December 2021 - Patricia Roberts-Miller

Finding the strongest opposition arguments

various headlines accusing someone of being a demagogue

I often say that we should try to find the best opposition arguments, and so, when I’m trying to do that, there are some sites I tend to use. I wanted to post something about my sources, and then found I needed a fairly long explanation as to why I use these when I’m looking for the strongest argument for a policy, practice, or claim I think is wrong. There are two things I’m not doing–I’m not looking for “objective” or “unbiased” sources; I’m not looking for a representative sample from places along a continuum of party affiliation.

As I’ve argued, I think the left-right binary/continuum is nonsense (to the extent that it isn’t demagogically self-fulfilling), as is the notion of a binary of “objectivity” or “bias.” People who use terms like “objective” or “biased” can’t define them in a way that fits with research on cognition, and those terms are usually just what Burke called “ultimate terms.” A source might be very “biased,” in the sense of only including data that supports its argument, and yet all that data might be “objectively” true (that is, accurate representations of good studies and so on). I don’t think there’s any point in trying to find better ways to define objectivity or bias–I think we should just walk away from trying to find objective or unbiased sources, in service of a different goal.

A lot of discussion about sources is in service of the aspiration of The One Source on which we can rely. We have to abandon the comfortable fantasy of a source on which we can rely, a prophet with direct relation to The Truth. We all want clarity; we all want a source, author, ideology, perspective, in-group that guarantees us that what we believe is absolutely true. We all want to be able to believe rather than think. We are all suckers.

The fantasy of an objective source is unfortunately favorable to toxic populism in that both posit that there is some one perspective from which we might look at an issue that is the purely true one. Both rely on the false notion that, when we’re faced with deep disagreement, we should try to identify the group that has the Truth. If we find and join that group, then we will always be right, and we don’t have to think, but believe. Down that road lies demagoguery. If we believe that belief is enough, that there is an in-group that has a direct line to Truth, then we look for that group. And then we believe that only that (our) in-group has a legitimate policy agenda, and everyone else is spit from the bowels of Satan. And we start thinking that authoritarianism is a pretty good idea.
We all want to believe that our beliefs and behaviors are not just right, but the only possible way to think or behave. We pant after certainty the way my dog pants after squirrels. The difference is that he knows he hasn’t caught the squirrel, and we think we have.

If fyc, or any course, is to be a course in civics, then it means a course that teaches students how to recognize and resist that panting hope that, when we use this source, are a member of this group, (or whatever), we no longer have to worry that we might be wrong. We don’t need a course that tells us how to recognize when they are wrong, but when we are.

We shouldn’t worry that we might be wrong. That’s like worrying that water runs downhill. It does. We are. Just as, if we’re building a house, we have to take into account that water runs downhill, and plan for how we will manage rainwater, so we should acknowledge that we are always, if not actively wrong, then at least not seeing a situation from every possible point of view. We should also acknowledge that we, being human, think about the world through the lenses of cognitive biases. That water runs downhill doesn’t mean we have to lie on the ground and refuse to build a house; that we are all operating via cognitive biases doesn’t mean we have to lie on the ground and refuse to deliberate. There are ways that we can reduce the chances we’re wrong, and one of the most available and most straightforward, is to look at the best arguments that say we’re wrong.

If we believe that people disagree because we really disagree, (and not because everyone else is a benighted tool of a malevolent force) then we start looking for why people disagree. And it might be that some of the people who disagree with us are fools, stooges, psychopaths, or grifters–in fact, I think that it’s a given regardless of the issue and regardless of our position that some people on every point on the political spectrum are fools, tools, and so on (including us, from time to time)–but not everyone who disagrees with us is in one of those categories. And not everyone who agrees with us is an angel of enlightened and compassionate discernment. Because there are never just two sides to an issue.

And that’s why we need to find the best arguments that criticize our position, or argue for a policy we think is wrong-headed. Sometimes, we will find that even the best argument for some policy or candidate is incoherent, made in bad faith, profoundly dishonest, or not even good enough to be proven wrong. Not all arguments are equally good.

