The classical and Renaissance tradition of treating persuasive speech as a serious intellectual discipline. Aristotle's Rhetoric was its founding text; Cicero made it the centerpiece of Roman education; Edmund Burke and other 18th century parliamentary orators studied it as a model for political action. Political rhetoric treats the craft of public argument as something worth taking seriously on its own terms, not as a substitute for substantive political thinking but as one of its essential vehicles.
Tradition
Political Rhetoric
The classical tradition of treating persuasive speech as a serious intellectual discipline central to political life.
Thinkers
Thinker
William F. Buckley Jr.
1925–2008
William F. Buckley Jr. was the architect of modern American conservatism as a movement — the National Review founder who built its institutions, honed its rhetoric, and policed who was in and who was out
ThinkerEdmund Burke
1729–1797
Edmund Burke was the founding father of modern conservatism, a reforming Whig whose response to the French Revolution defended inherited institutions against rationalist schemes of social engineering
ThinkerGeorge Orwell
1903–1950
George Orwell was an English socialist who understood totalitarianism from the inside out — his commitment to the cause inseparable from his contempt for the lies told in its name
Related through shared thinkers