Debates We Don't Have

Yesterday I mentioned "civility dealbreakers"--issues about which we can imagine no reasonable, ethically responsible discussion. People across the political spectrum have such dealbreakers. But in current culture, I think blues/progressives get seen as wielding those dealbreakers more often.

I ran into this at the Better Angels convention. Some reds were stymied by the idea that there were some topics where an intellectual, let's-hear-both-sides debate would be inappropriate or hurtful. The use of preferred pronouns for trans and non-binary folk--the significance of trans folks' lived experiences generally--came up a lot in this vein. There's a lot of fear among reds that they'll be socially or professionally sanctioned for refusing to use a pronoun they don't feel makes sense--or for using the "wrong" pronoun inadvertently. They point to some high-profile instances of what they consider "political correctness" being used to punish or silence people for having the wrong point of view. Jordan Peterson's resistance to his Canadian university's policies on pronouns serves as a popular reference point for many reds.

I think I can understand these reds' combination of frustration and apprehension about being accountable to a moral code that (from their perspective) has been conjured up and imposed with zero explanation or reference to reality. I can see how, for many reds, it seems like even the most mundane probes for more information get met with sharp attack.


About this and about a lot of other topics where there seems to be a large mismatch between ethical assumptions, these reds want to have a reasonable discussion. Their model for such a discussion resembles a kind of high-school debate with a pro versus a con side that let listeners determine truth from. I mean that "high school" not as denigration; I just mean high school is often where we encounter the notion that "examining both sides" constitutes the central meaning of thinking critically.

When reds see blues objecting to such a debate, they sometimes interpret this as blues avoiding or censoring an intellectually honest discussion for the sake of emotional comfort. I imagine it analogous (in terms of what it feels like from the outside) to a non-fundamentalist trying to debate a Biblical literalist about evolution. Apart from Gish-gallop-style shotgun attacks on "evolution," Christian young-Earth creationist arguments eventually, inevitably, route back to "Well, the Bible says X, so that's how it is." There's just no getting past it. Biblical fundamentalists often won't even entertain the hypothetical idea that their scripture could be historically or factually inaccurate or inconsistent.  When such an undebatable axiom founds all other thought, debate becomes impossible with someone who doesn't share that axiom. It's a frustrating experience.

At the convention, then, I tried several ways to frame why a both-sides debate isn't always a good way to think through a topic.

There are some debates Better Angels doesn't have. We don't debate seriously whether women should be allowed to vote. We don't debate whether Christians are uniquely able or unable to reason morally. We don't debate whether gay people's sexuality renders them mentally ill or irrational. Why not?

Partly because the stakes of that discussion call into question the ability to have the discussion at all. I can't debate with detachment when my right to debate at all is the subject I'm debating. Suppose you're wrongly, involuntarily confined in a psych ward. You have to convince the nurses and doctors that you don't belong there, that you have no psychological or behavioral pathologies that justify your being there. But how, to put it bluntly, do you convince psychologists that you're not crazy? You in the psych ward, after all. It's normal for people in psych wards to insist they don't belong there. A reasonable, equitable discussion with medical professionals becomes nearly impossible. You start at a huge disadvantage.

A high-school style pro-/con- debate proceeds as if such disadvantages don't exist. It assumes an ideal, let's-just-reason-together playing field. But that level playing field doesn't exist for certain issues. Women's right to participate in politics equally with men remains uncertain (witness the gap between the percentage of women in the population versus the percentage of women in elected, representative office). People do regularly tie one's religious identity (or lack thereof) to a stereotype about how reasonable or thoughtful someone can be about ethics. Gay people have historically been (and in some quarters still are) considered psychologically ill or morally deficient and therefore incapable of rational discussion about sexuality.

Debating these issues implicates participants in ways that undercut the mutual good faith necessary for civil discussion. It's like a group of psychiatrists suddenly turning to you and wondering (just as an intellectual exercise, of course) whether you have a psychopathology. It may just be a neutral topic for discussion for them; it's a graver matter for you. Your right to be considered a full, equal person capable of discussion with other people is suddenly at stake. This isn't just a matter of feeling uncomfortable (though it's surely that, too). It's a matter of a starting disadvantage that breaks the basic assumptions of debates generally.

There are other arguments for not debating certain topics. I'll get to those tomorrow.

JF