The Tea Party and Aristotle's Rhetoric, Part 2: The Three Means of Persuasion

This series is both an exploration of the Tea Party and of Aristotle's rhetoric, so feel free to comment on either. Please don't feel that you need to discuss the topic through Aristotle.

In Part 1, I explained why I thought the Tea Party had been weakened by a failure to understand and use rhetoric skillfully. As a way of exploring this, and how to correct it, I used Christof Rapp's SEP article, Aristotle's Rhetoric. The main points from that post and the resulting discussion are that Aristotle believed the best use of rhetoric was to persuade people with the truth, that a form of syllogistic reasoning called the enthymeme was an excellent way to do that, and that the Tea Party needs to find common ground with the public and other movements from which to begin pursuing their goals. In Part 2, I will begin exploring the technical aspects of rhetoric and how the Tea Party could improve.

Aristotle's Rhetoric claims that there are three technical means of persuasion. That is, these means depend on a method, and the method depends on knowing what is and isn't persuasive. In addition, 'technical' implies that these are things provided by the speaker, not pre-existing conditions.

These technical means are "(a) in the character of the speaker, or (b) the emotional state of the hearer, or c) in the argument (logos) itself." The speaker wants to seem credible by displaying practical intelligence, a virtuous character, and good will, all in his speech. Emotions can change our judgments, so the speaker must arouse the hearers' emotions, and to do that he must have a good understanding of human emotion. Finally, the speaker should demonstrate to the audience what the situation is, persuading by argument.

Of the three, Aristotle emphasizes the argument, and he gives two methods for it. Induction works from particulars to a universal, using examples. Deduction works from things already believed to something different being necessarily true because of those presuppositions. In rhetoric, deduction uses the enthymeme, a form of syllogism, but one in which, because we lack complete knowledge, is of necessity somewhat less formal than the logical syllogism. Typically, they take the form of 'if - then' or causal 'since' or 'for' clauses.

E.g., 'If X is the case, we should do Y,' or 'since X is the case, ...' or 'X is the case, for Y results in X and we know Y is true.'

From this discussion, it seems to me that the Tea Party could do better in all three technical areas. One problem with coming to grips with the problem, however, is that everything the Tea Party says or does is distorted by the lefty media (i.e., most mainstream media). For example, the media and the Tea Party's political opponents (but I repeat myself) have done a good job of character assassination, so has the Tea Party failed to do what it could to establish its good character, or has its massive opposition simply outshouted it? It's hard to say, but I certainly think the Tea Party could do a better job with all three techniques.

Probably the Tea Party's single biggest rhetorical failure is in understanding the emotional state of the audience. Actually, I believe the Tea Party has seriously erred in understanding who the audience is. The proper audience is that great middle of the electorate who are not already politically opposed and who could be persuaded. Too often, Tea Partiers publicly speak as if they are talking to other Tea Partiers or to their acknowledged political opponents. This is why, I think, their rhetoric is too often extreme: they are stoking the fires of the base, or they are attacking their enemies. There's a time and place for both of those, but mostly the Tea Party needs to understand those who are unaligned and persuadable and adjust their rhetoric to persuade them. Those are the emotions it is important to understand and work with.

The Tea Party and Aristotle's Rhetoric

Ace accuses the Tea Party of being hostile to considering popular opinion in their positions. For this reason, he considers them "a movement not of politics but of political philosophy." His criticism is not for their beliefs, but rather that their insistence on ignoring popular opinion naturally limits their power, and he wants them to be politically powerful, to maybe even replace the Republican Party.

I have seen first-hand what Ace is talking about. I was one of the organizers for a local Tea Party group, but after the rest of the leadership insisted on ideological purity rather than getting results, I left the movement. To be fair, they thought ideological purity would get the results they wanted. However, while I am sympathetic to the idea that one man and the truth are a majority, elections don't work that way. I could (and still can) see some ways in which Tea Party concerns are shared by the base of the left, and if we could frame things the right way, and cut some deals, we could achieve some important objectives.

