Notes On Rhetoric now has its own site here. There will be occasional updates. Many appear to be still as serviceable as ever, in particular this one:
Turkey - If your opponent is criticising the policies of some state you favour, demand that he talks about Turkey instead. This may sound a feeble ploy, equivalent to saying ‘please talk about something else’ but can be effective if you use language like ‘if you’re being consistent’ ‘disproportionate and selective attention’. (You may if you wish substitute some other country for Turkey – obviously so if, by chance, your opponent is talking about Turkey.)
A nice example of this at the Tomb.
The reductio ad absurdum of this position is that one should busy oneself with impotent cursing and condemnations of foreign regimes over which one has zero influence, while exempting your own government and its allies from criticism. In other words: ethical bombast on the one hand, and ethical abdication on the other.
At worst, the 'Turkey' tactic can also short-circuit moral universality - the belief that we should apply to ourselves the same principles we apply to others. So, for example, moral condemnation of torture by American and British soldiers (in accordance with moral universality) meets with 'but why are you silent about much more horrific things elsewhere..'; patient criticisms of the 'democratic deficit' in our own societies meets only with our attention rerouted to utterly undemocratic regimes. So it goes on, diversionary and insidious.
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