Copyright by John T. Reed

This Web site is, in part, a debate between me and others with whom I take various issues. I welcome intellectually-honest debate. It is one of my favorite ways to test my theories and learn. That is the way we were trained at Harvard Business School where all lessons are taught by the case method and my wife and I got our MBA's. When Harvard Business School was founded in 1908, it was modeled after Harvard Law School which also uses the case method of instruction. In college, I was on the debate team during my freshman year. Retired general and unsuccessful presidential candidate Wesley Clark was on that debate team as well.

One of my readers said reading this article changed his life. I was surprised by that. But I find myself returning more and more to it over time. One of the great disappointments of my life is discovering how thoroughly dishonest most people are. Some people will, on the slightest provocation, fire off a statement or paragraph that contains three, four, five, or six different, intellectually-dishonest arguments in a matter of seconds. Alan Colmes who regularly appears on Fox News is one of them.

Here is a discussion I once had with a mother of an 18-year old I had just thrown off a high school varsity athletic team I was coaching. I was new so I did not know the kid’s reputation. But it was such that when I was asked by the principal how the team was going and I started to say, “There is one kid…” He stopped me in mid-sentence and said let me guess, then stated the name of the kid in question. Apparently, he had been a pain in the ass in the local schools since first grade. So his mom comes in to tongue-lash me in front of the team about it. At one point, I list all of his transgressions on the team—transgressions she could not deny were misbehaviors.

Her response was to demand, “How did YOU behave when YOU were 18?”

“I was a cadet at West Point when I was 18.”

I thought that was one of the world’s greatest answers to a woman trying to prove I, too, was a juvenile delinquent at that age. It wasn’t especially clever on my part. It was just a fact. She had committed the cardinal lawyer’s cross examination mistake of asking a question to which she did not already know the answer.

In a nanosecond, she shot back, “This isn’t West Point!”

It took my breath away. She not only changed the subject—an intellectually-dishonest debate tactic—she changed the meaning of my answer 180 degrees. My thought was no wonder this kid is such a mess. This woman is world-class dishonest. Not the slightest thought of reacting to my answer like a normal person would, i.e., laughing and saying “I guess you’re not a good example of boys will be boys then.”

Although I am fond of intellectually-honest debate, about 90% to 95% of the statements made by my opponents to prove that I am wrong have been of the intellectually-dishonest variety. The same thing applies across the board. Almost all arguments consist of one intellectually-dishonest debate tactic after another. It is one of the reasons why our country has gotten so screwed up.

Lest I be accused of intellectually-dishonest debate myself, I hereby explain the difference.

Two intellectually honest tactics

There are two intellectually-honest debate tactics:

1. pointing out errors or omissions in your opponent’s facts
2. pointing out errors or omissions in your opponent’s logic

Rules of debate

All other debate tactics are intellectually dishonest. Generally, the federal rules of evidence of our courts attempt to make the argument or debate there intellectually honest. Roberts Rules of Order, which were written by my fellow West Point Graduate (Class of 1857) Henry Martyn Robert, are used to govern debate in many organization meetings. For example, one of Robert’s Rules, Number 43 says,

“It is not allowable to arraign the motives of a member, but the nature or consequences of a measure may be condemned in strong terms. It is not the man, but the measure, that is the subject of debate.”

Most of Roberts Rules relates to procedure like limiting debate. Those rules are irrelevant to an online debate like that between me and other real estate investment gurus.

Some debate organizations have rules like the Code of the Debater from the University of Virginia which says among other things:

“I will research my topic and know what I am talking about.

“I will be honest about my arguments and evidence and those of others.

“I will be an advocate in life, siding with those in need and willing to speak truth to power.”

I disagree with the phrase “those in need” above. It should say those in the right.

Politicians, con men

Intellectually-dishonest debate tactics are typically employed by dishonest politicians, lawyers of guilty parties, dishonest salespeople, cads, cults, and others who are attempting to perpetrate a fraud. My real estate opponents, in general, are either charlatans or con men. As such, they have no choice but to employ intellectually-dishonest tactics both to prove that I am wrong and to persuade you to buy their products and services. My coaching opponents are generally not charlatans or con men, but many are quite political. Other coaches denounce me because I denounced some approach they use and they cannot admit they were wrong. Those who dislike my military views are also career politicians notwithstanding their claims to be “selfless servant warriors.”

