Real debate is no longer possible when platitudes become indistinguishable from policies.

The problem with making a gross generalization is that it takes only one exception to invalidate it.  So, let me be more precise in offering the major contention of this essay.  It isn't that genuine debate in this country had become utterly hopeless 100% of the time.  It's only utterly hopeless 99.99999% of the time.

Why have I drawn this conclusion?  After more than three years of writing essays and participating in debates at the Intellectual Conservative — not to mention participating in other discussions and forums leading up to the 2008 presidential election — I can count on one hand the number of legitimate debates I've had with, shall we say, people of opposing political views. 

At the IC, two individuals come to mind who exemplify the best in debate, Raymond Ingles and yonkel.  I've disagreed vehemently at times with both of these men (particularly Mr. Ingles), but unlike other Liberals/progressives/moderates/non-conservatives who react to things I and others have written, they bring more than their emotions and feelings to the table.  As a consequence, every time they enter the discussion the issue gets thoroughly explored and advanced.  They may not convince me of their position, but at least they laid it out in an adult manner for others looking in on the discussion to judge for themselves.  And that, after all, as Dennis Prager is fond is saying, is a key purpose of debate: to achieve clarity rather than agreement.

And what about the others?  Exempting the utter fools and drive-by flamethrowers who only enter debates to see how inane they can be in supporting their candidate or position, there is only a small number of additional people who appear genuinely sincere — but completely confused — when expressing their opinions.

Again, this isn't about agreeing with what I say.  If a guy who wrote a Catholic novel can compliment an atheist for his intellectual honesty, then we're way beyond that point.  Rather, these are people who feel strongly about an issue, but otherwise have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.  All of this came together in the perfect self-assessment from one of these folks whose name is unimportant, but whose sentiment typifies the new Obama-nation that's been years in the making.  Thinking is hard.  Studying is even harder.  And putting the two together before offering an assessment is too challenging to consider.  Therefore, simply express a feeling and call it an analysis.

Think I'm being too hard?  Here's the exact quote.  "Now, I could open another internet page and google whatever information I need to answer any questions you pose that I might not be able to answer myself, and do it with great skill and in very fine detail. That's one of the joys of modern technology and a forum such as this. Then it would be fact countering fact, rather than platitudes, sloganeering and irrational emotion vs. sound, unbiased, logical analysis and reasoning. (You see, I agree with you.) But the point is there's an incredible amount of information out there. The more you read, the more confused you get. And then you find yourself right back where you started."

My translation of the above statement: "I could actually try to educate myself on the matter, dig through conflicting facts, check the sources and underlying assumptions that give rise to them, try to separate the real issues and facts from the BS, but this is hard work. So, I'll just find the best sounding platitude and stick with that."

This is what has come to pass for informed debate by too many people on the Left.  So, as a public service to those folks who actually want to know something before they offer a judgment, let me review a few things that we on the Right already know and embrace, and attempt to practice whenever we state a position.

A good debate consists of at least three main elements.  First, the individual making a statement relies on something other than his/her own personal opinion to form a point, or moves beyond nice-sounding platitudes and slogans when offering a conclusion.  Second, the debate isn't a series of competing facts and figures thrown back and forth, but rather facts and figures placed in some kind of relevant context.  A 5% unemployment rate, for example, may be an accurate figure, but it matters greatly whether the previous year's employment rate was 1% or 20% before drawing any conclusions from this fact.  Finally, even when we've moved beyond platitudes and out of context facts and figures, it's still important to consider a third element to informed debate.  Namely, what exactly are the sources and assumptions behind this information?

Of the three, this component involves the most work.  To pick a superficial example, I'm not going to rely on a Neo-Nazi website to educate me about the extent, or relevance of, crime statistics by minority offenders.  In the same vein, I won't take at face value statistics about smoking-related illnesses from a tobacco company website.  But similarly, I'll also treat with similar suspicion any statistics I get on global warming from the Natural Resource Defense Council, or any facts on animal cruelty from PETA.

While our friends on the Left seem to intuitively understand my hesitation about looking at Neo-Nazi and Tobacco Company sources, from what I've discerned these past few years by looking at the comment section to the Intellectual Conservative postings, the vast majority of them are shaking their head in bemused wonder at my mention of the NRDC and PETA as representative examples of the agenda-driven Left.  I spent a lot of time discussing the agenda politics of the NRDC in the latter half of http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/07/31/an-even-more-inconvenient-truth-the-myth-of-man-made-global-warming/, so I won't repeat it all here.  And, for those interested in how PETA and other Left-leaning organizations compile their data and offer their judgments, there's always my Looney Liberal Chronicles.

