Edmund Burke and the Strategy of Opposition

Edmund Burke is considered the Father of Conservatism, but he wrote on plenty of other stuff too.

<a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/burke-a-vindication-of-natural-society">From this source, here's an excerpt where Burke keenly identifies, hundreds of years ago, a strategy of persuasion which might be called the Strategy of Opposition:

Such are the Doctrines which, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly and fully avowed, are found to prevail throughout the Writings of Lord Bolingbroke...there is no Reason to conceal the Design of it any longer.

The Design was, to shew that, without the Exertion of any considerable Forces, the same Engines which were employed for the Destruction of Religion, might be employed with equal Success for the Subversion of Government; and that specious Arguments might be used against those Things which they, who doubt of every thing else, will never permit to be questioned. It is an Observation which I think Isocrates makes in one of his Orations against the Sophists, That it is far more easy to maintain a wrong Cause, and to support paradoxical Opinions to the Satisfaction of a common Auditory, than to establish a doubtful Truth by solid and conclusive Arguments. When Men find that something can be said in favour of what, on the very Proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible, they grow doubtful of their own Reason; they are thrown into a sort of pleasing Surprize; they run along with the Speaker, charmed and captivated to find such a plentiful Harvest of Reasoning, where all seemed barren and unpromising. This is a Fairy Land of Philosophy. And it very frequently happens, that those pleasing Impressions on the Imagination, subsist and produce their Effect, even after the Understanding has been satisfied of their unsubstantial Nature. There is a sort of Gloss upon ingenious Falsehoods, that dazzles the Imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober Aspect of Truth.

Note that Burke disapproves of the strategy, its application, and its goals of application. Also note that the same strategy is used today.

I'll cite this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tYm41hb48o">WLC-Hitchens debate as an example where Hitchens uses, in typical Hitchens fashion, a Strategy of Opposition; in contrast to the assertion of a real argument.