Have you ever heard anyone changing their view significantly on any of those aforementioned topics? There are countless others that can be included in that group.
My point is that if you come to me and present me with a list of statistics, complelling rhetoric, testimonials, etc about an issue that you believe in, 99 times out of 100 I'm not going to just switch sides because you did your homework. Really this works with everything. The goal of most sensible persuassive speeches and arguments is to alter beliefs, not convert new followers. You most likely won't be able to convince a Catholic preacher that abortion is ethical and should remain legal, but you may be able to take some of the zealous edge off his opinion.
I'm just tired of seeing the government debate the same so called "important" issues over and over when they could actually be doing something useful.
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