The Ethos of an Advocate in an Adversarial Model of Democratic Discourse
Reading Jonathan Rauch’s interview with Brink Lindsey about “traditional and liberal conservatism,” I was struck by these sentences from John Stuart Mill that he quotes early on:
In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity.
Lindsey’s explanation of why to include the emphatically liberal Mill on a list of the five best books about conservatism is that Mill articulated the place of conservatism within a liberally-constructed order – explained what conservatism was for, even if he wasn’t one.
I don’t know if that’s a good enough reason to include him on this particular list, but it is an absolutely essential insight – and just as much a conservative one as a liberal one, in that its essential quality is intellectual humility. A liberal would say that you need to hear from people who reject your premises because you need to keep an open mind so you can learn; a conservative would say that you need to hear from people who reject your premises because you are not God, and neither is whoever you learned your premises from, and hearing from strong advocates of opposing points of view will remind you of your own limitations.
So far, so fine: in our capacity as citizens, we need to hear from opposing points of view; and as a society, we need distinct parties advocating said points of view. But what about the advocates themselves?
There are those – Damon Linker is a good example – who argue that advocates need to keep their views within certain agreed-upon bounds. There are some premises that we all have to accept to participate in political life; not many, but there are some, and more than merely the abjuration of violence as a political tactic. Within those bounds, have at it, but you must stay within the bounds. The rationale is, basically, that if argument doesn’t stay within certain bounds, then eventually one side or the other will simply not accept the outcome of victory by their opponents, and political life will dissolve into civil war. That certainly does happen – it’s what happened in 1860 in this country – but I really question whether such developments can be prevented by establishing those kinds of ground rules for debate (which, indeed, was the way politics mostly operated in the period between Jackson and Lincoln). After all, there is no meta-enforcer of this kind of bargain; when it ceases to be in the interests of one or the other party, it simply collapses.
But the alternative of saying that an advocate owes nothing to the system itself, and is perfectly justified in cultivating a kind of ideological tribalism among his or her following, strikes me as problematic as well. Among other things, if the citizenry sorts itself into partisans, then who’s doing all this valuable listening?
Is it possible to be a humble and yet fierce advocate? To say, in effect: I like making arguments of this sort – based on these premises, in defense of these groups or interests, on the side of this intellectual tradition, etc. – and I don’t intend to make arguments that “belong” to the other side, because I believe that my side deserves the best representation it can possibly get. And yet: I know that my own arguments are not complete, precisely because they are merely arguments, part of the process of getting to truth rather than the truth itself. Is it possible to advocate in that spirit and still advocate effectively? Does this, ultimately, devolve into something resembling a “bounds of decency” argument?
Indeed, I worry that the whole premise of a “contest of advocates” model is that there is someone sitting in the jury box, someone being convinced. But the more we sort into ideological tribes, the smaller the pool from which one might draw such a jury. And yet it makes all the sense in the world for advocates to try to encourage that sorting – because it makes their job easier, if nothing else, and also because it’s an arms race, and they can’t forgo any tactic that the other side might use to its advantage. And I tend to think that the best arguments in an intellectual sense – the ones that best advance the conversation – are far from the best ones for achieving that ideological sorting.
Politics is a game played by elites who are trying to capture enough of the electorate to retain power; I’m not deluded into thinking there’s such a thing as a “popular will” that ought to be or even can be expressed through politics. If I could be certain that terrible arguments in the courtroom still led to a good approximation of justice – that, in effect, the system works even if the jurors have mostly prejudged the case, and those who haven’t are mostly knaves or fools – then I wouldn’t really worry about this question, except from the private standpoint of someone who enjoys political argument. But I’m not sure they do.
More on this later; now, off to a show.
A few years ago I made a film about 9/11, and one of the film’s subjects was a Lebonese woman about my age.
We became friends and I told her that the Lebonese civil war was one of my earliest “current events” memories; and we ended up havivg a very long conversation about radicalization.