And this is where policy argumentation is a useful heuristic. If people are making a specific affirmative case for a policy we think is wrong-headed, and we read the best case for it, and it is wrong-headed, that doesn’t mean that our policy is right. Someone’s affirmative case (the plan for which they’re arguing) might be bad, and yet their negative case (what’s wrong with our plan) might be good. It also doesn’t mean that everyone who disagrees with us is wrong.

In my experience, we’ll often find that there are reasons and good enough arguments for positions, practices, ideologies, and groups other than ours. And, in my experience, we’ll often decide that, even though there are good enough arguments for a position, we still disagree. They’re good enough to be taken seriously, but not good enough to persuade us to change our mind.

What matters for the purpose of finding strong opposition arguments is: 1) if the source accurately represents the data (even if it is selective); and 2) if it is the best argument for that perspective.

I don’t think there is a two-dimensional way to represent our policy affiliations, so I talk about a spectrum. But even the metaphor of perspective is damagingly reductive. There are continua, but more than three, and some of those continua have more than one axis. I think it can be useful to talk about left v. right on some of those specific axes (e.g., social safety net), but not on all.

Here are what I think are some of the important axes in politics:
• Government regulation that promotes particular industries ( “pro-business government intervention”) v. free market [note that both of these positions would be considered “right-wing’]
• Government regulation that promotes safe, equitable, and ethical working conditions v. free market
• Government regulation that promotes safe, equitable, and ethical working conditions v. pro-business government intervention
• Interventionist foreign policy (intervention long before imminent existential threat) v. isolationism/pacifism (military action only for imminent existential threat)
• Interventionist foreign policy for purposes of promoting US businesses/economy v. interventionist foreign policy for ethical/moral goals (Wilsonian foreign policy)
• Support for a social safety net
• Epistemic libertarianism/authoritarianism: the extent to which someone believes that other points of view are legitimate points of view that should be heard; or, to put it another way, the extent to which people believe that there is an obviously good policy solution for every problem, and they know what it is
• Populism v. Pluralism: the extent to which one believes that there is one group that is real v. multiple legitimate points of view
• Populist Authoritarianism v. fairness: there is one group that is real, and all policies and practices should privilege that group v. procedural fairness
• Procedural fairness v. equity
• Regulations promoting reactionary v. progressive standards of “moral” behavior
• Naïve realist, reactionary, and demagogic hermeneutics of foundational texts (the US Constitution, Scripture, and so on) v. ….well, all others.

There are probably other important ways of thinking about various American policy preferences–this isn’t an exhaustive list. I just wanted to show that we really don’t have a binary of policy options or affiliations. I’m sure other folks could come up with lots of additional one (e.g., promoting environmental protection through nudges v. punitive regulation).

If we want, as teachers of argumentation, to get students to understand that our political world is not an existential and apocalyptic battle between Us and Them, then one way is to teach them how nuanced our policy commitments are—that they aren’t a binary or continuum. Just to be clear: there are people who want to destroy democracy and create a one-party state of people who have the pure ideological commitment. But those people are all over the political spectrum, and not everyone who disagrees with us is like that.

So, having said all that and given lots of caveats, here’s a list off the top of my head of sources I often use. I’ve given annotations on some, but not all. Again, my point is not to present this list as the definitive list that others should use, but to show what such a list might look like. Most teachers probably need to create their own, depending on their paper topics. For instance, if I had a lot of students writing about immigration, the list would be really different. A lot of sources on this list would be irrelevant, and I’d include some pro-union/anti-immigration sources, as well as some much more pro-immigration sources than anything I have on here. This list is intended to help others think about what lists they might give their students.

