Bizzell’s and Jarrat’s article (2004)  recaps and addresses the topics of discussion at a previous ARS conference and illuminates the merits of the opinions of the several groups involved. One detail in particular struck a chord with me. They mention that in answering a specific question, “Why Study and Teach the History of Rhetoric at All?,” there was a bit of resistance and reluctance. In a push for pluralization of rhetorical traditions, it becomes evident that there was recently and perhaps still is resistance to this by and large accepted ideal. Bizzell and Jarrat write, “It is only fair to include rhetorical works by as many people as possible, particularly those that have been victimized, marginalized and oppressed by way of redress” (24). As valuable as this push has been, it is disheartening to know that  people still resist it. This resistance brings me to an earlier point of discussion in the piece, namely the aversion to the term tradition. “Many people at the conference did not even like the term ‘”traditions,”‘ plural, because they felt that any version of the word ‘”tradition'” implies a continuity and teleology for the texts and figures under study that is tendentious and exclusionary” (20). Well, ultimately, this is the point. There is value to the term tradition, because this is what we’ve been trying to combat for quite some time. We’ve been trying to do away with the tendentious, exclusionary approach that we’ve had to rhetoric, namely our own Western Rhetoric that dominates communication on a global scale. The fact of the matter is that traditions exist in a every rhetorical context, especially on the cultural and geographical level. Traditions naturally evolve and become new traditions. At this point in time, where the idea of transnational exchange is recognized more and more as essential, it is silly to worry about the nature of tradition, as the point of transnational exchange is not replacement or changing local and regional traditions, rather bringing them to the forefront and giving them an equal, deserved part in our field, which has historically suppressed them and dismissed them as monolithic and novelty. The attention that this issue has received in recent years is extraordinary and authorities in our field have moved beyond the merely multicultural approach to embrace this idea of transnational exchange. The very term implies transaction and not amalgamation, which is ultimately what we should strive for, because in an effort to achieve unity we shouldn’t have to let go of the strategies that make various rhetorical traditions meaningful and effective in different contexts.