Is there nothing in the worlds of negotiation, of convincing people to think and do things they aren’t entitled to, with the elegance, the power, the pure majesty of simply capping off one’s argument with a jaunty “full stop”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Abraham Lincoln had told Jefferson Davis \u201cabolish slavery and rejoin the union, full stop<\/em>!” there would\u2019ve been no Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Had RIchard Nixon said “I am not a crook – full stop<\/em>“, there’d have been no Watergate, no impeachment, no resignation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If WInston Churchill had punctuated the Dunkirk speech – “…we shall fight on the beaches and the landing grounds, we shall never surrender, full stop<\/em>!”, Hitler would have pulled back from France, abdicated, and fled to Mongolia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Had the Pope responded to Martin Luther with a decisive “Iustificamur ex operibus, plenus finis<\/em>” (“We are justified by works. Full stop<\/em>“), there’d have been no Reformation, no 100 years war. \\<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the guys in Milli Vanilli had simply said, \u201cWe are the real singers! Full stop<\/em>!”, they would be bigger than Madonna, Elvis, the Beatles, Taylor Swift and Slim Whitman today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So pity the poor Minnesota GOP. Who can stand in the face of such remorseless logic and deft rhetoric?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example – I, personally, started out believing that “Rights” are inalienable, non-material things with which one is born, and from which one can not be legitimately separated except by very solemn due process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But then I read this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n