Sorry, forgot to mention I have pasted this from a friend of mine's opinion page. 'My analysis' at the top are actually his words, not mine. One of the best analysis ever, I must say. Contd. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On O'Reilly's children and willingness to die in these wars: Moore tries to get O'Reilly to state whether or not he would send his children off to die in these conflicts. O'Reilly argues that he doesn't have the right to send his children, but would send himself. Moore is trying to prove that O'Reilly is all talk and no action by asking whether or not he would send his own children off to war in these conflicts. O'Reilly accurately points out that he would sacrifice his life, but that he can't talk for his children. Moore tries to press the same issue several times, but O'Reilly keeps coming up with the same response -- 'I would sacrifice myself, but I can't make a decision for my children.' I think O'Reilly is very strong on this point because he's right -- he can't speak about whether or not he'd send his children off to war, because it isn't his choice. He does, however, stick to his guns by pointing out that he would be willing to give his OWN life for the conflict. Since one's own life is the highest price you can pay realistically, O'Reilly is making the strongest statement possible without looking like an arse for saying that he'd make decisions for his children (who I presume are legal sovereign adult individuals). O'Reilly then swaps the question around on Moore, asking Moore if he would give his life for the conflict in Afghanistan. Moore goes through a huge process of entirely evading the question. He'd give his life to go after Al Qaeda, but he wouldn't attack the Taliban. He doesn't give any answer on how he'd do that, and switches to when it's justified to attack a government. His answer? 'Only if it poses a threat to us.' So O'Reilly brings up Hitler, to which Moore responds Pearl Harbor, and O'Reilly points out '33-'41. Moore claims mistakes were made in the statement, "Thereýfs a lot of things we should have done." If we should have done something, and we didn't, that would be a mistake. And I don't hear Moore trying to crucify FDR... Therefore he is strengthening O'Reilly's earlier statements about mistakes being made. But Moore goes further, and states that he would have made sure Hitler never came into power. O'Reilly (correctly) points out that would be pre-emption, the very policy Moore likes to criticize Bush over. Moore is not a fan of any of the cases where the US does covert things in other countries trying to interfere with their government (the whole Nicaragua thing in specific seems to be a favourite), yet he suggests that the same thing should be done in hindsight, oops? Basically, Moore is using hindsight to support the same policies he speaks out against. O'Reilly 4, Moore 0 On revolution: Moore argues that Iraq could have changed regime via revolution, while O'Reilly argues that Moore opposes the ways that America supports revolutions. Although slightly parallel with the previous line of discussion, I think this merits a separate point. O'Reilly points out that if Moore were president, Saddam would likely still be in power. Moore argues that there's no way to know that, because perhaps revolution would have broken out. They get into a discussion about the history of revolution and how people have successfully risen up against dictatorships throughout the world. O'Reilly points out that Moore opposed the policies of Reagan which helped to supply guns to these countries that revolted. Moore doesn't respond to that point, and it is dropped, but Moore keeps prodding at the popular revolution concept as a successful catalyst in regime change. I think that Moore has an excellent point on rebellion, but that O'Reilly also has a point that Moore opposes presidents who have supported revolutions in other countries... I think they both have a good point and tie on this segment of the argument. O'Reilly 5, Moore 1 Conclusion: So in the end, I really think that O'Reilly's points were a lot stronger logically than Moore's, and that he made far fewer slip-ups on the issues. However, I think that Moore probably had a better command of rhetoric and didn't look that bad despite some of the gaffes he made. The fact is that Moore is great at rhetoric, but his arguments tend to be lacking of a real solid point or punch instead reveling in playful images and political satire of sorts. However, if you really read the transcript, you will realize that Moore's arguments, though maybe more convincing, just aren't logically sound. People say that O'Reilly isn't that bright? Well, I think the fact that he came up against Moore and managed not to make any serious mistakes logically, or speak himself into a trap says something about his intelligence. Moore is the fiery speaker who relies on emotions to make points, and in some strange cosmic joke, O'Reilly actually became a calm debater concentrating on the facts rather than trying to belittle his opponents. I think O'Reilly, while being a royal arse, is probably quite intelligent, gauging his tactics according to the person he's debating. Since he can't strong-arm Moore (getting emotional and loud towards Moore is the sort of thing that Moore thrives on and can work off of), he just stuck to the issues and made some dynamite logically sound arguments against Moore's points, and ended up making Moore slip up and contradict himself instead. Moore, on the other hand, is full of rhetoric and preying on mistakes. I think that Moore was hoping to find the O'Reilly that you usually see on the program berating his interviewees and trying to belittle them, and catch him off-guard with a statement that O'Reilly shouldn't have made. The fact is that while there's plenty to be down on Bush and Iraq about, Moore picks very extreme things that aren't actually provable and changes the argument just enough to make it impossible to disprove (for instance changing 'Bush lied' to 'Bush didn't tell the truth'). This makes him weak if someone just sticks to the issues.