Back in the day, Americans loved to debate. Television was filled with debate shows- PBS’ “Firing Line” and “The McLaughlin Group”, the Sunday talk shows, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report/News Hour, and even the silly “Point-Counterpoint” segments on 60 Minutes, which were mocked by Saturday Night Live and in the movie Airplane!.
I became interested in politics because of debate. I loved those shows. I became a debater myself in college, and loving to argue had a big influence on my career choice to be a lawyer. (All my test scores said that I should have been a scientist or mathematician.)
Well, we don’t debate anymore. The classic cable debate show, CNN’s “Crossfire”, has been basically off the air for 16 years (a short revival did not last long). Sean Hannity no longer debates the late Alan Colmes on Fox News.
But more importantly, in online discourse, where the action seems to be now, we all seem to reside in our own epistemological bubbles. Debate is seen as extremely bad. The online world cheered John Stewart’s famous appearance on Crossfire where he blamed the program for America’s social ills, and many folks, especially on the left, tend to repeat the formulation that one’s human rights are never up for debate. (On this last point, I often wonder what folks like Frederick Douglass and Thurgood Marshall, who eagerly participated in debates about Black people’s humanity and persuaded millions of people to support civil rights, would think of the epistemological position that one should never have to debate a civil rights issue.)
This is, I think, bad for society. Debate, over time, persuades people. Indeed, it is a great irony that the left now distrusts debate so much, because so many liberal advances have resulted from that side winning public debates. A classic example of this is gay marriage. This was anathema to the American public in the 1990’s, and Republicans ran on the issue as late as 2004. Now we have gay marriage in all 50 states and few Republicans even complain about it. What happened? Quite simply, the public debate forced out the fact that the anti-gay marriage position was silly. Opponents of gay marriage knew better than to make blatantly homophobic claims, so instead they argued things like that marriage was a pillar of civilization and that any “threat” to marriage could cause the collapse of society. Well, then a bunch of states and countries legalized gay marriage, and society didn’t collapse. Game over.
This is how debate works in a democratic (or even semi-democratic) society. Debate forces people to actually tell the public what they think, and establishes a track record which can then be compared against reality.
And the weird thing about our modern debate-less age is that while you may not believe this, people actually don’t talk very much about what they actually think. Here’s an example- the pro-lifer Ross Douthat has numerous times said that he is given very few opportunities to debate abortion in public, even though his position as a New York Times columnist makes him a natural person to participate in such debates.
But the reality is that not having these debates furthers the pro-life cause, not the pro-choice one. Why? Because it happens that many pro-lifers have a lot of crazy beliefs. For instance, in her classic Abortion And the Politics of Motherhood, published in the 1980’s, Kristin Luker documented how many pro-lifers held ridiculously restrictive views about sex and also held grave doubts about the equality of women and whether they should be in the workplace. Society does pro-lifers a great favor by not debating abortion- we never get to hear pro-lifers asked about stuff like whether they think that government policy should discourage women from having recreational sex. It may be fun to say stuff like “women’s bodies are not up for debate”, but meanwhile large segments of the public have no idea that the pro-life movement has much broader goals than simply preventing abortions that many people might have moral qualms about.
But I would add that even beyond the narrow “it’s good for liberals” point, debate is good for society. For instance, right now conservatives are passing legislation preventing Critical Race Theory to be taught in schools. These laws are terrible impositions on academic freedom. But one of the liberal complaints about them is that the conservatives don’t understand Critical Race Theory. Again, one of the ironies here is a lot of CRT types dislike debate and portray it as denying the humanity of oppressed people. But debate would help a lot here, because both advocates and opponents would have to explain their terms. Right now, the public is making decisions about these policies in the dark.
And one last thing- we need to start talking to each other again. In this era of extreme polarization, politicians and activists gain favor from their supporters by demonizing the other side and portraying them as fascists and totalitarians and evil people. You can’t do that in a debate. You have a human being that you are talking to, and you have to treat them as a human being. You have to listen to what they actually think rather than putting words in their mouth. It’s a good human exercise to speak to people with different worldviews than you have. Long before “diversity” became a codeword for a sort of crude headcount, it was about standpoint epistemology- the notion that we all bring different experiences to the table. Debate exposes us to the benefits of that diversity.
So let’s put “Crossfire” back on the air and start arguing with each other again.