I’ve been all but banned from watching political debates in our home. My inability to restrain myself when it comes to critiquing, loudly, whatever passes for logical argument today has made me a pariah in our library. No one talks about the State of the Union with me anymore…
While I have plenty to say to the television during election season, I was at a loss when my fifteen-year-old came home from school last week fuming about the “mini debates” in his AP US History (APUSH) class. I was probably not the most objective listener. But I held my tongue and let him have his say.
It wasn’t debate at all, he said. And it wasn’t at all about persuasion, either. It was, he ranted, manipulation, not reason, the stirring up of emotions, tearing someone down, without argument or concern for truth at all. What made him even more frustrated was the dismissive attitude of his classmates. That’s just debate these days, they told him, that’s rhetoric.
But that’s not rhetoric, he protested to me. Attacking your opponent with an appeal to emotion, divorced from logic and truth, isn’t rhetoric at all. Even worse, his classmates didn’t bother to establish their own credibility, but they relied instead on destroying the ethos of their opponents with throwaway emotional statements that may or may not have had any basis in fact. Where, he wanted to know, was the logical progression of an argument? Where was the validity of the structure and the reaching for truth in these “debates?”
What could I tell my frustrated son who just wanted a fair and honest debate? Or even, as he put it, any sort of debate at all…
Isee the same attitude as that of my son’s high school classmates, even among my peers, adults who really should know better — people in law, politics, higher education, and media. We are more and more conditioned to accept this facsimile of logical argument in place of something meaningful and real. We sense it, some of us can name it, but collectively we don’t seem to know what to do about it.
Sometimes I even see the same dismissive attitude as my son’s freshman classmates. That’s just debate. That’s rhetoric — convincing the audience you’re right. Formal logic is too rigid, too hard to understand. It’s more important to get your message across any way you can.
Or worse: they, the other side, do it so we have to do it, too, otherwise we won’t win. And really, isn’t that the heart of it? We argue to win. We aren’t debating in order to seek truth: We think we’re right, so we want to win.
But, you might protest, if you are right, especially morally, shouldn’t you be arguing to win? Do I want evil to win instead? After all, the widely (and almost certainly misattributed) quote from Edmund Burke tells us that “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” If we see evil, should we not strive to do all in our power to defeat it?
Yes, of course. And also, a bit of hedging, no.
German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrestled with this dilemma during WWII: Was it morally, spiritually, right to assassinate someone — even the evil that was Hitler? In the end, Bonhoeffer concluded that assassinating Hitler was still morally wrong but that allowing him to continue was worse, and that he, Bonhoeffer, was willing to absorb the sin and guilt of murder to stop him. The “end justified the means” only so far as one man was willing to do what was wrong — not because he thought the means was right but because he thought the end was a necessary wrong. And even that only after years of consideration and prayer.
And that, I think, is one of the ways we find ourselves going astray in civic debate today. When we feel we hold the moral high ground, we believe we have automatic justification for winning by any means. We feel not only justified but obliged to fight to win. Would Bonhoeffer, who was murdered by the Nazi regime for plotting to kill Hitler, who faced a clear and unequivocal evil yet deliberated over “winning” by immoral means, agree with our approach today?
We argue to win — sometimes because we stubbornly, pridefully, hate to lose, and yet also often because we believe wholly and certainly that we are not only right on facts and position but right in a universal, good versus evil battle for humankind itself. The best of us truly seek to understand our opponents, with active listening, open-ended, curious questions, warmth, and care. We want to understand them, but even then usually so we know how to convince them that we are right and they are wrong.
But what if we’re wrong? What if I’m the one who has misunderstood an issue or not known a key fact that would change the entire nature of the argument? Will I learn that if I am listening only to know how to win? Or, what if I am right, but the person in front of me has reached their conclusions authentically and carefully, with information and experiences from which I can learn? Can I really understand them if I come to the argument already certain their position is wrong —o r even evil? Why should that matter?
Sometimes, evil looms so large, so terrible, that you cannot mistake it for anything else. Hitler’s methodical extermination of Jews —and so many others who were considered by the Nazis openly, brazenly, matter-of-factly less than human, less deserving of life — was an undoubted evil. The methodical, calculated, and well-documented, well-executed desire to eliminate an entire people group can’t really be anything else, can it? When did it become obvious?
We have the benefit of hindsight, don’t we? From the beginning, we can trace the thread of evil through Hitler’s words. Why didn’t anyone stop him, we ask desperately? Why did they fall for his manipulation, why did they go along with his evil? We don’t really want to know about the German people of the 1930s. We want to know about ourselves. We want to know if we are doing the same today. We worry that we will miss something and allow ourselves to unwittingly support evil until it’s too late to stop it.
So, we determine not to let that happen. No authoritarianism or totalitarianism or fascism on our watch! We are not those foolish or hateful Germans – and not just Germans – who enabled Hitler. We are better than that. We are smarter. We are good people. We stay on the lookout for hate. We want to stamp it out before it can grow.
