86 How to Win Every Argument
Hedging
Hedging is put around arguments, as it is around fields of crops,
to prevent them from being trampled. Hedging in argument
means sheltering behind ambiguous meanings so that the sense
can be changed later. ('I said the last thing we wanted in the
Middle East was an all-out war, and I stand by that. What we
have embarked upon is a limited war...')
Hedging involves the advance preparation for a definitional
retreat. The words and phrases are so carefully chosen that the
option is retained to do a switch in definitions. Opposing argu-
ments and examples bearing down on the arguer suddenly find a
hedge barring their advance, while their quarry may be sighted
in a different field. ('All I said was that I'd be home at a reason-
able hour. I think that three o'clock in the morning is a reason-
able hour in view of what I've been doing.')
Hedging is fallacious because it puts forward two or more
different statements under the guise of one. The alternative
interpretations are smuggled, like the companions of Odysseus,
clinging to the undersides of the sheep which they appear to be.
The hope is that the hearer, like the blinded Cyclops, will not
know the difference. The effect of hedging is to render useless
the information it purports to convey.
Soothsayers would be sorrier souls without hedging to give
them more than one chance. Just as you hedge bets in a race by
backing more than one horse, so in prophecy you can bet on
more than one outcome.
Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn / The power of man, for
none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth*
(The hedge was that the witches failed to tell Macbeth that this
description did not apply to those such as Macduff, born by*William Shakespeare, Macbeth, iv, i, 79-81.