rhetoric

How to Lose an Argument

by Ryan Young on November 25, 2011

in Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Thomas Erskine defended Thomas Paine after authorities decided to persecute him for the radical ideas contained in his Rights of Man. Here, Erskine tells a story that explains to Paine’s prosecutors why someone who threatens force during an argument is almost surely wrong:

You must all remember, gentlemen, Lucian’s pleasant story: Jupiter and a countryman were walking together, conversing with great freedom and familiarity upon the subject of heaven and earth. The countryman listened with attention and acquiescence while Jupiter strove only to convince him; but happening to hint a doubt, Jupiter turned hastily around and threatened him with his thunder. ‘Ah, ha!’ says the countryman, ‘now, Jupiter, I know that you are wrong; you are always wrong when you appeal to your thunder.’

Quoted from J.B. Bury, A History of Freedom of Thought, pp. 130-31.

He’s right. An argument can only truly be won on the merits.The world would be a better place if more people realized that.

Smears and Hypocritical Calls for “Civility” Follow Tucson Shooting

by Hans Bader on January 15, 2011

in Culture, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Even though the Tucson shooter was mentally unbalanced, did not listen to talk radio or Fox News, and liked The Communist Manifesto, several liberal lawmakers, and liberal media like the New York Times, immediately insinuated that his actions resulted from an “atmosphere of hate” or “climate of hate” created by conservatives.

Now, after baselessly accusing conservatives of complicity in murder, they are suddenly calling for “civility.” But this demand has little to do with civility as most Americans would define it. By “incivility” they simply mean disagreement with liberal policies. Liberal newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post recently made this point all too clear by selecting the most divisive and hateful left-wing figures possible to deliver hypocritical lectures about the need for “civility.”

On January 11, the New York Times selected former Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), who earlier called for the death of Florida Governor Rick Scott, to give Americans a lecture about the need for “civility” and an end to “violent confrontation” in a negative “political climate” (negative for Kanjorski, because the veteran Congressman lost his race for reelection in 2010).  Last October, Kanjorski said of Scott, “they ought to put him against a wall and shoot him.”

On January 13, the Washington Post featured an editorial about the need for more civility, written by demagogue Al Sharpton. What are Sharpton’s credentials for this coveted slot?  He helped incite a race-riot that killed 7 people.  And he was found guilty of libel for falsely accusing a prosecutor of being a rapist — just one of the wildly false allegations Sharpton made in the course of his involvement in an infamous hate-crime hoax, the Tawana Brawley case. Sharpton has never apologized for these calumnies.

In his editorial for the Post, Sharpton hints that the shootings might have been influenced by an ugly “climate in our public discourse.” He decries the “dangers of inflammatory rhetoric” even as he whines that his own heated past rhetoric (such as referring to a “white interloper”) had allegedly been “distorted” by critics. (Sharpton, who has denounced Jews as “diamond merchants,” helped incite the 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart Riot that killed 7 people at a Jewish-run store in Manhattan.)

This crass exercise in self-promotion earned him kudos from the Post’s Jonathan Capehart, who ludicrously admonishes Sarah Palin to follow the example of Sharpton, who Capehart reveres as if he were a wise elder statesman. Civility, it seems, is trumped by racial solidarity and ideology at the Post.

What “civility” really means at the Post is fleshed out in the columns accompanying Sharpton’s, like the editorial written by E.J. Dionne, who perennially attacks Republicans for alleged incivility, and earlier approvingly cited the President’s “call to civility.” Dionne insinuates that opponents of gun control are collectively guilty of subversion, nativism, and birtherism, writing that “The descriptions of President Obama as a ‘tyrant,’ the intimations that he is ‘alien’ and the suggestions that his presidency is illegitimate are essential to the core rationale for resisting any restrictions on firearms.” (There is little basis for this claim.)  To Dionne, incivility is synonymous with a conservative position on guns – and “even responsible conservatives” must accept some responsibility for curbing such “violent” views.

What enforcing civility means to the New York Times is made equally clear: adhering to liberal views, and holding conservatives collectively liable for the Arizona shootings.  Praising the President’s call for civility, the Times once again blames those “whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents.”  The identification it is referring to was its Monday editorial, in which the Times insinuated that Republicans, Tea Party members, and conservative media had caused the shootings, although not “directly.”

The Times claimed that the shooter was “ very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has . . . infected the political mainstream with violent imagery,“ and that “it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger” that has set the “nation on edge” by “demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is . . . the enemy of the people.”  (Never mind that America’s political climate is mild and bland by historical and international standards.  Or that assassinations were more common back when liberal networks had greater market share.)

