Shifting ground 147
All actors are left-wing subversives. Let me give you a couple of
examples...
(You then spread over the entire profession the tar which your brush
collected from two of them.)Shifting ground
People may employ hedging to make their contentions ambig-
uous, or they may use a definitional retreat to claim that their
words meant something else. In the third version of this defen-
sive type of operation, they may actually change the whole
ground they were maintaining, while still claiming continuity.
When people do shift the substance of what they were saying,
they commit the fallacy of shifting ground.
/ said I liked the project and thought it a good one. However, I share the
objections you have all voiced, and can only say how much this rein-
forces a view I have long held that it is not enough for a project to be
likeable and good.
(A leap from one bank to the other with the grace of a ballet dancer
superimposed on the desperation of a stranded man.)The deception is the source of the fallacy. Criticism of the
original stance is avoided by shifting to a different one. In that
the argument has taken place about the position as understood,
it is irrelevant to the new position which is now claimed. Similarly
a critique now has to start all over again on the new position
because what has passed so far has not been centred upon it.
/ said we'd come out stronger after this election. Look, we both know
that many things can strengthen a party. I have always thought it a