A long time ago, in a land far away, I coached Debate. The team that I coached, from Cass City, Michigan, finished third in the state in their school size. That is the highest they had ever finished, to that date. Debate formats at that time were odd. A lot of it depended on who could the throw the most quotes in direct refutation of the other team's quotes. Some judges just kept scorecards of who could get the most quotes in. Well researched fast talkers who could get the most sources in often had the advantage.
Back in the days before the Internet and Google, it was often the school with the most resources, the most magazines and source materials to pull from that had the advantage. Our school was not that wealthy, and would always lose a war of quotes. So we decided to take a different tack. The affirmative team was very confident, had one solid case, and concentrated on presenting that. They did so with non-verbal aplomb, reflecting a fiery confidence in their vision, The negative team was almost sneering in their disdain, and had basic quotes to refute any case presented. We concentrated on the non-verbal as well as the verbal, but were factual and slightly more rhetorical. They were a very smart, very good group of kids and I was very proud of them.
Now that we have the beauty of the Internet and rapid search engines, it is easy to build a wall of quotes to defend your position. And there enough sources on either side to bolster a case for anything. Jesus was a Buddhist? I can prove that! Hitler never killed the Jews? I can find articles to support that ludicrous proposition!
I could fill my opinion pieces with quotes and sources, and spend hours building a pseudo-scientific case. It easy to chain together whatever you want. I choose not to do that. One, it is not a very interesting way to write. Two, I don't want the victor to be the last person to find a quote. I don't want to be simply the fast talker to be the winner.
So my opinion/commentary pieces are not often a string of material or quotes from other sources. This is not unusual, and is fairly standard for editorials and commentary. Although nothing is made up whole cloth, I'm not trying to engage in source wars. I am pleased to answer any comments and try to support my position in that way, but I just don't think it makes good writing to present a string of quotes.
I'm not trying to run columns that try to convince you that global warming is real. Not by a list of source documents. They exist, but I figure you can find those on your own.
I'll talk generally about gun control, but I won't engage in a war of statistics, that both sides could play until they're blue in their face.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is at a tough stage, and both sides are armed to to the teeth with "facts" supporting their position. I don't know at this point if I can convince someone of one thing or another about it, even if I spend days compiling facts about it. It comes down to whether or not universal health care is an important value to you or not. If it is not, then I don't know if there is anything that I could say or present to convince you. If it is, and you think the law is imperfect (as all laws are) then you will want to work within it to improve it.
The opinion/commentary/essay pieces that I do are well within the type of literature/writings that are considered proper and respectable. I will never deliberately lie or try to obfuscate the truth, but I will present my own point of view. And I will do it more with rhetoric, reasoning and passion than I will with strung together quotes.
I hope that when I retire that I will have the time to research and put together more scholarly posts. But I keep having this pesky work thing I have to do. And I have many other types of writing I like to do (fiction including History of the Trap and the Crowley Stories, Ripping Good Yarns, theater, poetry, and Monday Musings). Anyways, I will try to support the information I give, answer questions that are posed to me, and never knowingly give false information.
Oh, yes! Retire and have time for scholarly research! Area 51, I can't wait to assemble the truth about you!
Na-no Na-no,
T. M. Strait
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