"....with good intentions."
Nearly every day I drive by this billboard: I've struggled with both whether and how to respond to this. It invites the nonconstructive response of mockery and the not-possible response of argument. Neither suits and yet there it sits, on the side of the road, every day. In the end, I've decided to engage. What I mean is this: Let us lend as much depth as possible to this message, let us seek the points of connection and appeal, and let us delve into the question of the rhetorical and persuasive power of the choices made herein. Let us take seriously each part. There is, of course, every chance in the world that I will overshoot my mark but, given the alternatives, this is the risk I choose. To begin at the beginning: "Dave 27:1" The appeal to individualism, which suffuses this ad, begins almost subtly. The title mocks scripture but also pulls at the thread in each of us which desires to ' live by my own rules ' and ' go...