WRITING at The Orthosphere, Kristor examines a rhetorical weapon highly effective against modern liberalism. He writes:

Utopians are almost always intoxicated by some grand, glorious and beautiful vision, so that they tend to make sweeping statements of perfect generality. This tendency makes them, and their ideas and proposals, quite vulnerable to a rhetorical technique known as retortion. Retortion applies a doctrine to itself, to see whether it survives the treatment. If it does, the doctrine is more likely sound. If not – well, then it is dead. A doctrine that does not survive retortion is autophagic: self-devouring.

Two obvious examples:

Perhaps the simplest is the classic cant of every sophomore: There are no absolute truths. It seems so wise, right? Or, at least, it once did, until we all learned to ask, “Is ‘there are no absolute truths’ absolutely true?” If so, then it is false; if not, then it is false. So, there are indeed some absolute truths.

Another classic: “We ought to tolerate all points of view;” which, of course, follows directly from the supposed truth of “there are no absolute truths.” OK; the proper response of the traditionalist, or indeed of anyone not an idiot, is “So, I guess we ought to tolerate the point of view that we ought not to tolerate all points of view.”

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