A year or so later I found myself in a monastary in the mountains on border between Bosnia and Serbia, interviewing a former Serbian soldier who ha lost both legs, an arm, and half his face trying to deactivate a mine. I never did find a place for his testimony in the film I was making.
For reasons I partly understand I have an easier time “speaking to those who might be convinnced” when I make films that when I write text. But the tools of the day seem to demand text (meta is bettah, right ayjay?) which seems to bring forth a different sort of voice.
Recently I’ve begun to seek out telephone conversations, and am wondering if next Summer I might be able to forgo the lucrative Summer rental in order to invite both friends and adversaries to spend a little time in each others’ company in pleasant surroundings. A 12 Chimnies of my own making so to speak.
— Tony Comstock · Aug 17, 07:25 PM · #
An ever increasing amount of political discourse today consists of public shaming of people who dare to bring up topics and perspectives that aren’t respectable, such as immigration and race.
Of course, the less we are allowed to think about things, the stupider our policies become.
— Steve Sailer · Aug 17, 09:09 PM · #
Steve,
Maybe invite some of the people who deride your ideas as mere racist claptrap over for a long conversationweekend of badmiton, barbaque, sailing, and surfing?
— Tony Comstock · Aug 17, 11:41 PM · #
See?
— Steve Sailer · Aug 18, 12:08 AM · #
So I guess you’re more into the “sorting” thing and not so much into the “changing minds” thing?
— Tony Comstock · Aug 18, 01:01 AM · #
You don’t really get it, do you?
— Steve Sailer · Aug 18, 01:16 AM · #
What I get, Steve, is that you’re content to have carved out a little niche for yourself preaching to the converted and blaming a vast conspiracy for your marginal status.
Fine. Whatever floats your boat. But if your ideas have a scintilla of truth they deserve a more able and courageous champion.
— Tony Comstock · Aug 18, 12:40 PM · #
Tony’s idea – that Steve have some of his detractors (Saletan? Gladwell?) over for barbeque – is good, but I doubt they would come.
— J Mann · Aug 18, 01:33 PM · #
Steve, the massive negative reaction to your project? Maybe there’s something to be learned from that other than “political discourse today consists of public shaming of people who dare to bring up topics and perspectives that aren’t respectable, such as immigration and race.”
If people could detect any true compassion or empathy from you regarding black people or mexican imigrants as you make your various statements, maybe the reaction wouldn’t be so negative.
Same with your obsessiveness. If you didn’t jump in every single time education (or whatever) was mentioned to point out that it’s a waste of money to close the achievment gap, (or give poor mexican’s loans, or….) People see that obsessiveness and ask themselves, “why would someone make it crusade to point out the shortcomings of races other than his own? And continue that crusade to the detriment of his own career? It suggst animus, Steve.
And then there is your promotion—with window dressing caviats—of the gentic differences in IQ between races, something of which cannot be said with any certainty, but that was all you wanted to talk about for years there: how black people were dumb. That was the topic that you most wanted to share with the general public: black people are genetically inferior to white people, the holy grail of racists and the main rationalization of slave owners. And something unproven. What kind of person is going to obsessivly yammer on about something as damaging as that WITHOUT SOLID EVIDENCE? Someone whose brain is not functioning at the highest levels.
And then for me, there was the stuff you wrote about black people and Katrina:
“… What you won’t hear, except from me, is that “Let the good times roll” is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.”
http://vdare.com/sailer/050903_new_orleans.htm
Not many people have read that. And did you publish a retraction when it turned out that all those stroies of rape and murder were untrue?
You chose this path. You have been doing it for years now and people reactions haven’t changed and yet you continue on. Obvisouly it meets some need for you. So quit the whining.
— cw · Aug 18, 02:15 PM · #
CW just brought the wood. Also:
Heh. They could dream big back then, nicht va?
— KVS · Aug 18, 03:40 PM · #
Noah has expressed doubts about two trends:
- Sorting into homogeneous groups on the Internet where heterodox viewpoints are never heard.
- Boundary setting so that views must remain within certain agreed-upon bounds.
