A clear-eyed guide to demagoguery--and how we can defeat it What is demagoguery? Some demagogues are easy to spot: They rise to power through pandering, charisma, and prejudice. But, as professor Patricia Roberts-Miller explains, a demagogue is anyone who reduces all questions to us vs. them. Why is it dangerous? Demagoguery is democracy's greatest threat. It erodes rational debate, so that intelligent policymaking grinds to a halt. The idea that we never fall for it--that all the blame lies with them--is equally dangerous. How can we stop it? Demagogues follow predictable patterns in what they say and do to gain power. The key to resisting demagoguery is to name it when you see it--and to know where it leads.

Using quality children's literature that presents families positively and promotes appreciation of family diversity, this book offers you a unique way to help students understand the common complexities of today's families. Books are grouped into four major categories-diverse family groups, family heritage and tradition, relationships within families, and family conflicts. Within these areas books are chosen for specific topics, ranging from Death in the Family to Homelessness. For each title there are questions for reflection and discussion and a target activity that reinforces the concepts presented in the book.

This fourth edition of Surgery of the Anus, Rectum and Colon continues to redefine the field, with its comprehensive coverage of common and rare colorectal conditions, advances in the molecular biology and genetics of colorectal diseases, and new laparoscopic techniques. Contributions from international experts on specialized topics and various new illustrations ensure that the extensive text is not only current and authoritative, but easy to understand. No other book provides the expertise of a world-class editorial team with the cutting-edge knowledge you need to master colorectal surgery.

In a culture of profit-driven media, demagoguery is a savvy short-term rhetorical strategy. Once it becomes the norm, individuals are more likely to employ it and, in that way, increase its power by making it seem the only way of disagreeing with or about others. When that happens, arguments about policy are replaced by arguments about identity-and criticism is met with accusations that the critic has the wrong identity (weak, treacherous, membership in an out-group) or the wrong feelings (uncaring, heartless). Patricia Roberts-Miller proposes a definition of demagoguery based on her study of groups and cultures that have talked themselves into disastrously bad decisions. She argues for seeing demagoguery as a way for people to participate in public discourse, and not necessarily as populist or heavily emotional. Demagoguery, she contends, depoliticizes political argument by making all issues into questions of identity. She broaches complicated questions about its effectiveness at persuasion, proposes a new set of criteria, and shows how demagoguery plays out in regard to individuals not conventionally seen as demagogues. Roberts-Miller looks at the discursive similarities among the Holocaust in early twentieth-century Germany, the justification of slavery in the antebellum South, the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II, and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, among others. She examines demagoguery among powerful politicians and jurists (Earl Warren, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) as well as more conventional populists (Theodore Bilbo, two-time governor of Mississippi; E. S. Cox, cofounder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America). She also looks at notorious demagogues (Athenian rhetor Cleon, Ann Coulter) and lesser-known public figures (William Hak-Shing Tam, Gene Simmons).

In ""Deliberate Conflict: Argument, Political Theory, and Composition Classes"", Patricia Roberts-Miller argues that much current discourse about argument pedagogy is hampered by fundamental unspoken disagreements over what democratic public discourse should look like. The book's pivotal question is, In what kind of public discourse do we want our students to engage? To answer this, the text provides a taxonomy, discussion, and evaluation of political theories that underpin democratic discourse, high-lighting the relationship between various models of the public sphere and rhetorical theory. ""Deliberate Conflict"" cogently advocates reintegrating instruction in argumentation with the composition curriculum. By linking effective argumentation in the public sphere with the ability to effect social change, Roberts-Miller pushes compositionists beyond a simplistic Aristotelian conception of how argumentation works and offers a means by which to prepare students for active participation in public discourse.

Over the years, many writers and historians have attempted to identify the names of indigenous tribes in the New World, a task made difficult by the sheer number of indigenous groups but complicated even further by the fact that many of these names have been passed down only through oral tradition. But beyond the small number of indigenous tribes which are identified in standard history volumes and textbooks, there are thousands of other indigenous groups which, while lesser known, still deserve to have their existence recorded and recognized.This book is an index of tribal names collected from printed sources on indigenous peoples in the New World. Because most of these original source materials had attempted to reproduce words which had only been verbalized previously, there was a great deal of variation between sources. Organized alphabetically, this index collates these variations, tracing them to the spellings and forms which have become standardized over the years. Each entry includes the tribal name, the tribe's 'parent group' or ancestral tribe, the original source for the tribal name, and the approximate location of the name in the original source material.

What has gone wrong with discourse and deliberation in the United States? It remains monologic, argues Patricia Roberts-Miller in "Voices in the Wilderness," which traces America's dominant form of argumentation back to its roots in the rhetorical tradition of 17th-century American Puritans. A work of composition theory, rhetorical theory, and cultural criticism, this volume ultimately provides not only new approaches to argumentation and the teaching of rhetoric, composition, and communication but also an original perspective on the current debate over public discourse
Both Jurgen Habermas and Wayne Booth--two of the most influential theorists in the domain of public discourse and good citizenry--argue for an inclusive public deliberation that involves people who are willing to listen to one another, to identify points of agreement and disagreement, and to make good faith attempts to validate any disputed claims. The Puritan voice crying in the wilderness, Roberts-Miller shows, does none of these things. To this individual of conscience engaged in a ceaseless battle of right and wrong against greedy philistines, all inclusion, mediation, and reciprocity are seen as evil, corrupting, and unnecessary. Hence, the voice in the wilderness does not in any real sense participate in public deliberation, only in public pronouncement.
Arguing that our culture's continuing affection for the ethos of the voice crying in the wilderness is one of our more troubling inheritances from the early American ambivalence to public discourse--including the Puritan denigration of rhetoric--Roberts-Miller contends that the monologic discourse of the Puritans in fact contains within it arguments for dialogism. Thus, the history of rhetoric can provide much richer fields for reimagining discourse than heretofore credited. Roberts-Miller concludes by extending her findings into their practical applications for argumentation in the public sphere and in the composition classroom.

What was the relationship between rhetoric and slavery, and how did rhetoric fail as an alternative to violence, becoming instead its precursor? "Fanatical Schemes" is a study of proslavery rhetoric in the 1830s. A common understanding of the antebellum slavery debate is that the increased stridency of abolitionists in the 1830s, particularly the abolitionist pamphlet campaign of 1835, provoked proslavery politicians into greater intransigence and inflammatory rhetoric. Patricia Roberts-Miller argues that, on the contrary, inflammatory rhetoric was inherent to proslavery ideology and predated any shift in abolitionist practices. She examines novels, speeches, and defenses of slavery written after the pamphlet controversy to underscore the tenets of proslavery ideology and the qualities that made proslavery rhetoric effective. She also examines anti-abolitionist rhetoric in newspapers from the spring of 1835 and the history of slave codes (especially anti-literacy laws) to show that anti-abolitionism and extremist rhetoric long preceded more strident abolitionist activity in the 1830s. The consensus that was achieved by proslavery advocates, argues Roberts-Miller, was not just about slavery, nor even simply about race. It was also about manhood, honor, authority, education, and political action. In the end, proslavery activists worked to keep the realm of public discourse from being a place in which dominant points of view could be criticized--an achievement that was, paradoxically, both a rhetorical success and a tragedy.