Compromise, especially with the left, was not interesting to the rest of the leadership. They wanted all or nothing, believing they could get it all if only they were pure enough. They saw the left as very real enemies who could not be dealt with. Although it was never said, I got the impression that compromising with leftist groups, even if it got results we wanted, would sully the movement and should be disdained. We had to win by outright defeating them; that was the only acceptable answer. Completely outnumbered and believing that to be a destructive, unreasonable attitude, I decided to leave.

In two ways I see this as a failure of rhetoric. First, I was not able to convince them of my position. I knew what I believed, and I still believe the organization I was in would have gotten better results from my methods, but I wasn't able to reach the rest of the leadership. Second, the Tea Party itself has done a very poor job of persuading America of its positions, and its poor use of rhetoric has made it easy for the statist media to label it extremist, and even conservatives who should be sympathetic to attack it.

Since then, I have begun to appreciate the value of rhetoric, as Aristotle conceived of it. Aristotle sees the skilled rhetorician as someone who, in any given situation, knows what would be persuasive. Like the exercise of military power, the exercise of political power depends on momentum. The important thing is to get a mass of people, all at roughly the same time, who support your goals enough to give you power (money, work, votes, etc.), not the purity of that mass's beliefs. In order to build momentum, you need to persuade disparate groups of people that they would rather support your movement over any other that they might have sympathies with. Skill in rhetoric is essential for that.

Aristotle believed that the best use of rhetoric was to persuade people with the truth. A number of other ancient Greeks had written about rhetoric, but Aristotle linked it to logic and dialectic by proposing the enthymeme, a form of syllogistic reasoning, as the basis of rhetoric. A popular audience could not be expected to follow a long train of logical or dialectical reasoning, so the enthymeme was a simpler, looser form of logic. For that reason, some look down on the enthymeme -- it accepts conclusions that a stricter logic would not. But the questions of society are often not amenable to strict logic: there are too many unknowns, or there simply are no accepted truths about a topic from which to form a first premise. It is in these gray areas where the strictest logic cannot get very far that rhetoric can be quite useful.

The main objection to adjusting the Tea Party's rhetoric as well as to compromising with leftist groups is lack of trust. The reason the Tea Party became a necessity in the first place is a long series of betrayals by allegedly conservative politicians. This is a valid point, but I believe the answer is in honesty, not a demand for ideological purity. A rhetorically sophisticated Tea Party could have been, and could still be, much more influential than it is without compromising its ideals. I think the key to that is to be completely honest with everyone all the time about what the movement and its leadership are doing.

Instead of having a hidden agenda, like the left, the Tea Party should declare its goals openly, and then work toward achieving them in stages. Sometimes that might mean allying with political opponents in order to achieve a small step forward. The way to do that and not be a sell-out or look like one is to be honest about what is going on, put it all up on the net, and be willing to walk away from alliances that do not advance the goals. When the rank and file ask, 'why are we working with those dirtbags in the Occupy movement?', the leadership can honestly reply with the specific, previously stated goal they are working together to achieve, why the temporary alliance is valuable, and of course by pointing out that the alliance is temporary: as soon as we achieve X, we'll go back to fighting them. There are times in war when two mortal enemies agree to a cease-fire, a prisoner exchange, or another form of cooperation that benefits both sides. If the Tea Party insists that such a thing is treason, then it has chosen to be of very limited effect, and very possibly part of the problem.

Being part of the solution doesn't mean picking your hill to die on, not for an American. Our way is to let the other side die for their beliefs, whether literally or figuratively. Our way is to win, and winning requires effectiveness. In politics, that means getting good at rhetoric and compromise. Right now the Tea Party is telling the truth in angry, ugly ways that isolate it and strip it of effectiveness. It is essential for them to learn to tell the truth persuasively in a way that invites outsiders join in, a way that builds momentum, a way that actually has a chance of saving this republic.