Here is a list of the intellectually-dishonest debate tactics I have identified thus far. I would appreciate any help from readers to expand the list or to better define each tactic. I am numbering the list in order to refer back to it quickly elsewhere at this Web site.

1. Name calling: debater tries to diminish the argument of his opponent by calling the opponent a name that is subjective and unattractive; for example, cult members and bad real estate gurus typically warn the targets of their frauds that “dream stealers” will try to tell them the cult or guru is giving them bad advice; name calling is only intellectually dishonest when the name in question is ill defined or is so subjective that it tells the listener more about the speaker than the person being spoken about; there is nothing wrong with using a name that is relevant and objectively defined; the most common example of name calling against me is “negative;” in coaching, the critics of coaches are often college professors and the word “professor” is used as a name-calling tactic by the coaches who are the targets of the criticism in question; as a coach, I have been criticized as being “too intense,” a common put-down of successful youth and high school coaches. People who criticize their former employer are dishonestly dismissed as “disgruntled” or “bitter.” These are all efforts to distract the audience by changing the subject because the speaker cannot refute the facts or logic of the opponent.

2. Changing the subject: debater is losing so he tries to redirect the attention of the audience to another subject area where he thinks he can look better relative to the person he is debating, but admits to no change of subject and pretends to be refuting the original on-subject statement of his opponent

3. Questioning the motives of the opponent: this is a form of tactic number 2 changing the subject; as stated above, it is prohibited by Robert’s Rule of Order 43; a typical tactic used against critics is to say, “They’re just trying to sell newspapers” or in my case, books—questioning motives is not always wrong; only when it is used to prove the opponent’s facts or logic wrong is it invalid. If my facts or logic are wrong, my motive may be the answer to why. But let’s cut out the middleman of why my facts or logic are wrong and just point exactly what the error is. Pointing out the suspicious motive only indicates there is no error, just an attempt to insinuate an error by innuendo.

4. Citing irrelevant facts or logic: this is another form of tactic Number 2 changing the subject

5. False premise: debater makes a statement that assumes some other fact has already been proven when it has not; in court, such a statement will be objected to by opposing counsel on the grounds that it “assumes facts not in evidence”

6. Hearsay: debater cites something he heard but has not confirmed through his own personal observation or research from reliable sources, e.g., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s allegation that a Bain Capital investor whom he refuses to name told him that Mitt Romney has not paid any taxes for ten years.

7. Unqualified expert opinion: debater gives or cites an apparently expert opinion which is not from a qualified expert; in court, an expert must prove his qualifications and be certified by the judge before he can give an opinion

8. Sloganeering: Debater uses a slogan rather than using facts or logic. Slogans are vague sentences or phrases that derive their power from rhetorical devices like alliteration, repetition, cadence, or rhyming; Rich Dad Poor Dad’s “Don’t work for money, make money work for you” is a classic example. In sports, coaches frequently rely on cliches, a less rhetorical form of slogan, to deflect criticism.

9. Motivation end justifies dishonest means: debater admits he is lying or using fallacious logic but excuses this on the grounds that he is motivating the audience to accomplish a good thing and that end justifies the intellectually-dishonest means

10. Cult of personality: debater attempts to make the likability of each debate opponent the focus of the debate on the grounds that he believes he is more likable than the opponent

11. Vagueness: debater seems to cite facts or logic, but his terms are so vague that no facts or logic are present

12. Playing on widely held fantasies: debater offers facts or logic that support the fantasies of the audience thereby triggering powerful desires to believe that override normal desire for truth or logic

13. Claiming privacy with regard to claims about self: debater makes favorable claims about himself, but when asked for details or proof of the claims, refuses to provide any claiming privacy; true privacy is not mentioning them to begin with; bragging but refusing to prove is silly on its face and it is a rather self-servingly selective use of the right of privacy; The worst offenders are the U.S. Navy SEALs who claim to be great but they “not at liberty” to reveal the details because they are military secrets. Enough details have leaked out, hovever, that those not in the SEAL cult of personality can see that if you could buy the SEALs for what they are worth and sell them for what they claim to be worth, you would have a substantial capital gain.

