If anyone’s been watching cable “news” television lately, listening to talk radio, or visiting blogs and news portals on the internet, they’ve probably noticed a lot of shouting at, over and past one another. Partisan politics is arguably at an all time high. The reasons for this are complex, debatable and suited wholly for a different article. I shall not address such issues here. Rather, I’m going to offer a simple, somewhat obvious but apparently ignored method of debating another individual who may harbor a different point of view on a particular matter.
No one likes to be wrong.
At least, we don’t like to be wrong about something when it wasn’t ourselves that discovered such wrong and we especially dislike being proven wrong by another, particularly when that other person receives a smug sense of satisfaction when proving him or herself right at the expense of your supposed intellectual prowess. It sucks. It can garner resentment towards your opponent…who, frankly, shouldn’t even be categorized as such but who will now remain firmly in your eyes with disdain.
Unlike competitive sports, where winning is the end goal, debating in politics, economics, religion, philosophy and other intellectual pursuits should not be focused on victory or the defeat of your rival. Rather, the debate should simply be understood as the method or procedure by which the debating parties can elicit the truth. It’s not a game but it can be fun if you approach it as an illuminating path to discovery.
The First Amendment’s protection of free speech is based upon the idea that the free exchange of ideas, harbored by rational men and unhindered by government, will eventually result in the discovery and acceptance of the truth. It is an optimistic philosophical underpinning that credits men in a free society of being both rational and willing to being proven wrong in the pursuit of truth.
Thus, before we can possibly understand how to argue with an opponent we must first commit ourselves to the possibility that we may be the one that is wrong and be prepared to accept that result if it should occur. The best way to do this is to change one’s perspective on this: one should become comfortable with the notion of realizing their own ignorance or faulty logic and celebrate in the discovery of truth rather than resenting those that presented it to them. For example, when we embraced the truth that the earth orbits the sun or that all life evolved from a common ancestor, we are much more interested and preoccupied with celebrating the discovery than we are in loathing in the sudden realization that we had been ignorant for so long. So why not apply the same reactionary behavior towards political debates?
Now that we’ve accepted our fallibility we can move on to effectively debating an opponent. As I said above, no one likes to be proven wrong. So it’s important that you not focus on humiliating your opponent’s use of logic. Rather than destroying their ideas and pushing the truth upon them, try to make them come to what you believe to be the truth on their own. Empathize. The lack of empathy is the biggest obstacle to any debate. If we cannot see the issue from our opponent’s perspective, it’s near impossible to bring them to understand ours.
For example, if an American liberal is to debate an American conservative on the issue of health care (the debate du jour), would that liberal base their argument on the supposed human right of every citizen or human to have adequate health care? I certainly wouldn’t start with this although it’s worth mentioning at some point. A better idea would be to first analyze the basis of your opponent’s disagreement. In this case, the conservative opposes large government and favors private markets. Why? Well, because markets have generally proven to be more efficient in most matters than government in providing better goods and services to people at lower costs. Does that always prove true? Not necessarily as we’ve seen with private security (i.e. police), private militaries and military logistics, private firefighters, and so on. But, generally, the conservative has a sound, rational base to their stance on health care. So then, what will you be arguing? If possible, you should focus on efficiency and lower costs.
In this case, the liberal should point out how every other industrialized nation has a single, uniform health care system, albeit different from nation to nation, which has proven to reduce administrative costs far below our nation’s mish mash of various systems (veterans/military system, medicare/medicaid, employment/worker based care, and out of pocket). Switzerland has something like 5% administrative costs while the US sits around 25%. The liberal should lament that it takes government to do this but that this has proven time and again to be the most efficient use of resources. Further, the government bureaucracy of these other nation’s systems is, in actuality, smaller than the private bureaucracy of our system. See what I did there? Go on to argue that since Switzerland switched to a government-backed Bismark system from a US out-of-pocket system several years ago that their private insurance companies have become more competitive and have actually increased profits. Point out that their pharmaceutical industry hasn’t suffered. Bring up how individual premiums have dropped dramatically while coverage has increased universally, all with a lower rate of rising costs that our US system. Address…no, celebrate the fact that doctors, hospitals, insurers and health care-related industries all remain private! (All of this is true, of course.) And be sure to cite a nation like Switzerland – a vigorously capitalist nation, financial center, and leading producer of pharmaceuticals; not Sweden or France or another nation with socialist tendencies and a history of dislike among your conservative counterpart. But, of course, be prepared to address those nation’s systems and to delineate the differences between their systems and the one you’re praising. In fact, go ahead and join in on ridiculing the Canadian and British systems to engender some temporary comradery with your conservative counterpart (but don’t say “comrade!”).
This is but one example of how to effectively approach an argument and from just one perspective (the liberal one) and you certainly don’t have to agree with the above assertions. The point is that you want your opponent to reach your conclusion using their own principles wherever possible. In the case above, we used conservative principles to sell a liberal idea. Your goal should never be to humiliate them or prove them wrong for your own sense of self satisfaction and intellectual superiority. After all, whatever it is that you’re arguing at the moment, you too at one time did not harbor that view and had to learn it from someone else.