That the recent calls for civility are about ideological gain, not avoiding violent rhetoric, is illustrated by recent articles in publications like Slate.  There, Jacob Weisberg once again smears conservatives and libertarians by claiming that the Tea Party and conservative populism “made the Giffords shooting more likely,” by questioning government authority in areas such as Obamacare: “At the core of the far right’s culpability is its” support for “ the dangerous idea that the federal government lacks valid authority” in areas like “health care reform.” “It is this, rather than violent rhetoric per se, that is the most dangerous aspect of right-wing extremism.”

Never mind that the government’s legitimacy is based on, and enhanced by, its willingness to respect constitutional limits, which include limits on federal power – something recognized by the highly-respected judge slain in Tucson, John Roll, whose most famous ruling struck down portions of  a federal law, the Brady Act, as a violation of the Tenth Amendment.

Never mind that critics of the law’s constitutionality include well-respected people like James Blumstein, a professor of constitutional and health care law who was a key adviser to Tennessee’s outgoing moderate Democratic governor.

Weisberg’s smear is echoed more politely in a newspaper op-ed arguing that “the real problem with today’s political discourse” is “not the language of violence,” but “the notion  . . that an incremental change in the way health care is delivered” through Obamacare “is a plot to deprive Americans of their freedom.”  (The op-ed admits the obvious: that the map on Palin’s web site with a gun sight was just a harmless metaphor, not violent rhetoric that would incite anyone to commit a crime.) Never mind that a respected federal judge struck down Obamacare’s individual mandate as unconstitutional, or the fact that Obamacare violates individual freedoms in several ways, such as containing racial preferences that were criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

It’s not surprising that liberal commentators would seek to redefine civility in terms of ideology, rather than violent language or metaphors.  It’s not as if conservatives have a monopoly on violent metaphors.  As the president himself has said:

“They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun”
A GOP victory would mean “hand to hand combat”
“Get in Their Faces!”
“I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!”
“Hit Back Twice As Hard”
“We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“
“It’s time to Fight for it.”
“Punish your enemies”
“I’m itching for a fight.”

And violent imagery is hardly unknown among hardcore liberals.  Plenty of examples can be found at the Climate of Hate Blog.  Here are some additional examples:

“Save mother Earth Kill Bush”
“Prepare for war”
“I hope Glenn Beck kills himself”
“Bush is the disease Death is the cure”
“I’m here to kill Bush”
“Abort Sarah Palin”
“Sniper wanted”
“Bush is the only dope worth shooting”
“Death to extremist Christian Terrorist pig Bush”
“Death to world #1 terrorist pig Bush & his sheep”
“Smite Bush for he is an abomination upon the Earth”
“Lee Harvey, where are you?”

The Political Climate is Too Dull and Conformist Already

by Hans Bader on January 12, 2011 · 1 comment

in Culture, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Zeitgeist

There is a lot of cynical and dishonest blather right now about the need to dial down America’s political rhetoric because of the shootings in Tucson, even though such rhetoric played no role in the shootings. As the Denver Post‘s David Harsanyi notes, this blather is being used as a pretext by liberals (some of whom are quite nasty) seeking to shut down debate and criticism of abuses by big government.

Lost in the furor over the shootings is the fact that America has a fairly bland political culture that discourages harsh criticism of political leaders: bland by both historical and international standards. My French relatives regularly denounce their country’s leaders in far more heated and pungent terms than Americans like Sarah Palin do. Founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were attacked far more vitriolically in the media than recent presidents like Obama and Bush were, as Reason magazine points out here and here. Recent attempts to blame the shootings in Arizona on the political climate are ignorant of both America’s own history and the world beyond America’s borders.

As reporter Robert Barnes noted days ago in the Washington Post, there is “no evidence that the suspect in Saturday’s shootings that left six dead and Giffords and 13 others wounded was influenced by inflammatory political rhetoric, or that any voices that motivated him were outside his own head.” But Congressman Bob Brady (D-Pa.) responded by introducing a bill to “shut” harsh rhetoric aimed at politicians “down.” And the liberal establishment, speaking through the editorial board of the New York Times, recently called on Arizona to “quiet” the harsh “voices” who allegedly promote “division” by criticizing liberal constituencies like illegal immigrants, “welfare recipients,” and “bureaucrats.” The Times insinuated that “opponents of health care reform” had helped create a political climate that led to the shootings.

Chilling sharp criticism of political leaders is a bad idea. It will make it even harder to get entrenched politicians to address problems like America’s skyrocketing budget deficit, which has mushroomed as result of feel-good “bipartisan” policies like the recent deal between Obama and Congressional leaders (which will add $900 billion to the national debt to perpetuate welfare-expansions in the failed stimulus package, and tax-cuts that the country can’t afford), the Iraq War, the failed $150 billion Bush-Pelosi-Reid stimulus rebates, and the costly No-Child-Left-Behind Law backed by Ted Kennedy and George Bush (Bush increased education spending by 58% even as wasteful education spending exploded).