CW’s post is a good example of both trends in action, showing how intellectual discourse is increasingly devolving into what Lenin lauded as “Who? Whom?” thinking.
In contrast, my view is that what we’ve learned since the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century is that truth is, on the whole, better for people than ignorance, lies, or wishful thinking. That was never a terribly popular view and it is becoming less popular as debate devolves into ad hominem charges that the bearers of unwelcome news must be, by definition, bad people.
CW complains that I often bring up race when discussing education. Yet, race is central to education issues today. For example, consider this August 15, 2010 article in the New York Times, which begins:
“Triumph Fades on Racial Gap in City Schools” By SHARON OTTERMAN and ROBERT GEBELOFF “Two years ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, testified before Congress about the city’s impressive progress in closing the gulf in performance between minority and white children. The gains were historic, all but unheard of in recent decades. ““Over the past six years, we’ve done everything possible to narrow the achievement gap — and we have,” Mr. Bloomberg testified. “In some cases, we’ve reduced it by half.” ““We are closing the shameful achievement gap faster than ever,” the mayor said again in 2009, as city reading scores — now acknowledged as the height of a test score bubble — showed nearly 70 percent of children had met state standards. “When results from the 2010 tests, which state officials said presented a more accurate portrayal of students’ abilities, were released last month, they came as a blow to the legacy of the mayor and the chancellor, as passing rates dropped by more than 25 percentage points on most tests. But the most painful part might well have been the evaporation of one of their signature accomplishments: the closing of the racial achievement gap. …” “Reducing racial gaps in educational performance has been a national preoccupation for decades. …” “The achievement gap was also the main thrust of the No Child Left Behind law, which mandated annual testing for all students in grades three through eight and required school systems to track the performance of each racial and ethnic group, with the goal of bringing all children to proficiency by 2014.” “New York City’s progress in closing its achievement gap on those tests drew national attention as a possible model for other urban school districts. It won praise from President George W. Bush as evidence that No Child Left Behind was working. In 2007, the city won a prestigious urban education prize from the Broad Foundation, which cited the city’s progress in narrowing the racial achievement gap.” “But the latest state math and English tests show that the proficiency gap between minority and white students has returned to about the same level as when the mayor arrived.”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/nyregion/16gap.html
Now, I’ve been following education statistics for 38 years, so in CW’s view, that makes me “obsessive.” Or you could say that I tend to be well-informed and, not surprisingly, tend to be right about things like this.
But being right about crucial issues of public policy just makes me a bad person. In contrast, Mayor Bloomberg is a good person because he’s on the side of the angels on education. Of course, in reality, he used lies, ignorance, and wishful thinking about education and race to win himself a third term, with the connivance of most of the prestige press. But when measured in Who? Whom? terms, he is good and I am bad. And that’s all you need to know.
My education policy recommendations — e.g., rather than try to raise black and Hispanic achievement by a standard deviation while not allowing white and Asian achievement to rise, I suggest trying to raise all four groups’ achievement levels by half a standard deviation — tend to be both more feasible and more fair than the proposals of Good People like Mayor Bloomberg, President Bush, and Senator Kennedy. But who cares about helping children when the important thing is to publicly demonstrate your Goodness?
— Steve Sailer · Aug 18, 09:47 PM · #
“In contrast, my view is that what we’ve learned since the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century is that truth is, on the whole, better for people than ignorance, lies, or wishful thinking.”
So you are speaking the truth and everyone that disagrees with you is either ignorant, lying, or engaging in wishful thinking.
— cw · Aug 19, 01:24 AM · #
The thing is, the state of knowledge about the intersections of race, culture, society, economics, and educational performance are such that it is impossible for a responsible, intellectually honest person to claim to know “the truth.” And so you have to wonder about the emotional and motivational basis of someone who is so sure of knowing it, particuarly when the “truth” always seems to lie in this one particular direction: the inherent difficiencies of race other than his own.
— cw · Aug 19, 02:31 AM · #