“It would seem then that rhetoric alone is not a moral endeavour. Socrates believes that without knowledge, without philosophy, rhetoric alone is not an art at all. It is a form of flattery, a way to coax the uneducated into accepting a position that is not necessarily correct, moral, or even just.
Rhetoric without knowledge is like the blind leading the blind. More specifically, it is the ignorant leading the ignorant.”
When I lived in Phoenix at one point I attended a philosophy meetup. The discussions were interesting. But I stopped going when I realized that we were never going to act on the real world in any meaningful way. So yes, that’s why there’s an “Action” section on The County Fence. 
As Abe Lincoln said: “I care not for a man’s religion whose dog or cat are not better off for it.”
And as he also said: “In my experience a man with no vices has very few virtues.”
He introduced me to sophism. Worth looking up what that is.