And in the process, we label the bad and the good. And the bad we label evil. We label it hate. We stand on the solid ground of moral outrage, righteous anger, justified in an offensive position. We have no need to question the truth of those positions. We are the good people. We must do all that we can to fight evil, even if we fight with the weapons of our opponents. Even if we manipulate rather than persuade.
Did Socrates believe he was right? Did he believe he held the moral high ground? Actually, he did. He firmly believed it, in fact. And on what ground did he stand? The simplified answer is he believed that he knew nothing. Socrates admitted his own lack of knowledge. He seized the high ground of the pursuit of truth and justice, virtue over certainty. And from that position, he began his arguments. Not because he didn’t believe in an idea, not because he didn’t think one answer was correct and another wrong, but because he believed that seeking a just truth was more right than standing his ground to defend his own ideas.
He believed most strongly in the idea that if you pursued truth earnestly and honestly, that if you were on the side of truth, you would, in the end, win. Plato’s descriptions of Socratic dialogues don’t show a man who didn’t think he had the right answer: They showed a man who was willing to ask and answer questions that would lead to the right answer.
The Greek philosophers weren’t the only historical figures who used honest, open questions to seek truth. Jesus believed, whether you do or not, that He was divine, the Son of God. If true, that would certainly grant him the ultimate moral high ground. Yet he asked questions — He didn’t just lecture His audience or try to understand their point of view so He could show them how they were wrong. By all accounts, Jesus looked at the people who challenged Him, and He saw them, and He heard them. He put the truth of His very identity on the table to be challenged. He even asked His disciples, the ones He should have lectured, not questioned, “Who do you say that I am?”
He looked at a crowd, stones in hand, convinced of their righteousness, the rightness of their stance and heard them ask, firm in their convictions sure they knew the answer, “The law says she should be stoned; what do you say?” He, in return, asked them, “Who among you has not sinned?” He also turned to the fearful, the anxious, the worried, and asked, “Why do you worry about clothes?” and “Why are you afraid?” He asked those who sought to deny His authority on the Sabbath, “Do you remember what David did when he and his companions were hungry?” He asked a grieving sister, “Where have you laid him?” though he already knew the answer. Asking the question allowed Him to enter into grief with her. Rather than harangue, he engaged. “Who do you say I am?”
And He sat with their questions, as well. When the moral leaders and the crowds demanded answers or simply wanted to learn, He listened. “Why don’t your disciples fast?” They challenged His adherence to the law. “Don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” She knew she was right, and she wanted Him to agree. “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?” They tried to set a trap. And He listened and engaged with them all.
If Jesus believed He held the ultimate high ground and still He asked, still He listened — what does that say about us and the ground on which we mount such a fierce defense? Are our stakes that much higher? In the end, did the people Jesus debated get it wrong? He was the divine, yet He was still executed for not agreeing with the most moral beliefs of His day, put to death by those who believed based on all that they knew, that they were right.
And not only do we believe we are right, we believe, like many of those religious leaders, that what we oppose is not only wrong, but dangerous. Even evil. But if, in fact, Jesus was who He said He was, did He not face the greater evil? What evil do we face that would allow us the certitude exempting us from asking and answering? If He who believed He could claim absolute authority and absolute certainty still chose to ask rather than to declare, maybe we should pause to question how solid our grasp is on what is truly evil.
Do we get that wrong, too? Do we know today, in arguably one of the most comfortable times and places the world has ever known, what evil really is? Do we label evil accurately? Do we name it well? I don’t know that we do. Not long ago, you might have been labeled hateful, even evil, if you opposed — or questioned — the Affordable Care Act. Even more recently, you might have been labeled evil if you refused to wear a mask in the waning days of the COVID pandemic — or evil if you believed everyone should be vaccinated. Certainly, you are evil if you support President Trump. And evil if you oppose him.
Any good scientist or lawyer — or debater — knows that one of the first things we must do is to define our terms. I once spent a year working with a global team of colleagues trying our best to do just that for consistent messaging and advocacy for Israel-Palestine. Definitions had to be precise. And acceptable to every one of our varied audiences. Consider that now — do we define evil correctly? What about hate? Are we using them the same way every time, in every situation, with every group of people? Or have we used it so freely, so broadly, that someone ought to step in, like Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, to challenge us: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
I did not “hate the poor” if I opposed the Affordable Care Act, nor did I wish to “kill grandma” if I supported it. I was not evil if I questioned the efficacy and safety of the COVID vaccine, nor was I evil if I believed schoolchildren should wear masks. I remember parents on a local listserv back in 2004 calling other parents evil for supporting George Bush, being lectured from the pulpit that such support was “hateful,” while friends in other parts of the country were being told they would surely go to Hell if they dared vote for a Democrat…
Is that really true? How do we recognize true evil if we so casually assign the label? Might someone be wrong for opposing mask mandates? Sure. Were they evil for doing so? Can you ascertain that? Did they oppose masks in the hopes that people would get sick and die? Or did they oppose them because they had researched and come to the conclusion that masks caused more harm than good? Was my neighbor evil for supporting a ban on attending a concert without proof of vaccination? Did she want to keep people from enjoying music? Or did she believe that the vaccine was necessary to protect those in attendance? Could she have been wrong in her support without being evil?
