{"id":10442,"date":"2011-08-17T16:25:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T16:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/08\/17\/a-little-pedantry-never-hurt-anyone\/"},"modified":"2011-08-17T16:25:06","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T16:25:06","slug":"a-little-pedantry-never-hurt-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/08\/17\/a-little-pedantry-never-hurt-anyone\/","title":{"rendered":"A Note on Political Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme?&#0160; Many conservatives so label it.&#0160; But obviously it is not a Ponzi scheme.&#0160; The intent behind such schemes is fraud.&#0160; Not so with the SS system.&#0160; If your point is that the SS system as currently configured is unsustainable in the long run, and is to that extent <em>like<\/em> a Ponzi scheme, then say that.&#0160; You will then be saying something that, in my opinion, is true.&#0160; But don&#39;t say something that is literally and obviously false if you expect to convince fair-minded people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">You may accuse me of not understanding the purpose of political rhetoric.&#0160; &quot;The purpose is not to convince thoughtful and fair-minded people; the purpose is to fire up the lazy and largely thoughtless masses.&#0160; The purpose is to &#39;energize the base.&#39;&#0160; You naively think that others share your abhorrence of loose and irresponsible talk.&#0160; They don&#39;t.&quot;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme?&#0160; Many conservatives so label it.&#0160; But obviously it is not a Ponzi scheme.&#0160; The intent behind such schemes is fraud.&#0160; Not so with the SS system.&#0160; If your point is that the SS system as currently configured is unsustainable in the long run, and is to that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/08\/17\/a-little-pedantry-never-hurt-anyone\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Note on Political Rhetoric&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}