But the real point here is that every side in a political debate begins its assessment with underlying assumptions, and these need to be clearly laid on the table to allow the resulting data to be analyzed and interpreted.  The Right does a pretty good job of this, as evidenced in the IC comment sections.  Rather than bombard an opposing view with an unending series of out of context facts, more often than not you'll see these facts discussed as part of Constitutional prerogatives and limitations, market-related forces in a capitalist economic system, personal responsibility, personal freedom, and a myriad of other issues and forces that give the data meaning. 

Illegal immigration, as one example, is discussed from the standpoint of federalism, border security, its economic implications, its implications on free and fair elections, its impact on healthcare and education costs, and so forth.  It's even been discussed by some on the Right as a matter of racial preference; and when it has, I and others have attacked these underlying assumptions as a legitimate means of challenging some of the conclusions their advocates have drawn. 

Contrast this with the standard approach of the Left, which discusses illegal immigration from the standpoint of "fairness."  I can tell you what's in the Constitution.  I can tell you where interpretations of the Constitution differ based on strict construction or court activism.  I can tell you how an uncontrolled border threatens the physical security of the country.  And I can even show statistically the impact illegal aliens have on increased education and health care costs. 

But I can't tell you what "fairness" is, because "fairness" is an emotion, not a policy.  It means different things to different people at a very fundamental level.  Arguing from a position of fairness is simply offering a personal opinion.  As I've commented on this subject before, instead of relying on some consistent, definable (dare I say "legal") criteria, some people evaluate everything on their (or their group's) own subjective notion of "fairness."  They apply one set of fairness criteria to judging elections, another set of criteria to international relations, another to domestic situations, and yet another to a different situation.  Thus, any decision they arrive at is "fair," because it only has to be consistent insofar as that particular situation, since in the final analysis it's merely a subjective evaluation on their part anyway.  "Fairness" is simply the process that supports the outcome they desire.

Why has it come to this?  Why has the notion of intuitive reasoning supplanted the need to actually know something about a subject?  It's a phenomena that's been decades in the making, and to quote the good Reverend Wright, its chickens have finally come home to roost.  In fact, I wrote about this in my first essay at IC, and it bears repeating.

People who think with their emotions aren't bad people, or even consciously ideological.  I tend to refer to them as idiots not to insult them personally, but rather to describe the utter lack of introspection and content to their thought process. 

But to be perfectly clear, it isn't so much that they are incapable of real thought, as they have been conditioned not to think.  They don't question the underlying assumptions that left-wing activists use to draw their conclusions, and they accept at face value the often draconian solutions these activists maintain are the minimum requirement for sound environmental policy.

Why is this?  To use the example of man-made global warming, why would otherwise rational, intelligent people accept the notion that a car's exhaust is heating the Earth to a dangerous level, but never once ask how this conclusion was derived, whether there are other factors that better account for this phenomenon, or whether the Earth is really warming at a rapid rate – or getting hotter at all?

The answer, I believe, can be traced to our shared value system, which provides a common frame of reference to address these and other issues. It is the shorthand, connect-the-dot reasoning we all engage in to navigate through daily life.  Critical thought is only needed when the matter at hand is something unique, and we've been talking about – and worrying about – global climate change for at least 40 years. 

These values and reference points are not bestowed upon us at birth, like Moses receiving the Holy Tablets.  Rather, they are taught to, absorbed by, and reinforced within each individual through a life-long process that begins with our earliest years and extends throughout the remainder of our life.  For example, we're all taught from an early age that the environment is fragile.  As children we write school papers on this subject and participate in community projects to "save the environment."  When we get older, we get our news from journalism school graduates who show us pictures of melting ice caps or drought-stricken farmland and talk about the importance of driving hybrid cars, practicing resource conservation, and signing the Kyoto Treaty. 

As adults we happily segment our garbage to cut-down on environmental pollution, and set our thermometers at uncomfortably high or low levels to "save energy" – thereby reducing the nasty, dirty fossil fuel emissions needed to produce our electricity.  The world, and our role in it, is put clearly in focus, as are the notions of "good" or "bad" behavior regarding our treatment of the environment. 

