that pompous vanity portends
a comprehensive statesmanship that will fill the world with
the splendor of its triumphs? Because Sir Robert Walpole
gambled and swore and boozed at Houghton, are we to suppose
that gross sensuality and coarse contempt of human nature
are the essential secrets of a power that defended liberty
against tory intrigue and priestly politics? Was it because
Benjamin Franklin was not college-bred that he drew the
lightning from heaven and tore the scepter from the tyrant?
Was it because Abraham Lincoln had little schooling that his
great heart beat true to God and man, lifting him to free a
race and die for his country? Because men naturally great
have done great service in the world without advantages,
does it follow that lack of advantage is the secret of
success?

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS: _The Public Duty of Educated
Men_, 1877

Reducing Proof to Absurdity. A very good way of showing the
unreliability of an opposing argument is to pretend to accept it as
valid, then carrying it on to a logical conclusion, to show that its
end proves entirely too much, or that it reduces the entire chain of
reasoning to absurdity. This is, in fact, called _reductio ad
absurdum_. At times the conclusion is so plainly going to be absurd
that the refuter need not carry its successive steps into actual
delivery. In speaking to large groups of people nothing is better than
this for use as an effective weapon. It gives the hearers the feeling
that they have assisted in the damaging demonstration. It almost
seems as though the speaker who uses it were merely using--as he
really is--material kindly presented to him by his opponent. So the
two actually contribute in refuting the first speaker's position.

Congress only can declare war; therefore, when one State is
at war with a foreign nation, all must be at war. The
President and the Senate only can make peace; when peace is
made for one State, therefore, it must be made for all.

Can anything be conceived more preposterous, than that any
State should have power to nullify the proceedings of the
general government respecting peace and war? When war is
declared by a law of Congress, can a single State nullify
that law, and remain at peace? And yet she may nullify that
law as well as any other. If the President and Senate make
peace,