Screeds
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Argument, Rhetoric, and Ethics
February 17, 2004
Today, your Curmudgeon is grateful that the news has been so static. Quite apart from the old saw that "no news is good news," Mark Alger at Baby Troll Blog, one of your Curmudgeon's mandatory daily stops on the Web, has raised a topic of ever-increasing importance:
ANYONE WHO MUST DEBATE Or argue with a leftist should have heard "Phil the Lib from Brooklyn" on the Sean Hannity show today. (I gather from what Sean said, Phil is a regular caller. I've never heard him before, but I know the type from long exposure.)
Phil's call was a textbook example of the Marxist/Leninist argumentarium in action. The technique is taught in and spread by Red cadres in training for revolutionary action. The Red will quickly drop a three to five quick tropes into a discussion that are baldfaced lies, then say, "But I don't want to talk about that..." And, while his interlocutor tries to deal with the outrageous lies being promulgated as though they were received truth, the Red will, in arguing those points, drop six to ten more lies.
In short order, the Red's opponent's head is spinning. But that's the point.
The point is not communication or winning arguments. The point is to so pollute the dialectic that your opponent is tied up in knots and can't hear himself think for the screaming.
The answer of course is to refuse to engage. If a leftist starts using this technique, cut him off. Hang up the phone, close the door, walk away. If all else fails, deck the mother****er.
Of course, one of the points of this style of argumentation is to goad an opponent into violence. The Red can then use the opponent's own ethics against him by waving the bloody shirt and claiming the mantle of victimhood. If his opponent does not knuckle under to these tactics, but resorts to violence, the Red will take matters into the courts -- anything to roil the milieu of the decadent enemy society.
The Red will sneer at you that violence is the last resort of the incompetent, trying to goad you into further foolish action. Oblige him. Bloody his nose. Keep it up until he shuts up. Remember -- you cannot engage a Red in honest debate. They do not know the meaning of the term.
Just be prepared -- he's a sneaky bastard, and he and some of his comrades will catch you in a dark alley and resort to some incompetence.
This is when you demonstrate the value of Second Amendment rights. [Emphases in the original; bowdlerization performed by your Curmudgeon]
If, as your Curmudgeon has said before, we are witnessing the death of true argument in these United States, Alger has highlighted one of the main reasons: the replacement of honest intellectual exchange by rhetorical tactics.
A number of brilliant analysts of argument and persuasion have set down the requirements of honest exchange: the supremacy of facts, avoidance of personalities, willingness to admit that one might be wrong about propositions for which the evidence is inconclusive, and so forth. Arthur Herzog, in The B.S. Factor, mentions another: sufficient decency to disdain victory through force of rhetoric.
Argument differs from rhetoric in many ways, but one above all others: the goal of argument is not to defeat one's opponent, but to increase one's understanding. Rhetoric is a sheaf of techniques for prevailing at verbal combat, regardless of the rightness of one's position. Demosthenes, the classical icon of rhetoric, was said to be capable of taking either side in any controversy and prevailing through sheer rhetorical skill.
He who prefers clever rhetorical tactics to analysis of the facts and the reasons for them is not interested in increasing his understanding. His goal is to subdue his opponent.
Why would a man set out on such a course? What is there to be gained by subduing or silencing others through tactical means?
Only the world and all that's in it.
The Communist empires of the Twentieth Century kept their grip on their subjects mostly by denying them the ability to communicate with one another, and with others outside their masters' sphere. Though the Reaganite "spend 'em into the dustbin of history" strategy had much to do with the timing of the Soviet collapse, the regime was already tottering from the expansion of global communications. The Xerox machine made it impossible for the Kremlin to retain its power by any means except the military one. Once confronted by an enemy able to outmatch them in that domain, they were toast.
In these United States, free and open communication is the rule. (We shall omit consideration of the universities and the Old Media for the purposes of this screed.) There's essentially no prospect for a regime of censorship that would suit the purposes of the Left. Its thrusts at imposing the shackle of "political correctness" on Americans' speech by the cultivation of unearned guilt have all rebounded catastrophically against it. What remains to it is the pollution of the intellectual waters, such that we recoil from them in disgust and futility.
Sadly, unless the defender of freedom is intellectually well armed and possesses a robust sense of humor, the tactic works more often than not.
The sense of humor is a shield against the sense of outrage Alger alludes to in his piece above. Outrage in a discussion format only feels energizing. In fact, it's wearying. It also tempts one to unsuitable responses. If an honest debater feels outrage stealing over him, he must invoke his sense of humor at once, both as protection and as the beginning of the only effective available retort: the leap to the meta-argument.
The "meta-argument" is to the argument itself as the rules of a game are to the play of a particular game. It "summons the referee" to bear witness to a dirty trick. If one can show that the opponent is violating the rules and hoping not to be called on it, the gain can be immense. Given the pattern Alger cites, imagine a reaction like this:
[Hearty chuckle] What Phil is doing here, friends, is stating a group of rumors and outright lies as if they were unchallenged facts. He has to assert them quickly and move on to other subjects, to keep them from being challenged and destroyed. An honest arguer wouldn't do that. But Phil's not interested in argument; he's trying to prevent argument and spread propaganda in its place. Phil, as our listeners don't have any patience for that, we don't have any time for you. [Click]
This fits Alger's recommendation that we "refuse to engage," which is of course correct. One cannot argue with a man determined not to argue. But in consideration of the third parties at whom "Phil's" tactics are really aimed, for the defender of freedom to expose their true nature comes near to being ethically compulsory. It can also obviate a punch in the nose.
In several of his works, theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe makes use of a principle that has been styled "argumentation ethics." Broadly, it posits that, if one has the right to argue for anything at all, then a priori one must possess rights of the traditional (i.e., Lockean) variety. In their hunger for sole possession of the rhetorical field, statists will gladly destroy all basis for argument with streams of "tropes" intended to confuse or silence their opposition. Similarly, Greek debaters of the classical era used a tactic called "many questions" to induce an opponent to misspeak or babble. Your Curmudgeon would love to believe that they know not what they do, but he's afraid that they know very well indeed.
