Fallacy and the Robberts Miller (rules)

One fallacy that Wallace uses during his speech is Scapegoating. When he says, “It is a government that claims to us that it is bountiful as it buys its power from us with the fruits of its rapaciousness of the wealth that free men before it have produced and builds on crumbling credit without responsibilities to the debtors, our children”, he is blaming the federal government for taking the freedom away from the American people. Because he is bashing on his opponent, this makes Wallace look weak. Although he is trying to explain to the people that the federal government is the bad guy in the sense, he is calling them names and putting them responsible for everything that is going wrong in the world. By doing that and not backing himself up with facts, this makes Wallace look unprofessional and unfair. This ties in to “DEMOCRACY, DEMAGOGUERY, AND CRITICAL RHETORIC” by Roberts Miller and van Eemeren and Grotendoorst’s basic assumption that argumentation is discourse ori- ented toward resolving a dispute, and there certain rules inherent in such behavior. The first rule is “Parties must not prevent each other from advancing stand- points or casting doubt on standpoints”. Wallace engages in personal attack by blaming the federal government, calling them names, and holding them responsible for freedom being taken away from the American people. Thereby, this is all fallacious, which makes Wallace’s speech weak.