The argument would be more transparent and less manipulative if it tried to prove that other ways of helping desperate people, such as direct aid in people’s countries of origin, would not do enough. We can critique a loaded question with a sentence like this: The question _____________ assumes that _____________, when, in fact, it could be that_____________.

The entire argument is not invalidated just because there are counterexamples. As we saw in Section 2.8: Finding the Limits on the Argument, many arguments limit their claims to acknowledge exceptions. The claim in the example above would need to be limited, perhaps by revising the central claim to "many of this country's teachers” in front of “teachers.” Of course, the validity would still depend on whether there really are so many such cases.

If we see a general statement, we should ask ourselves whether it is always true or whether we can identify any case that doesn’t fit the pattern. If there is an exception that the argument hasn’t accounted for, that may point us to a weak spot that we should mention in our assessment.