American Enterprise Institute. Reliably pro-GOP.
Cato Institute. Libertarian, reactionary.
Christianity Today. Conservative and moderate American Protestant Christian, conservative on social issues.
Council on Foreign Relations. Mixed.
The Economist. “Liberal” in the British sense.
Foreign Affairs. Interventionist, especially for business or military purposes, tends to be anti-Dem (but not always pro-GOP).
Foreign Policy. Interventionist for humanitarian purposes, tends to be pro-Dem (but not anti-GOP).
Guttmacher Institute. Reliable data on reproductive issues, generally pro-birth control, but not in ways that seem to bias the data.
Heritage Foundation. Almost always pro-GOP. Originalist on constitution. [Edited to add: I’m no longer recommending Heritage. They’re engaged in active dishonesty about CRT. If they’ll lie about that, they’ll lie about anything.]
Homeland Security. Government statistics on issues of immigration.
The Nation. Democratic socialist on economic issues, left on cultural/social issues, anti-interventionist on foreign policy, anti-GOP, often anti-DNC.
New York Times. Mixed economy on domestic, Wilsonian Foreign Policy, often anti-GOP and DNC (news articles strong, editorials problematic).
Pew Research Center. Reliable polling on various issues, transparent about methods.
Public Religion Research Institute. Reliable polling on issues of US religion.
Southern Poverty Law Center. Reliable information on hate groups of various political agenda, left on social/cultural issues.
Texas Observer. Specific to Texas, pro-immigration, social justice, equity, pluralist. (Texas Tribune is similar, but strives to be bi-partisan)
Wall Street Journal. Pro-government intervention for business/stock market in terms of both domestic and foreign policies; generally anti-Dem (news articles strong, editorials problematic).
Washington Post. Mixed economy on domestic, generally pro-Dem unless it bleeds, mixed on foreign policy (news articles strong, editorials problematic).

Liberalism and appeasing Hitler

Prime Minister Chamberlain announcing "peace for our time" — From here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetNFqcayeA

I’m going back through a really smart book about why Liberals (in the British sense) supported appeasement of Hitler and Germany, and came across this really good description of Liberalism:

“Liberalism postulated the rational and ‘progressive’ nature of the historical process. Besides success, it upheld pragmatism, tolerance and compromise as the principal political virtues. At the core of the liberal outlook stood the ‘idea of limits.’ It abhorred excess and extremism; it believed that ‘absolutist’ thought of any sort assured at least failure if not perdition. All problems and conflicts were seen as soluble with the application of reason; and reason, Liberals believed, ultimately did prevail. Reason, in fact, suffused all and was identified with reality.” (3)

UK Liberals don’t correlate exactly to the Democratic or Republican Party in the US–they’re closer to centrist Democrats, Libertarians, or libertarian-oriented Republicans. And the point that the Morris book makes is that Liberals supported appeasing Hitler for very different reasons from Tories (the British conservative party). Like the Tories, they largely sympathized with the Germans regarding the punitive Versailles Treaty, disliked the French, and underestimated Hitler, but they did so for different reasons, especially regarding that last point.

They argued that Hitler had outgrown Mein Kampf, and dismissed the racism of Nazi ideology because, as Morris says, they “refused to believe that a ‘civilised’ nation of 70 millions could subscribe to it, let alone base domestic and foreign policies upon it” (7). They argued, over and over, the Nazism was really about economic issues and problems:

“Nazism was seen as the German version of Fascism, a socio-economic ideology of bankrupt capitalism. It served, and was subscribed to by, a coalition of economic ‘losers’–industrial and financial barons intent upon preserving their profits and economic empires, the unemployed and Lumpenproletariat seeking security and work, an the lower middle classes desirous of retaining their assets now imperilled by big business and political instability. Thus perceived, Nazism was an ideology of class war. [….] race doctrine was ignored or regarded as mere camouflage designed to conceal the ‘real’ (economic) motivations of the regime and its backers. ” (10-11)

Goebbels pt. IV: Argument v. argumentation

Basically, I’m saying that fyc teaches argument and not argumentation, and that fyc, as currently taught, often rewards demagoguery, unintentionally. It does so by encouraging students to assume there are two sides on every issue, and that those two sides are identities (“liberals” v. “conservatives,” or “pro-“ or “anti” whatever). If there is any discussion of fallacies (and most textbooks don’t mention), it appeals to modernist notions of fallacies,[1] and it encourages students to note the fallacies in out-group rhetoric. That’s useless. That just inflames demagoguery.

Teaching students how to identify what’s wrong with how some out-group of theirs argues doesn’t help our situation.