14. Stereotyping: debater “proves” his point about a particular person by citing a stereotype that supposedly applies to the group that opponent is a member of; dismissing criticism by academic researchers by citing Ivory Tower stereotypes is an example of this debate tactic. For example, Professor David Romer of Cal did a study that found coaches should go for a first down far more often and kick far less on fourth down; Some coaches laughed and rejected his findings because he is a “professor,” turning the report sideways when reading it, dismissing Romer as “Ivory Tower.” If Romer is wrong, it is because of an error or omission in his facts or logic; not because he is a college professor.

15. Scapegoating: debater blames problems on persons other than the audience; this is a negative version of playing on widely-held fantasies; it plays on widely-held animosities or dislikes

16. Arousing envy: debater attempts to get the audience to dislike his opponent because the audience is envious of something that can be attributed to the opponent

17. Redefining words: debater uses a word that helps him, but that does not apply, by redefining it to suit his purposes, like leftists calling government spending “investment”

18. Citing over-valued credentials: debater accurately claims something about himself or something he wants to prove, but the claim made is one that attempts to get the audience to over-rely on a credential that is or may be over-valued by the audience; for example, some con men point to registration of a trademark or corporation as evidence of approval by the government of the con man’s goods or services

19. Claiming membership in a group affiliated with audience members: debater claims to be a member of a group that members of the audience are also members of like a religion, ethnic group, veterans group, and so forth; the debater’s hope is that the audience members will let their guard down with regard to facts and logic as a result and that they will give their alleged fellow group member the benefit of any doubt or even my-group-can-do-no-wrong immunity, also called affinity fraud

20. Accusation of taking a quote out of context: debater accuses opponent of taking a quote that makes the debater look bad out of context. All quotes are taken out of context—for two reasons: quoting the entire context would take too long and federal copyright law allows “fair use” quotes but not reproduction of the entire text. Taking a quote out of context is only wrong when the lack of the context misrepresents the author’s position. The classic example would be the movie review that says, “This movie is the best best example of a waste of film I have ever seen,” then gets quoted as “This movie is the best...I’ve ever seen.” Any debater who claims a quote misrepresents the author’s position must cite the one or more additional quotes from the same work that supply the missing context and thereby reveal the true meaning of the author, a meaning which is very different from the meaning conveyed by the original quote that they complained about. Furthermore, other unrelated quotes that just suggest the speaker is a nice guy are irrelevant. The discussion is about the offending quotes, not whether the speaker is a good guy. The missing context must relate to, and change the meaning of, the statements objected to, not just serve as character witness material about the speaker or writer. Merely pointing out that the quote is not the entire text proves nothing. Indeed, if a search of the rest of the work reveals no additional quotes that show the original quote was misleading, the accusation itself is dishonest. This was done to Mitt Romney in 2012 when he said that as a consumer he liked to be able to fire people at service providers, by giving his business to one of their competitors, so they would be more motivated to do a good job. It was taken out of context as proof he liked to fire people in general when he was a boss.

21. Straw man: debater attacks an argument that is easy to refute but which is also an argument that no one has made in the debate. Obama can hardly get through a paragraph without commiting this violation.

22. Rejecting facts or logic as opinion: It is true that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But everyone is not entitled to their own facts or logic. Nor is anyone allowed to characterize a factual/logical argument as merely the opinion of the opponent. Facts are facts. 2 +2 = 4 is not my opinion. It is a fact. Frequently, when I explain one of my conclusions with facts and logic, my debate opponent dismisses those facts and logic as merely “your opinion.” That is a lie. Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki says incorporating enables you to deduct a vacation to Hawaii as a board meeting on your federal income taxes. He’s wrong. It’s not my opinion. It’s the Internal Revenue Code Section 162(a) which you can read for yourself at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode26/usc_sec_26_00000162----000-.html. Whether you can deduct a trip to Hawaii has nothing to do with whether you are incorporated. And you cannot deduct a vacation. It has to be an “ordinary and necessary business” expense. Travel expenses which are “lavish or extravagant” are explicitly not deductible according to IRC §162(a)(2). The fact that Kiyosaki and his CPA co-author differ from my statements on that subject are not matters of opinion. They are either lying or incompetent. I am accurately describing the law.