I think we all agree that most of the time those terms are hyperbole, used for effect. But use them often enough and they lose their impact. They lose their truth. If George Bush was evil, what was Hitler? Were they the same? What about Obama? Trump? Where is the line between wrong, misguided, maybe even greedy or selfish, or foolish, and real evil? Can we recognize it at all anymore when the word itself may have lost its distinction?
Maybe we need to define rhetoric, as well. Or argument. I’ve often helped my students define conflict — not as something bad, but something that simply exists any time we hold opposing views. Teaching rhetoric this year, I had the chance to deepen my own understanding of the vocabulary. We spent weeks on ethos, logos, and pathos. My students had already studied logic. They knew the difference between a valid argument by form and a true argument. They understood the concept of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. We built on that understanding by crafting rhetorical speeches that effectively employed formal arguments. We talked about the importance of ethos, establishing our credibility, our authority, the reason our audience should listen to us. And we talked about how often that is missing or misused in dialogue today, for instance, how often political ads try to establish credibility based on likability rather than capability or experience. And we learned how to develop the heart of a debate, our logos, the logical argument that forms the reason for your position. Logos isn’t merely argument for the sake of argument. It isn’t a series of valid syllogisms that lead to a final conclusion we want our audience to accept. Logos means reasoned argument. It means that we are leading our listener step by rational step to the point which we are making in pursuit of truth. Truth. Logos demands our argument be true. Or that we believe it to be true.
Logos is the beating heart of rhetoric. Without that reasoned argument in pursuit of truth, our rhetoric falters, becomes a political ad rather than a good-faith dialogue. Pathos reaches for the heart, but our emotions must serve our reason. C.S. Lewis believed that properly ordered emotions bridge the gap from what we know to be true or virtuous and our ability or desire to act upon that reason. Our emotions guide us, inform us, restrain us. They keep us from the indecisiveness of reason alone and the coldness of mechanical logic. Without pathos, we cannot recognize truth when we encounter it. And it is through pathos, through emotion, that we reach our audience most effectively.
And that is where my son found himself in APUSH. Each student had been assigned a president, and they moved through a tournament of sorts, the class voting on who won each round. He fared well through a few rounds but ultimately found himself facing off against a classmate who embraced an “ends justify the means” approach to debate. He launched an emotional attack which my son tried to counter with researched facts. But his opponent simply spoke louder. He repeated his accusations. And the class was on his side. He chose well…if all he wanted was to win. Though the president my son represented had a fairly benign and somewhat bland history, he had faced accusations of sexual assault, accusations that were largely deemed unreliable and not, in fact, either sexual or assault. Most people, regardless of political “side,” had been satisfied that he was not guilty. Yet, the accusations were made. And my son’s classmate hurled them with gusto. It’s a highly charged topic and his audience got on board with enthusiasm. My son told me he never had a chance. His careful research, his questions for his opponent, his logos, could not stand against the emotions enflamed with the charge of sexual assault.
And that, he said, was wrong. Sure, it was right to bring it up. He said it was an effective challenge to the ethos of his president. But it shouldn’t have dominated the debate. He should have been able to offer an effective rebuttal if pathos had been secondary to the argument itself. And if, he said, the goal was to determine the truth, to vote for the person with the most compelling rhetoric—in the real and right use of the word.
Did his classmates, he wondered, understand the difference between classical rhetoric of persuasion and the manipulation of “rhetoric” we see in our culture every day? Did they see anything wrong with the way his debate devolved? He was pretty sure they didn’t.
Most people in the world today, he told me, do seem to recognize that something is wrong. We aren’t able to argue anymore. We are surrounded by manipulative, emotionally exploitative speech that crowds out reason and strives to win at all costs. Most people see that. Extremists on both sides, he said with conviction, see it and use it. That manipulation gets them what they want, and they have no qualms about winning, regardless of truth or persuasion. But his generation? The kids in his class? He doesn’t think they even know another way exists. This is just what rhetoric is. In an age of TikTok and soundbites and labels that need to land with impact rather than accuracy, do they even see a different way?
I asked him why this mattered, this understanding of persuasion versus manipulation, reasoned argument versus emotion, seeking to win rather than seeking truth. “Because it’s impossible to have a productive conversation about our society, our world, like that,” was his blunt conclusion. He’s right. If the goal is to win, if we are content to use any means to win, if we abandon reasoned argument and the art of persuasion for manipulative appeals to emotion, we can’t ever have the sort of conversation that leads to solutions. We can’t govern. We can’t be governed. Can we even coexist? And ultimately, were do we find God, the true Logos, in this trap of winning?
And the scariest part of that for world and culture…does that work? If we always play to win — and not to find the truth — we welcome the very fascism that everyone fears.
