most ridiculous institutions known to man. For its inefficiency, its inconsistency with liberty and its lack of positive effects on the nation, public schooling must be abolished...
...Speaker 2: (This person, who disagrees strongly with Speaker 1, has several options. Among the most likely and prominent: character assassination, a combination of character assassination and argument assault or pure argument assault...
...Speaker 2: (Employing character assassination) "Speaker 1 is a conservative pig who does not know the first thing about education or liberty and values." (Speaker 2 might then proceed as if no point were ever made...
...there any problems here? First of all, Speaker 2 has just labelled Speaker 1 a "conservative." The problem with this is--unless Speaker 2 knows this for a fact-he or she might be wrong, thus producing alienation and serving no greater good in advancing a point. The politics are not the issue, only the argument. Why even assume Speaker 1 completely believes the point he or she just made? That is not even certain. Why not just deal with the merits of the point in its own right or with its greater implications...
...hard-liners who occupied the parliament building in Moscow in October as well as to the leaders of the failed 1991 coup against then President Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin had no | power to veto the resolution, which quickly freed from prison some of his arch-enemies, including former parliament speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov and former Vice President Alexander Rutskoi. Yeltsin's first speech to the new parliament, with a call for "more justice, more safety, more confidence," was unenthusiastically received by many lawmakers...