It has been quite some time since "conversation" has been a proper metaphor for American politics.
President Obama and others have not infrequently referred to the commerce that transpires between partisans as a national "conversation." This is telling, for whatever else may be said of these exchanges, they cannot be said to constitute a "conversation."
Conversation is a distinct species of discourse marked by, among other characteristics, a friendliness or hospitality of which this national exchange to which President Obama refers has not a trace. While the hospitality intrinsic to conversation precludes neither seriousness nor argument, it is most certainly incompatible with combativeness, and the utter rancor of which this "national conversation" is ridden is positively anathema to genuine conversation.
Yet it has been quite some time since "conversation" has been a proper metaphor for American politics. At its best, the latter is best understood in terms of an "argument." But regrettably, it has been at least as long since American politics has been at its best.
It isn't, of course, that at any one period our politics belonged entirely to the mode of conversation, while at another period this mode was superseded by that of argument; rather, both the modes of conversation and argument are ideal types, abstractions lent by a certain reading of the American political experience from its inception to the present.
So as to put some flesh on this distinction, we would be well served to consider two founding American documents: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. While the former represents our politics conceived as a conversation, the latter emblematizes its conception as an argument.
The Constitution is a concrete symbol of the politics of conversation. In affirming the existence of multiple sovereign authorities, i.e. the federal and state governments and their respective division of branches, the Constitution inspires this sort of politics. Conversation is constituted, after all, by diverse voices, each as relevant to the conversation as all of the others; unless the partners to it recognize this crucial fact — that is, unless each interlocutor is as vigilant as every other against succumbing to the ever present temptation to transform it from a dialogue to a monologue — there is no conversation. Similarly, in its specification of numerous "checks and balances," the Constitution secures just that wide distribution of power and authority in which our liberty consists, each party to it having no less and no more "a say" in the conversation for which it supplies the framework than any other.
The Constitution prescribes, not actions to be done, but obligations to be fulfilled in doing whatever it is citizens choose to do. The rules of conversation are the conditions of any and all conversation, but they do not specify utterances: they tell us, not what to say, but how to say whatever it is that's said.
Finally, the Constitution looks to nothing beyond itself, no crises to be "solved" or trans-Constitutional Ideals to be pursued. In like fashion, conversation is its own reward, and while any given conversation may have as its objective an as-of-yet unrealized goal, this is not essential to its nature as conversation.
The Declaration of Independence, in contrast, is an emblem of argument. The Declaration asserts "unalienable Rights" that, because they are allegedly possessed by all human beings, transcend the Declaration and, for that matter, every human society. The perfection of these "Rights" is the end for the sake of which politics, whether American or otherwise, exist. Also, being "self-evident," the "Rights" affirmed by the Declaration are the axioms of a "proof," not only of the original argument that Jefferson made on behalf of his American brethren and against the King of England, but of every "argument" that has since been undertaken, both here and abroad, for "the solution" of one "problem" after the other.
The impulse to view politics in terms of an argument has always been powerful among Americans, and at no time more so than today. Contemporary politics is all about surmounting crises of one sort or another. Yet while argument is an endeavor of much value, and while there is obviously nothing inescapably uncivil about it, there is no circumventing the fact that its participants are related to one another as adversaries, and that without much effort, the contentiousness of which it consists can shade imperceptibly into heated confrontation.
There is no denying that the argument is an enterprise promising much satisfaction, but the point is that it is an enterprise that, as such, is oriented toward the realization of an end that lies beyond itself, a "conclusion" or "solution" to a "problem" or an "issue." But if the objective of an argument is to "solve a problem," then the desire to control or plan is the proper disposition on the part of disputants. Arguments are not infrequently referred to as "fights," and arguers as "opponents" who seek to "defeat" one another; in this we discern the link between argument and physical confrontation.
Arguments can be good or bad. The "national conversation" to which President Obama alludes is in reality an argument, but insofar as it consists of arguments ad hominem, non sequiturs, arguments from pity, arguments from force and the like-logical fallacies that the father of Western logic, Aristotle, identified long ago — it is an argument gone to the bad.
The point in all this is that "rhetoric" aside, to the extent that, as a body politic, we have long since traded in the conversation for the argument, we have chosen a less civil and more arrogant politics.
This is very interesting. These words “conversation”, “argument”, as well as “debate” and a few other words are not understood by most people to have the same meaning as they do to philosophers. In a social sense a conversation is something you have with your grandmother and an argument is something you have with your father when you are a teen. Conversations go on and on while arguments end abruptly and sometimes with violence. Conversations end with glad tidings, hugs and kisses, while arguments end with one parties submission and the winners victory. Therefore, conversations are good while arguments are bad.
reply to Dr. Kerwick,
As always, Dr. Kerwick offers a serious short essay on a matter of importance to Americans who are interested in political discourse that transcends, but never completely detaches from, current political disputes. While his distinction between “conversation” and “argument” is a rough-and-ready one, that could be refined in one way or another, it is a useful device. However, I have a few critical comments.