What’s wrong with our world is not that we have a war between people who are right and people whose arguments are stupid, villainous, fallacious, self-serving, and irrational. What’s wrong with our world is that far too many of us frame the vexed, nuanced, entangled, and uncertain world of policy choices as a choice between the obviously right option (advocated by people who are good, objective, compassionate, rational [aka, Us]) and all other options (advocated by people who are villainous, and the people who are stooges or tools of that villainous group [aka Them]).

What’s wrong with our world is that far too many people believe that our politics is a war of extermination in which “real” people are justified in abrogating all the norms of democratic discourse and constitutional restraints as pre-emptive self-defense against the group that is trying to destroy us. That is the argument of Trump supporters, and that is what makes their rhetorical and political agenda anti-democratic. Like Stalinists, they argue that they are justified in violating all norms because we are in an apocalyptic war of identity (people who are good v. people who are bad). Trump supporters are far from alone in making that argument–people all over the political spectrum do; some more than others.

People out to destroy democracy rarely see (or describe) themselves as doing that. They see themselves as instituting a real democracy, a democracy of the only group that has a legitimate understanding of political issues. They believe that, by destroying all democratic norms and legal procedures, they are purifying the nation of the people who prevent a real democracy. They destroy the village in order to save it.

The problem isn’t that they’re bad people; the problem is that they’re people who believe that no point of view other than theirs, and no policy agenda other than theirs, is worth considering. Thus, getting out of a culture of demagoguery doesn’t mean abrogating the norms and rules of demcracy in order to exterminate the group that is threatening democracy. That is exactly what people who destroy democracies argue.

Saving democracy means saving the norms and legal practices of democracy. But how do you do that when a large part of the population is drinking deep of the Flavor-Aid that our group is threatened with extermination by Them, and therefore we are justified in anything we do?

That’s where courses in argumentation can do good work.

One way to get out of that culture is to show that we are not in a zero-sum battle between two groups. This isn’t to say that all positions are equally valid; it is to say that there aren’t just two. We have many potentially reasonable disagreements about policy that are not accurately described as a binary. Of course, there are people and groups who will crush anyone who disagrees with them, who will violate all norms in order to get their way, and those people (and groups) should be condemned and constrained. But, that someone disagrees with us is not proof that they a member (or tool) of those authoritarian groups. Not everyone who disagrees with us is a tool or villain. Some are, but not everyone. There are also people who are mistaken, deluded, gullible, ignorant, constrained in our understanding, and we are that people.

Making fyc a class in civics doesn’t mean giving students tools that will enable them to argue that their or our out-group(s) is/are irrational and bad. It should be a course in which the teachers are committed to teaching students how to figure out when their in-group is mistaken, deluded, gullible, ignorant (which means modelling acknowledging when our in-group is mistaken and so on). It would mean showing that our policy options are never a binary. Achieving that goal would mean teaching students argumentation, and not argument.

Teaching argument means teaching students to perform the moves we associate with an argument, and it restricts the teaching of logic to the formal fallacies. From the perspective of civics, this approach is useless since an argument might be formally right and yet still fallacious. “All bunnies are fluffy. This animal is not fluffy; therefore it is not a bunny.” That argument is formally correct—the problem is not the form, but that the major premise is false.

In formal logic, truth doesn’t matter; in informal logic, it does. Goebbels’ arguments followed logically from his premises, and his major premises are untrue. They also are inconsistent with major premises of many of his other arguments, but that’s a different post (and it’s how we get out of the problem of “logical argument” simply being a synonym for “argument I think is true”).

Goebbels would get an ‘A’ in any class that only relied on the formal fallacies. Where Goebbels would fail is in regard to fallacies relevant to informal argumentation: 1) did he engage the best criticisms of his argument? 2) did he hold his interlocutors to the same standards of logic and evidence to which he held himself? 3) did he represent his opposition fairly?[2] 4) is his overall argument internally consistent? (5) could he cite non-in-group sources to support his claims about “facts”?

