What are the rhetorical strategies used in The Indispensable Opposition?

Answer 1

I read the article, and frankly the message is clear, although it is arranged in an alternating style involving raising contradictions.

Irony and contradiction seems to be his primary strategy, allowing him to consider alternatives and deliberate about the most central issue that remains at every point.

Lippmann raises three primary concerns: free-speech, totalitarianism, and democratic government, and considers democracy to be a compromise between free-speech and totalitarianism. So, making a list, and proposing a compromise are some of his other strategies.

Another approach similar to irony is paradoxes, which are not completely obvious, but which involve the contradictions between the different forms of government and types of liberties.

For example, he states that there is still free speech under Mussolini, and it is useless to reject that that is the case, even though it is not a democratic form of liberty.

Writing strategies such as analogy, contradiction, considering alternatives, and eliminating opposition may be considered rhetorical when the writing expresses a form of argument involving those things. These things are certainly present in Lippmann's essay.

I also agree with the other answer, that diction and style are the kinds of things the teacher is looking for. Probably something mentioned in class.

Hopefully I was helpful. If you have a lingering interest in this kind of essay critique, I highly recommend a book I read in college, called They Say / I Say, which underlines many of the core issues present in argumentative writing.