This common frame of reference allows us, as a group, to make certain judgments that are universally accepted. Windmills are good.  Solar energy is better.  Conservation is best.  The internal combustion engine, to quote Al Gore, is an example of man seeking to "artificially enhance our capacity to acquire what we need from the earth . . . at the direct expense of the earth's ability to provide naturally what we are seeking."  By manufacturing "millions of internal combustion engines [that] automate the conversion of oxygen to CO2, we interfere with the earth's ability to cleanse itself of the impurities that are normally removed from the atmosphere." [Earth in the Balance, by Al Gore, p. 207]

No one laughs at the main theme of this passage which presumes to know intrinsically what man "needs" from the Earth, and what is an "artificial enhance[ment of his] capability" to acquire natural resources "at the direct expense of the earth's ability to provide naturally what we are seeking."  No further justification is required to support these value-laden judgments, because they're not seen as expressing anything controversial.  They're just obvious statements about obvious matters that are plainly obvious to any thoughtful, thinking individual.  

From this basis it's a logical conclusion that cars are "interfering" with the natural state of affairs of Mother Earth, which leads to an equally obvious policy objective to deal with this cancer.  As for the finite supply of fossil fuels that are mined, drilled, and otherwise gouged from the Earth to feed these poison-producing internal combustion engines, they serve only one purpose: to make Dick Cheney richer, and help George Bush justify an illegal, immoral war against Saddam Hussein whom we're all glad is out of power, even though Bush lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction and ought to be impeached.

Because our schools, celebrities, TV anchorpersons and other opinion leaders accept these observations as fact, who are we to disagree?  Since 1975 (my earliest memory on this subject) I've been told repeatedly that the world is running out of oil.  There's only so much dead-dinosaur juice in the ground, and it will all be gone in 20 years or less.  Thirty years later, the same 20-year prediction is still being made.  If we don't switch to hybrid cars, solar-powered electricity, or wind-driven generators, we'll use up all the world's oil by 2030, or 2040, or 2050, or [pick a date] sometime in the near future. And when all the oil is gone, and coal is too dirty to burn, and nuclear power is too unsafe to produce, where will we be?  Ergo, we need to start changing our lifestyles NOW!  

At no point in this conventional wisdom analysis does anyone stop and say, "but wouldn't there be plenty of oil if we're willing to pay $100 a barrel to recover it?" 

The Earth isn't running out of oil.  It's running out of easily-acquired $20 a barrel oil.  There's plenty of oil off the shores of California and Florida, in Alaska, Mexico, the Middle East, the North Sea, Russia, and a whole bunch of other places in the world, including oil locked in shale.  It's harder to get, and therefore more expensive to acquire.  But it's there.

This doesn't argue against practicing conservation or pursuing alternative means of energy production.  A solar power car would be great – if there's a strong enough market demand to justify the billions of dollars of research and development needed to expedite its arrival.  Windmills are a fantastic source of cheap, clean energy, unless they happen to spoil Ted Kennedy's oceanfront view, at which point good old fashioned gas guzzling cars will do just fine. 

If Al Gore's prescription for responsible environmental management makes sense, he should be able to propose it without the intellectual legerdemain of over-hyped, value-laden judgments disguised as impartial analysis.  It's one thing to illustrate a point with a dramatic example.  It's quite another to have the example itself stand as a substitute for any further thinking about the matter.  If the issue is real, the evidence will support it.

But to get the evidence, one first has to collect all the relevant data.  When dealing with an issue as monumental as global climate change, 10, 20, 50, even a 100-year "trend" is nothing more than the blink of an eye in geological terms.  If global warming actually exists, and further, if man is the principal cause of its existence, there should be clear, convincing evidence of this before we begin substantially rearranging important chunks of our current way of life.  Why spend thousands of dollars to place your house on stilts so it won't be flooded if you're living in the middle of a desert?  Such an expenditure may be perfectly reasonable for those homes along Gulf Coast beaches.  But before I dip into my life savings to retrofit my house, I'd like to see a little evidence that central Utah is about to get inundated with water. 

When confronted with this question, the typical answer we get from the Protectors of the Planet is that we can't afford to wait until all the data is in.  By then it will be too late, so we must act now!  That's why it was so important in the 1970s to take strong measures against a fast-approaching ice age – that is, until global warming became the problem.  So, now we're told that we need to work just as quickly in 2006 to stop the warming of the earth, except recent studies have indicated that we may be in for a mini-ice age after all.

Apply this same reasoning to any subject — illegal immigration, universal health care, name the subject — and genuine debate becomes possible.  Ignore the assumptions and sources of the data used to promote those assumptions, and all that's at stake are opinions.

And as I've said more than once, opinions are like the exit point of the human digestive system.  Everybody has one.