Richard Nixon gives the speech “The Greatest Silent Majority” during the Vietnamese war to convince Americans to support South Vietnam in their war against communist takeover from North Vietnam. “The Greatest Silent Majority” directs primarily to the Silent Majority, the people who oppose the Vietnamese war, to convince them to support the war. Throughout the speech, Nixon uses strong rhetorical appeals to support the freedom of South Vietnam and the pride of the United States. He uses “The Greatest Silent Majority” to convince his nation to continue to fight in a war they are not interested in using emotional and logical appeals. In 1955, communist North Vietnam begins war with South Vietnam. North Vietnam wants to reunite the North and South and has the support of China along with the rebellious South Vietnam…show more content… To clearly state that he sides with the people, Nixon says, “And many others, I among them, have been strongly critical of the way the war has been conducted”. Nixon believes that a divided nation is a weak nation; therefore he says, “We have faced other crises in our history.” While mentioning previous crises America has gone through is saddening, it unites those who want to end involvement in the Vietnam War with those who do support the war because all Americans felt the same grief in past tragedies. Besides alienating North Vietnam, this sentence also instils a can-do attitude in the people's mind. Mentioning the past crises indicates that America is much better than in those times and demonstrates that America is capable of rising up out of hardships such as the Vietnam war. The ideology Nixon tells the audience is that America has been through bad times before, but it stood together to overcome it; America will be able to overcome this bloody
