Presidential Pardons
A persuasive argument is an argument that stands upon reason and logic to persuade others. Charles Lane’s article “Forget Chelsea Manning. This is the Obama pardon you should be mad about” is a good example of a persuasive argument. He puts forth the claim that it is not the recent pardoning of Chelsea Manning that the masses should be angry at. Rather instead he insists that if they are going to be outraged by a presidential pardoning they should direct their attention to the concurrent pardoning of Oscar Lopez Rivera. In his article, Lane first starts out by explaining what a presidential pardon is and how they usually work, then he starts to point out the glaring differences in the two cases. Lanes article is more persuasive because he mainly focuses on and
…show more content…
While on the other hand Rivera continues to refuses to take responsibility for his actions and shows not even the slightest sign of remorse. Lane quotes, “’Rick Hahn, the now-retired FBI special agent who helped investigate the original case against Lopez Rivera, told me. ‘But people I know who were victims of the FALN say that if the guy would just say he’s sorry, they’d all say, ‘Fine, let him go’.” Here lane is using a bit of ethos to bolster his argument by highlighting the thoughts of an officer of the law, a reliable source. Lane is playing on his reader’s emotion, one would think a prerequisite for someone to receive an unconditional release should be that they show at least a tad bit of remorse for their crimes. It is hard for the average person to support the unconditional release of someone who is not sorry in the slightest for their actions. Lane is trying to show the divide between the two cases in this passage by highlighted how one supposedly is sorry for their actions. Whilst the other still stands firm and refuses to denounce violence that they enacted and the violence that they had