Rhetorical Argumentation

AofW: Dmytro Kuleba: “American commentators are talking about a ‘short war’. They said the same about Russia’s war against Ukraine. It will be short only if Washington quietly scales down its goals, gives up on regime change in Iran, and sells a much smaller outcome as victory.”

AofW Dmitry Medvedev The peacekeeper is at it again. The talks with Iran were just a cover. Everyone knew that. So who has more patience to wait for the enemy’s sorry end now? The US is just 249 years old. The Persian Empire was founded over 2500 years ago. Let’s see what happens

AofW: Jonny Dymond, BBC it is a body blow to the House of Windsor...the King's brother, the late Queen's son, a senior member of the Royal Family whose activities for his country have led to investigation and arrest. It is hard to think of a much greater challenge for the Palace.

Aof W Globe Trump claimed that foreign countries were paying for his tariffs, not Americans. But...research published by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of NY suggests that...through Nov. 2025, 90% of the economic burden of the tariffs fell on U.S. companies and consumers.

AofW: Bill Clinton The Hill: “Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come. This is one of them...It is up to us who believe in the promise of American democracy to stand up”

AofW: Carney, Davos: The old order is not coming back...from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just. This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.

AofW: K. Roth, Guardian: what would a world dominated by unrestrained force look like? The crime of aggression – against invading other states – would not disappear altogether, but it would be badly weakened...Trump’s vision would turn that weakness into a governing principle.

AofW: President Trump to Republicans: "But you gotta win the midterms, because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached."

AofW: Ian Sutherland & Lucas Orfanides, Globe So, what’s the value of a liberal arts degree today? In the age of AI, it is the human intelligence of the liberal arts, built on critical thinking, ethical leadership and strong interpersonal skills, that will matter most.

AofW John Rapley, Globe Mr. Trump appears to have fallen into the same trap that tanked Joe Biden’s presidency – responding to bad pocketbook news with aggregate figures, like the growth of GDP...or the revenue from tariffs. None of these measures resonate with the vast majority.

Argument of the Week: Nancy Pelosi (NYT): “Hillary Clinton was the best qualified person to be president at that time …[but] nobody wants to know what you have done. Nobody gets elected because they deserve it. They get elected for what they’re going to do.”

AofW: E. J. Dionne Jr. NYT in 2025, Trumpian flimflam hit its limits...Republicans in the Indiana Senate defied the president’s demand for a midterm congressional redistricting. His power to intimidate is ebbing. A reasonable majority exists. It’s searching for alternatives

AofW: Douglas Sanderson Globe Indigeneity, like Orientalism, was never a thing. Indigeneity is a projection of meaning, but our cultural embrace of capital-I “Indigenous” has created..[a] false identity and fake symbolism. We must render “Indigenous” as ineffectual as “Oriental”

ArgofWeek: Pope Leo XIV decree: “Only monogamy guarantees that sexuality develops within a framework of recognizing the other as a subject with whom one shares one’s life entirely, a subject who is an end in himself and never a means to one’s own needs.”

AofW: Michael Ignatieff In Canada, it never pays to assume that when counterrevolution begins to the south of us, it won’t migrate north...It’s important, whatever our political disagreements on other issues, that the coalitions that brought victories for us all don’t break apart

AofW: Globe Edit: A clear message that politicians and the public need to hear: Stop playing games with vaccines. They are the safe and effective foundation on which a disease-free world for children is built. Without the MMR vaccination, millions of children worldwide would die.

AofWk: Pope Leo “a deep reflection” needs to be made “in terms of what’s happening” in the U.S. “Jesus says very clearly at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, you know, how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?

Argument of the Week: Alan Dershowitz: “We have to understand who our enemies are. And our enemy now is Canada [because of its] recognition of a non-existent entity [Palestine] and not doing enough to combat antisemitism.”

ArgofWk: Trump warning Hamas: They got very rambunctious, and they did things that they shouldn't be doing, and if they keep doing it, then we're going to go in and straighten it out, and it'll happen very quickly and pretty violently...if they're not good, they'll be eradicated.

AofW: Leo Feler, Numerator: People are still consuming the basics, but they’re cutting back on all extra stuff they were able to do coming out of the pandemic. It’s just more precarious because if we’ve already trimmed all the fat, the only thing left to trim are the essentials.