How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic (2006)

166 How to Win Every Argument

particular fallacy. This is why answers to questions about the

present or the future invariably begin with the phrase:

May I remind my honourable colleagues...

(He is, of course, reminding those opposite that they did it sooner,

longer, deeper, louder and worse. This is why their specious charges

can be rejected.)

A parliamentary question is always known in the House as a 'PQ'.
There is a good case to be made for having the reply to one of
them called a 'TQ'.
The tu quoque is easy to use because everyone is inconsistent
some of the time, and few people have a blameless past. You can
argue that anyone who has changed their mind has thereby
proved that they must be wrong at least some of the time, and
that this occasion could well be one of those times. If you can
find nothing at all to your opponent's discredit, even this fact can
be used in an attempt to undermine what he is saying. The rest
of us have weaknesses, why doesn't he?

As for the charges that I may just occasionally have helped myself out of

difficulty to a small extent, all I can say is look at Mr High-and-mighty

Holier-than-thou.

(And he is probably quite a lot holier than thou.)

Unaccepted enthyrnemes

An enthymeme is an argument with one of its stages understood

rather than stated. This is all right as long as both parties accept

the tacit assumption. When the unstated element is not accep-

ted, we move into the territory of the fallacy.