23. Argument from intimidation: [from a reader] The essential characteristic of the Argument from Intimidation is its appeal to moral self-doubt and its reliance on the fear, guilt or ignorance of the victim. It is used in the form of an ultimatum demanding that the victim renounce a given idea without discussion, under threat of being considered morally unworthy. The pattern is always: "Only those who are evil (dishonest, heartless, insensitive, ignorant, etc.) can hold such an idea." This is reminiscent of the McCarthy era loyalty oaths or groups that demand that candidates take a yes or no position on complex issues.

24. Theatrical fake laughter or sighs: This can be wordless, but it says what you just said is so ridiculously wrong that we must laugh at it. Hillary tried this (theatrical laughter) without much success in the 2008 presidential campaign. It is intellectually dishonest and devoid of any intelligence, facts, or logic. The whole Democrat party laughed at Sarah Palin. They were successful with this tactic. But that was in spite of the fact that, conspicuous by its absence in that “explanation” of how she was such a joke, was any evidence or logic. How is a guy who was never mayor or governor or head of anything else better qualified for the top executive job in the world than a person who was a mayor and a governor. Al Gore made the sigh debate tactic famous in the 2000 presidential debates and the ensuing Saturday Night Live parodies of it. On 6/2/09, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams celebrated this tactic in a comic strip that had Dilbert saying to the pointy-haried boss, “I like what you’ve done with your dismissive scoffing sound.” In 2010, Nancy Pelosi used a verbal version of this when she said, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” in “response” to the question where in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to order Americans to buy health insurance.

25. Innuendo: an indirect remark, gesture, or reference, usually implying something derogatory.

26. My resume’s bigger than yours. All the more reason why you ought to be able to cite specific errors or omissions in my facts or logic, yet still you cannot.

27. Insinuation: a sly, subtle, and usually derogatory reference

28. Halo effect claims of expertise: Implying you are an expert in X when your actual expertise is far narrower than X or even unrelated to X. This is a, “You know I’m right because I’m really smart.” Dr. Laura arguably did this daily in that she implied she had a doctorate in relationships when, in fact, her Ph.D. was in physiology (the study of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living organisms). She has a USC certificate in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling. The halo effect is the tendency of people who do not know a person to assume if they are good at A—the first impression on the other person—they must be good at everything. The epitome of smarts today are things like Rhodes Scholarship or a Nobel Prize. In fact, winning either of those means no more than that the person in question met the specific qualifications to get the award and no other qualifications. The same is true of all sorts of mystique accomplishments or experiences like being an Army ranger or a Navy SEAL or a former POW and so on. Army rangers, of which I am one, have about two months of training in patrolling behind enemy lines including ambushing and small hit-and-run attacks. There are also ever-so brief introductions to mountaineering and rubber rafting techniques. But many believe and are encouraged by the Army and some rangers to believe that being a ranger makes you a sort of general superman. High school graduate movie stars with no training or expertise in government policy pontificating about government policy are another example of persons using their success in one realm to imply high expertise in an unrelated field.

29. Peer approval of subjective opinion: “Proving” correctness of a subjective statement by citing the approval of political allies in the same subject—so-called peer review in academia. Peer approval has value when it relates to objective standards like those in mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Such peers check the accuracy of calculations, the cleanliness of laboratories, and whether they can replicate the results in their own experiments. But peer review is of little probative (proving) value when it relates to subjective areas like sociology, economics, or women’s studies where the peers in question, and indeed the whole field or large portions of it, have a particular political agenda. What is considered correct academic teaching in high schools is determined by long-term, circular, self-reinforcing, peer group-think unaffected by results achieved by their students. Meanwhile, at those very same high schools, numerous coaches and athletic directors decide what is correct by whether it produces victory in athletic competition against other high schools.