If we’re going to talk about fallacies, let’s do it well—in ways grounded in current scholarship in cognitive biases and argumentation. There are a lot of ways that a person could teach a class grounded in either set of scholarship, and I’ll get to them later, but, mostly, they involve students identifying their own tendency to reason fallaciously/rely on cognitive biases.

And there is one hard rule on which I’ll insist: that approach means “open” assignments are off the table if we’re claiming to teach argumentation and not argument. It isn’t ethical for a teacher to claim to teach argumentation and let each student write about whatever issue interests that student because the teacher can’t possibly assess the resulting papers in terms of argumentation. You can teach argument that way, and you can also teach lots of other wonderful things, but not argumentation.

And here we’re back to my claim that fyc doesn’t have to teach argumentation. It really doesn’t.

I think a major problem in our field, and one reason we get into unproductive and uninteresting argybargies, is that there is an underlying assumption that all fyc programs should have the same goal—that there is this thing, an eidos fyc, and we are all trying to achieve it. I think we should walk away from the notion that all fyc programs should have the same goals, and consider fyc to be strategic and local. The goals of any fyc program should be determined, not on the basis of what “the field” says should happen, but on the basis of what is most useful for the first year students of that institution. I think that decision should be informed by scholarship in rhetoric and composition, but I also think that scholarship in rhetoric and composition doesn’t support the claim that all programs should have the same goals.

But, back to assuming that the goal is teaching students to engage responsibly in civic discourse. If an instructor is going to claim to teach argumentation (and not just argument), then we have to know whether a student has accurately represented opposition arguments, is engaging the smartest opposition arguments, and is not relying on a binary. There is no way a person can know that about every issue on which any student might write. We can only think we know the best opposition on every issue if we apply modernist notions of fallacies (and react to things like tone), assume that one source always has the best argument (usually in-group), or if we ourselves think in terms of a binary (and so ask that students engage the “liberal” and “conservative” or “pro-“ and “anti-“ on every issue). As I used to say to my son when I advised him not to do something, “Guess how I know this.”[3]

I’m not saying we have to have “closed” assignments, in which students write only about a text or small set of texts picked by the instructor. Down that road lies not only boredom but actually loathing the most important part of our job: responding to students’ papers in a way that models how they should respond to arguments they read.

There are a lot of ways that teachers can constrain paper topics so that there are papers on a variety of topics, and yet a teacher can notice if the opposition has been misrepresented. I’ll explain a representative sample of them later. Here I’ll simply note that many of those teachers (like me) didn’t figure out how to do it while teaching fyc. (Or even for some time after.) I’m not, just to be clear, saying that the field of rhetoric and composition fails to teach argumentation; there are lots of people, and lots of texts, that do great jobs at it. I’m saying fyc doesn’t, but it claims to. And that is the problem.

There are lots of strategies, including not teaching argumentation. But, and this is the important point of this post, if we’re going to say that, as teachers, we can grade something as a good or bad argument without knowing the controversy well enough to know whether a student has accurately represented the smartest opposition, even though we haven’t read the sources about which the student is writing, we are modelling how disagreement works on the internet, when people believe they can assess the quality an argument without actually reading it.

We’re thereby making things worse.

[1] I mean “modernist” in almost the technical sense—late nineteenth and early twentieth century Anglo-American rejections of Anglo-American Enlightenment models of the mind. What I’m calling “modernist” is often called “Enlightenment,” but that’s inaccurate. The Anglo-American Enlightenment didn’t accept the Cartesian mind/body rational/irrational split. For the Anglo-American Enlightenment philosophers, there wasn’t a binary. So, for instance, sentiment assisted deliberation, but passion didn’t. So, they didn’t believe that “emotions” were irrational. It seems to me that it wasn’t until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that Anglo-American philosophy assumed the rational/irrational split (when, by the way, a lot of classical texts were translated into English, so they show that bias).

[2] I’ve come to think this and the second are the most important. When people are engaged in demagoguery, they homogenize all non- in-group members into one, and then pick the most useful—even if completely an outlier—quote or individual to represent all non-in-group members.

[3] He once asked, “Is there anything you didn’t learn the hard way?”