Essay 2

Demagoguery is a particular type of argument that is very popular in the United States. Demagoguery is an underhanded way of garnering support for a specific cause such as an election and it relies heavily on in-group and out-group differences, polarization, scapegoating, and leading questions. Author Patricia Roberts Miller describes demagoguery and the different rules of discourse which are needed in order to have a successful argument in her article “Democracy, Demagoguery, and Critical Rhetoric”. Miller explains that demagoguery is “polarizing propaganda that motivates members of an in-group to hate and scapegoat some outgroup, largely by promising certainty, stability, and what Erich Fromm famously called ‘an escape from freedom’”(Miller 462). Wayne La’Pierre is the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association and he gave this speech which outlines some steps he believes should be taken in order to protect the children of America. In this essay I will analyze La’Pierre’s argument and his demagogic discourse in order to determine the effectiveness of his speech. I will do this with help from Roberts-Miller’s article.  

La Pierre’s speech takes place in the wake of the Sandy Hook School Shooting where a young man, Adam Lanza, shot 20 children and 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut. When Lanza was confronted by police, he committed suicide. This is one of the greatest tragedies to happen to this country in years. La’Pierre is speaking towards people who are filled with fear at the abhorrent actions of Adam Lanza and he is trying to dissuade people from the idea that stricter gun control is the answer. La’Pierre’s main claim in his speech is that Americans must protect their children at their schools with armed guards. “I call on congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school”(La’Pierre, 3).  He says that Americans protect the most important things in their lives such as their money and their president with armed men and women so why not the future of America, the children.  Another claim that La’Pierre makes is that “There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people” (2). La’Pierre is referring to the entertainment industry. The industry that creates such things as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty or “ blood soaked slasher films like ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’” (La’Pierre, 2). La’Pierre states that these massive “media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes” (2) and all these deaths and acts of violence that people witness must have some psychological effect. La’Pierre has decided that the best defense is a strong offense. We need to post well trained, armed guards at all schools because, as La’Pierre states, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” (2).

            In her article, Patricia Roberts-Miller describes many of the fallacies that demagogues often commit. After reading her article, it is obvious that La’Pierre has committed some of these fallacies, leading to a flawed speech. Polarization is where someone presents two different options to a problem. One option is the option that the speaker or writer wants you to choose while the other option is obviously a much worse solution or is seriously flawed in some way. An example of polarization in La’Pierre’s speech occurs when he asks “Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away . . . or a minute away” (2). Obviously any person in their right mind would rather have a well-trained good guy with a gun come as soon as possible however the idea is not nearly as simple as La’Pierre makes it sound. He presents his listeners with a way oversimplified, easy solution of guns, and an obviously worse solution of no guns. Another type of demagogic fallacy, according to Roberts Miller, is scapegoating which La’Pierre uses multiple times. Remember the “callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry” (2) that La’Pierre mentions? Well he is making the entertainment industry a scapegoat. A scapegoat is someone who “bears the blame” (Roberts-Miller, 464) and La’Pierre is implying that the entertainment industry is the culprit behind the corruption of people such as Adam Lanza. Another example scapegoating in La’Pierres speech is when he said that the political class and the press in Washington were so afraid of and angry at the NRA that they wouldn’t allow any real resistance to monsters such as Adam Lanza. La’Pierre blames politicians and press for these atrocious actions because they might have been prevented if the NRA’s advice was heeded after the Virginia Tech massacre when they advocated for armed security in schools. La’Pierre gives a very convincing speech that is impossible to refute because nobody in their right minds can say that they would rather not protect America’s children.

            Through analyzing both La’Pierre’s and Roberts-Miller’s text I learned a lot about demagoguery, and more specifically, I learned about scapegoating, polarization, and the other types of fallacies used by demagogues. La’Pierre’s makes an initially convincing argument but when his speech is analyzed with help from Roberts-Miller’s article, we see that it is actually heavily flawed. After analyzing La’Pierres speech, I feel confident that I can now recognize and evaluate the different types of demagogic discourse.