Reasonable Discourse

Reasonable Discourse:

Snowflakes in Hell has some thoughts about the success of reasoned discouse in the gun rights movement. (h/t Gwa45).

You’ll notice that, for the most part, our side is appearing with facts, and reasonable arguments, and their side is slinging personal insults, stereotypes, and various other manners of prejudices.

I think the reason for the vitriol is that we have unwittingly hit on a nerve. The LA Times article presented gun owners in a human light. For those who have their identities wrapped up in who they are not, which is ignorant, paranoid, rednecks compensating for some kind of inadequacy and reacting to an irrational fear of crime stoked by the right wing establishment, it’s horribly destabilizing to a smug sense of self to read that those types of people might actually have things in common with you.

The huge unspoken truth about political positions is that they are social. You are likely to have positions that are acceptable to your friends. More, you are likely to take seriously positions you don't advocate yourself if any of your friends do. Having even one friend who desires gay marriage makes it more likely that you will consider this a reasonable position on which people can disagree; after all, you want to make space for your friends. The gay marriage agenda has proceeded from victory to victory on this score, and will eventually succeed -- very few Americans who oppose gay marriage really want to demonize gays, despite much concern to the contrary.

The progressive movement has been trying for a while to purge itself of people who don't share a particular range of viewpoints, and this is the reason. To allow anyone into the circle of friends is to accept a whole range of possibilities as at least potential -- however undesirable -- alternatives.

Snowflakes goes on:

Politics isn’t war. Sometimes you can win by humanizing yourself to the other side. Ultimately we will win by breaking down stereotypes and fighting ignorance, just like every other civil rights movement in recorded history. The Black Panthers didn’t end Jim Crow, that was ended by African Americans humanizing themselves to America, and demanding fair treatment.

It is a good thing about the American model that this has so often worked. Here is the corresponding cloud to the silver lining:

The way to persuade someone that a political position is not on the table is to demonize its adherents. If you can drive them out of the social circles entirely, then you have a situation where your preferred solution is not just more likely, but the only one accepted as reasonable.

You can see the effects of this by reading New York Times editorials. They use terms like "out of the mainstream," or "commonsense" not in any relation to what the actual mainstream of America believes, or what sense of things may really be common. Rather, it is to define not an argument, but a social circle.

Once defined, the social circle excludes whole rafts of positions actually quite popular with Americans. One of these is gun rights: concealed carry laws, already far too loose in 1988 for the NYT's standard for "commonsense", have been loosened further in almost every state in the union over the last twenty years.

At some point, it becomes necessary to decide if you prefer political victory or friendship. If friendship is the higher value, you are going to lose some things you care about politically. By allowing advocates of positions you disagree with to be friends, you are letting the nose of the camel into the tent. A good part of the whole camel is likely to follow.

Here we prefer friendship. This is one reason that Grim's Hall -- just as old as many another blog that discusses politics -- has never grown very large. People know instinctively that accepting the rules of reasonable discourse means losing a great deal that they care about. You can believe a man is wrong, and very badly and disasterously wrong, but if he is also your friend, often you'll let him be wrong rather than use the courts or the police to force his compliance with your will.