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Please, please suppress the urge to state that an argument is a strawman. All it does is make you sound like a high schooler practicing for the debate team. Jus

• 001sky 14y ago
  I kind of agree, generally, but in this case I think its worth pointing out. Consider for example: In general, there actually aren't a lot of federal regulations that affect small businesses. Which is on its face a sort of bizarre comment. It is "in general" the job of Congress to regulate interstate commerce / communications / banking etc. So, positing that this is "in general" irrelevant is indicative of much more than a localized flaw in his argument, becaue all of a sudden his 2nd point is about taxes and legal structure, and his 3rd point is about credit (see above: congress set taxes and regulates banks). A strawman shorthand for a specific type of fundamental mis-characterization: Asserting up a hopeless argument/position (that nobody believes) to reject it out of hand (for implausibility). Here, the initial flaw has cascading relevance to the next several points made, so its not just a pedantic or rhetorical gesture to highlight it.