Writing Teachers Ignorant of Rhetoric's Tradition of Corruption - NewView Options Provides Alternative

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) January 19, 2010 -- Provo, UT, January 19, 2010 -- Bill Drew, CEO of NewView Options and the author of a successful new e-book, 'The Secret DNA of Writing Essays – And Everything Else,' claims "Rhetoric has been surrounded by a tradition of corruption for centuries."

That's a pretty shocking statement, Mr. Drew. Do you have any evidence to support that, from recognized scholars? "Sure, there's lots of evidence for it," said Drew. "Is John Locke, the renowned English philosopher of the late sixteen hundreds, good enough for you? Here's what he said in his famous treatise, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: "...we must allow that all the arts of rhetoric... are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgement; and so indeed are perfect cheats... wholly to be avoided... rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit..." ( http://bit.ly/JohnLockeRhetoric )

Surely that's just one man's opinion, and an isolated one, at that! "Hate to disagree with you," Drew responded, "but Francis Bacon said the same sorts of things, as have many more modern scholars, such as Adam Smith, Wilhelm von Christ, and the very modern and distinguished scholar on Rhetoric from the University of Chicago, Wayne Booth. Although Booth argued for Rhetoric most of the time, his favorite term for the bad side of Rhetoric was rhetrickery, which he talks about quite a bit in his 2004 book, The Rhetoric of RHETORIC."

But ancient scholars didn't feel that way, did they? "Actually, many of them did, including Cicero and Quintilian, who taught rhetoric for a living to Romans of noble families. To be a professional user of Rhetoric, to be a rhetor, was to be seen as dishonest and conniving. Dio Chrysostum of the first century A.D. indicated: 'I do not make money, I am not interested in crooked deals... I do not promote things in the market place - for I am not a rhetor!' In the second century A.D., Lucian was even stronger in his condemnation of rhetors: 'The rhetor is a pushing, driving, money-chasing operator, who leaves any sense of decency, propriety, moderation, and shame at home when he goes to work.' And Lucian was a trained rhetor! In the free Chapter 7 of my book ( http://bit.ly/SecretDNAFreeChapter ), The Secret DNA of Writing Essays - And Everything Else, there's even worse - I provide six pages of similar quotes, all properly footnoted, of course, in the NOTES section at the end of Secret DNA."

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