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Introducing the Argumentum ad Mutationem
If I had a hat, I’d tip it to Michael Spielman.
Spielman is some Bronx resident who published an op-ed in today’s New York Times. The op-ed contains one of the finest imaginable examples of a rhetorical tactic that’s been on my mind lately — the argumentum ad mutationem. What is the argumentum ad mutationem (or argument from change, as the name means in Latin)? Well, you won’t find a definition in a rhetoric textbook, since I made the term up. But the argumentum ad mutationem is perhaps the most popular weapon in the left’s culture-war armory. It’s as ubiquitous and versatile as the AR-15. You may know one of its many permutations — the infamous phrase, “Get on the right side of history.”