Early on de Tocqueville correctly observed that this democracy was one in which “men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrain… - Gerry Spence

Ten elements that make up the great power argument.
1. Prepare, Prepare until we have become the argument.
2. Open the Other to receive your argument.
3. Give the argument in the form of a story.
4. Tell the truth.
5. Tell the other what you want.
6. Avoid sarcasm, scorn, and ridicule. Use humor cautiously.
7. Logic is power.
8. Action and winning are [siblings.]
9. Admit at the outset the weakest point in your argument.
10. Understand your power. Give yourself permission — only to win.
Take the winning stance. Turn on the Magical Argument. Open up and let the magic out. Trust it. Take the risk. Jump.

Parents must rear their children toward that one day when the child begins to seek his or her freedom, when the insect, whether an ugly moth or a beautiful butterfly, seeks to abandon the cocoon. During the years between infancy and adolescence, the winning argument will have already been made. The winning argument will have been love; the losing argument, discipline. The winning argument will have been respect; the losing argument, manipulation. The winning argument will have been honesty; the losing argument, hypocrisy. The winning argument will have been freedom; the losing argument, control. If the child has been afforded winning arguments during the child's lifetime, there is little against which the adolescent can revolt. The child will spring forth into the world with joy, not hate; with respect and love, not fury and violence. To give to the world a child who is capable of joyously blooming is the gift of the successful parent.

"The German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, in his important but, in America, little-known book, The Philosophy of 'As If,' proposed that in addition to inductive and deductive thought, there exists an original thought form he calls "fictional thinking." Myth, religious allegory, metaphor, aphorisms, indeed, the world of legal fictions and analogy are examples of fictions we use every day in thinking. An ordinary road map is actually fiction, for nothing like the map exists. Yet we can move accurately, assuredly in the real world as a result of our reliance on the fictional representation of the map. An argument that depends upon "fictional thinking," as Vaihinger called it, is the most powerful of all arguments — the parables of Christ, the stories of tribal chieftains, the fairy tales and fables that are the very undergarments of our society. Jorge Luis Borges, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, Gabriel García Márquez, and Joseph Campbell have all made the same argument, that "fictional thinking" is the original form of human thought, that it harkens to our genes."