Chilling criticism of Obamacare is also a bad idea, given that even liberal commentators admit that it is a “disaster” that has not lived up to its promises, and given how it has increased state budget deficits, healthcare costs, and red-tape. And it has been criticized by law professors as violating Constitutional limits on Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and Spending Clause.

The intellectual climate is already so stiflingly conformist in liberal circles that it is considered a faux pas or even racist to criticize Obama at some Washington-area dinner parties, no matter how factually based the criticism. The closing of the liberal mind is manifested in books such as I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican. (Vitriolic and violent rhetoric from the left in recent years has made any controversy over Sarah Palin look like a tempest in a teapot: Palin’s use of martial metaphors in campaign rhetoric was completely commonplace and unobjectionable, as Slate’s Jack Shafer and others have noted, and the word “campaign” is itself of martial origin.)

Making politics blander will not do anything to prevent future shootings. People who threaten to kill government officials are seldom influenced by the tone of political rhetoric. I was once a law clerk for a federal judge (a moderate Republican much like John Roll, the widely respected federal judge who was slain in Arizona). My judge had received many death threats over the years (and his family later received death threats after his funeral). Accordingly we, his law clerks, were vigilant to make sure that six people who had threatened the judge not be allowed into his chambers. But none of these death threats were tied to politics, much less to heated political rhetoric or Talk Radio.

Most of the judges in this country who are slain are killed by people unhappy over outcomes in non-publicized cases, such as divorce cases, or child-custody disputes, or run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Political rhetoric plays no role in their death whatsoever. Similarly, would-be assassins like President Reagan’s assailant, John Hinckley, often have bizarre motives completely unrelated to politics.

On the other hand, silencing dissenters will prevent them from harmlessly letting off steam and thus increase the likelihood that a few of them will resort to violence. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who was once venerated by liberals, observed in Whitney v. California, “repression breeds hate,” and “hate menaces stable government”; “the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies.”

Thoughts on the Tucson Shootings

by Hans Bader on January 10, 2011

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Zeitgeist

In the Washington Examiner, I have a commentary entitled “Shootings Obscure America’s Generally Bland and Timid Political Culture.”  In The Wall Street Journal, law professor Glenn Reynolds has an interesting column, “The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel.”  Law professor Eugene Volokh has an interesting commentary about the First Amendment and allegedly inciteful or threatening speech. The Washington Examiner‘s Mark Hemingway writes about ideological double-standards when it comes to press coverage of threats against public officials. Michelle Malkin has a commentary entitled “Idiocracy: Conservatives Who Say ‘Job-Killing’ Are Spreading Hate,” about the silly new liberal meme falsely depicting opposition to regulations as hate speech.

Image credit: SearchNetMedia’s flickr photostream.

Obama Inaugural Speech Spurns Notion of Apologizing

by Christine Hall on January 20, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming

Listening to President Obama’s inaugural address today, I was struck by his rhetoric with respect to “apologizing for our way of life.” It was a bit unclear, but hopefully he was referring, not only to threats to our national security, but to energy consumption — the notion that we (Americans, westerners) should not apologize for the energy we consume, which enables us to live better, more productive, healthy lives.

With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

As my colleagues have noted, many of Obama’s energy and environment appointments have a long track record of supporting anti-energy policies, such as renewable energy mandates, that drive up energy costs for the rest of us. But, for a moment, it would be nice to think that our new president doesn’t want us to apologize for the energy that empowers all of us to live better lives.

America’s Other Auto Industry, the Successful One

by Cord Blomquist on November 20, 2008 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch

CNN has a great story about the successful auto companies in America, namely those that aren’t named “GM,” “Chrysler,” or “Ford.”

Turns out, folks who work at and live near the Honda engine plant in Anna, Ohio don’t think the auto industry should get a bailout.  Local waitress September Quinn is quoted in the story as saying:

I don’t think they should bail them out because … obviously something’s not right in the way they’re running their business, and why should the American people have to bail them out if they can’t figure out how to do it right?

Quinn also had some insights into the problems that big labor unions have caused for the big three automakers.  As the CNN story reports:

“People agree with the unions because the workers want to be backed on everything, but then again, there aren’t people striving to do their job better,” said Quinn, whose father works at the nonunion Honda plant. “They’ve just got Papa Bear to back them up in any instance, and they keep their job. And you can do that, but I don’t know at the cost of what.”

That sort of common sense is a refreshing break from the doomsday rhetoric being spouted by domestic automakers and members of Congress.  Optimism is also present in the final quote of the story offered by John Lenhart, an officer with the Sidney-Shelby County Chamber of Commerce and a consultant with Plastipak Packaging in Jackson Center, Ohio:

The country’s got some ills, but we’ll heal up [ . . . ] We’ll be all right.

Check out the full story at CNN.com.