30. Ill-defined words: This could be called wine taster approval. In his book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell says leftist intellectuals use words of approval like:
    • complex
    • exciting
    • innovative
    • nuanced
    
    and words and phrases of dismissal like:
    • simplistic
    • outmoded
    • reactionary
    • turn back the clock
    
    These words have little or no meaning therefore cannot convey facts or logic therefore they are intellectually-dishonest debate tactics when used to argue a point.

31. Finding small error: Citing a slight error or typo as evidence that everything the opponent says is false or that the opponent is “unprofessional” or incompetent (name calling, ill-defined words).

32. Protest-too-much quantity of sources: This is citing an overly long list of legal or other purportedly-authoritative citations to prove the opponent is wrong. For example, people who claim income taxes are unconstitutional typically cite a book-length list of court decisions and statute sections to “prove” they are right. In fact, income taxes are constitutional because of the XVI Amendment to the Constitution as upheld by numerous court decisions over 97 years that have dismissed the long lists of legal citations as “frivolous,” typically fining the litigant for pursuing the suit at all. Actor Wesley Snipes went to prison after failing to pay his income taxes on the grounds that they were unconstitutional. Part of the trick of this debate tactic is to get the opponent to spend days researching all the citations.

33. Accusing opponent of being overly “simplistic:” Thomas Sowell identifies this intellectually-dishonest debate tactic on page 80 of his book Intellectuals and Society where he says, “…certain arguments are unworthy because they are ‘simplistic’—not as a conclusion from counter-evidence or counter-arguments, but in lieu of counter-evidence or counter-arguments. With one word, it preempts the intellectual high ground without offering anything substantive. Before an answer can be too simple, it must first be wrong. But often the fact that some explanation seems too simple becomes a substitute for showing that it is wrong. Virtually any answer to virtually any question can be made to seem simplistic by expanding the question to unanswerable dimensions and then deriding the now inadequate answer as simplistic” [Emphasis in original]

34. Assertion of non-existent ‘rights.’ E.g., the “right” to affordable health care and housing, the “right” to a job, a living wage, and so on. Some such “rights” become law, in which case they are technically now rights, but “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the only true rights in America. The rest are various forms of forced charity contributions—typically forcing wealthier or less politically powerful Americans to subsidize poorer, more politically powerful ones.

35. Claiming hyperbole = dishonesty. For example, I have often repeated someone else’s observation that, “The green movement is the red movement in disguise.” My debate opponent claims he is green, but not red, therefore I am a liar or wrong because I said that every single environmentalist was Communist. In another example, I noted that a mainstream media outlet—NY Times or Newsweek I think, tried to get comment on Obama from his Columbia classmates. After asking 400 who said they never met or heard of him at Columbia, I cited that and commented “Nobody knew him at Columbia.” or words to that effect. My debate opponent claimed there was one person who said they did remember—not in the 400—and that was all that was necessary to prove I was wrong. Does the word “pedantic” mean anything to you? If not, here is one of the Webster’s Dictionary definitions of “pedant:” “A person who overrates the importance of minor or trivial points of learning; displaying a scholarship lacking in judgment or sense of proportion.” The implication of this debate tactic is that all characterizations of large data sets must be stated in percentages to the third or fourth decimal point. Of course, such data is not available in most cases and would take considerable effort to dig up if it did exist. Hyperbole exists to deal with such situations. Hyperbole is also a distinctly American form of humor. The British, in contrast, generally use understatement to achieve humorous effect in similar situations.

36. Repeating sarcasm without indicating it was sarcasm. One of the cardinal rules when you give an unvideoed deposition is never to use sarcasm. Sarcasm is a statement which is the opposite of what you believe. The key is that you say it in a tone of voice that reveals how stupid a statement you think it is. The phrase, “Yeah, right” is the classic example. But dishonest trial lawyers will quote what you said in the deposition transcript and leave out the sarcastic tone of voice, e.g., The lawyer asks in the deposition if you believe the sun rises in the west and you say, sarcastically, “Yeah, right.” Then in court, he reads that part of the definition making it sound like you agreed with the statement that the sun rises in the West.

37. Sunk cost. Decisions should be based and evaluated on what you know now, where you are now, where you want to go, and what the best way to get there is—only. Taking into account past expenditures of money or effort is flat wrong and utterly irrelevant to decisions. This concept is also embodied in phrases like “water over the dam,” “water under the bridge,” “Don’t cry over spilt milk,” “what’s done is done,” “throwing good money after bad,” and “cut your losses.”

38. Both sides of the story. The media is trained to get “both sides of the story.” And they do mechanically, mindlessly. But what law of nature says there are only, or always, two sides to a story? Sometimes there is one; sometimes two; sometimes more than two. When this is used in an intellectually-dishonest way it is typically to elevate a bogus argument to equality with a valid one. You see this with the anti-vaccine movement, global warming, urban legends, superstition. Bad science and urban legends do not deserve equal time on the stage of public debate just because of the notion that there are “two sides to every story.”

39. Political correctness. I hesitate to cite this as a debate tactic because it is more accurately described as a refusal to debate. Al Gore recently said regarding an argument against his global warming theory that “the debate is over.” Gee. Who is the one who gets to decide that? Is he some kind of king or pope who gets to order the rest of us around? Doesn’t our constitution, including the part about free speech, prohibit such a censor in chief? The politically correct have a list of statements that, to them, cannot be debated. If you say anything that conflicts with the list, the politically correct denounce your ideas and you in the most extreme ways alleging racism, idiocy, “hate speech,” etc. The vehemence of their language is exceeded only by the certainty of their conviction that they are 100.0000% right. Of course, it’s easier to be certain when you only have to check a list than when you have to figure stuff out using facts and logic. The realm of the politically correct is a facts- and logic-free zone.

40. Mockery. 1. Derision; ridicule. 2. An absurd misrepresentation or imitation of something. No facts or logic.

41. Dismissing your failure to abandon your position because you “just don’t get it.” Enron, was famous for using this one when people said their business model made no sense. Actually, the critics were right. Enron went bankrupt and its CEO, who claimed he got it, got 24 years in prison for conspiracy, insider trading, making false statements to auditors, and securities fraud. See the Wikipedia write-up on the documentary about Enron called “The Smartest Guys in the Room.”

42. Everything you say is wrong and everything I say is right because you supported [Bush or Cheney or Palin or any other person or policy the liberals are deranged about] and I did not. This is a variation on changing the subject and assuming facts not in evidence, i.e., everyone knows Bush et al were incompetent/evil. The “everyone” refers to those on the left who suffer from Bush-derangement syndome or the Cheney or Palin mutations of it. The user of the tactic make a typically illogical, emotional, and/or intellectually-dishonest argument, then, upon being challenged with facts and logic, changes the subject to Bush or Cheney or Palin, alleges the target supported one or more of those persons, that the user of the tactic did not, and therefore the user is always right about everything and the target is always wrong about everything. (I never voted for a Republican except Reagan and then only in 1980 or a Democrat other than McGovern.) The key point is not to fall for that and start defending Bush or Palin. Stay on point.

There is a more comprehensive list of intellectually-dishonest debate tactics at http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html. And others at http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies. I also recommend Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection kit which says

Baloney Detection Kit

Warning signs that suggest deception. Based on the book by Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World. The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").

Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours

Since 1990, I have had my own Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist.

No doubt the bad gurus reading this will immediately go to those sites to memorize all those new, useful, con-artist techniques.

Negative pregnant

Many intellectually dishonest debate tactics are variations of negative pregnants. A negative pregnant is a statement that seems to deny something but when closely examined only denies a narrower question that was not asked. The classic example would be the question, “Did you murder Jones?” followed by the answer “I did not shoot Jones.” Although the answer is phrased in the negative—I did not—it contains or is pregnant with the opposite implication: “Yes, I killed him but at least I didn’t do it with a gun.” In most cases, the person responding is trying to seem like they are saying no when in fact they are not saying no to the actual question that was asked, meaning they must be saying yes. They are changing the subject of the question in order to answer a question the answer to which does not make them look as bad as the answer to the actual question that was asked would.

Roughly speaking, you could reasonably reply to all negative pregnant answers by saying, “So you admit you really agree with me and you’re trying to hide that fact by dishonestly seeming to disagree without really addressing my question?”

During Watergate, this was called a “non-denial denial.”

John T. Reed