First, Kerwick evidently believes that the “wide distribution of power and authority” provided by the Constitution equalizes the “say” each of the institutions has in our political discourse. The participants are numerous–”the federal and state governments and their respective division of branches.” I am not convinced that such equality was part of the original design of the American regime. I’m even more troubled by Kerwick’s characterization of these institutions as “multiple sovereign authorities.” This country has once paid the price for claims of multiple sovereignty, although it seems that the impulse to believe our political system to be so constituted grows stronger with the expanding political force of conservatism. Conservatives have no more urgent question before them than to figure out what sort of country they want the United States to be. Are we closer to being a loose confederation of contingently allied sovereign states–each state more or less free to work out its own destiny and write its own rules–or a Westphalian nation-state with a constitutionally embedded cleavage between the central government and the states that guarantees conflict but cannot be settled by the total victory of either side?
Second, Kerwick’s claim that “the Constitution looks to nothing beyond itself, no crises to be “solved” or trans-Constitutional Ideals to be pursued” gives the Constitution a fine instrumental Oakeshottian character, but it actually works against conservatism as well as liberalism. The theme of “crises” to be “solved,” of course, is primary for modern liberalism, and conservatives, from their standpoint, quite rightly dismiss it from serious consideration. However, I’m not so certain that conservatives can, or should, give up completely on the notion that there are “trans-Constitutional Ideals to be pursued.” What about the maintenance of a traditional Christian social order? What about the preservation of a traditional way of life? Conservatism, shorn of some version of such ideals, is hard to recognize, because conservatism must be about conserving something, and the formalism of a constitutional framework is thin gruel when more robust meat is wanted. This is why the projects of political conservatism must be concrete-defending traditional marriage, preserving the multiple roles of Christianity in American society, ending the welfare state, and the like. The conservative vision of society is what a conservative constitutionalism should be about, what a conservative constitutionalism should be promoting. I’m sure Kerwick knows Richard Weaver’s classic definition of conservatism: “a paradigm of essences towards which the phenomenology of the world is in continuing approximation.” I have simply tried to give some of those “essences” a name so they may be more visible.
From his final comments, I conclude that Kerwick blames President Obama rather more than his own ideological colleagues for the rancor he appears to condemn. I’m not sure this is a coherent position for Kerwick: having already acknowledged that “arguments” are (and must be) partisan, Kerwick is not in a strong position to deny that the differences between liberalism and conservatism in today’s politics are truly fundamental, since, at bottom, they are about nothing less than the character of nature of our government and our way of life as Americans. Both Left and Right have been preparing for today’s ideological warfare for a very long time now. Long before conservative politicians were striking apocalyptic poses, conservative intellectuals had staked out the battlefield. The Southern Agrarians, Kirk, Weaver, Kendall, Strauss, Voegelin, and many, many others had formed their order of battle. The Left finally showed up for the fight. Combatants cannot be neutral, and because of this, “arguments” trump “conversations.”
A further thought: “Conversation” is predominant in American politics when there are no huge issues about the very nature of our government and the kind of society Americans want or do not want. When the stakes are very high, then “conversation” can’t take place–only “argument”–if we’re lucky–will do. Is there any possibility for moderation in American politics today? I’m quite skeptical, because neither side truly wants it. the object of ideological warfare is to win, and nothing less will suffice. We now have precisely the extreme sort of politics that so many on both the left and the Right have sought for several generations. One visible indication of this is the contemptuousness with which Tea Party conservatives are removing old-fashioned ‘establishment’ Republicans from the active duty list. The Democrats underwent a less visible purge beginning back in the 1970s. Within the party organization, in many parts of the country, the way for ambitious men and women to get ahead was to be more left than the next guy. And the Republicans are well on their way to completing their ideological conversion into a party of the ideological Right.
It’s worth pointing out that the conflict Gestell has constructed is something of a false dichotomy in that there is, indeed, an ideological battle being waged as to the nature and purpose of American government and society, but the only reason for the conflict is the extent to which the social liberal has been successful in dramatically changing the nature of American government from its original form and function to one befitting his ideology. Gestell’s construction of the debate about the proper relationship between the federal and state governments serves as a perfect example. That debate was already had at the founding of the country, with the resulting government as described in the constitution being the grand compromise among many competing ideas, and lacking the supremacy of central government that Gestell describes (and desires). The debate we are having today is whether or not to completely disregard that entity created at the founding in favor of a grand new experiment (the ever-elusive Utopia that the social liberal always remains completely convinced is as close as the next accrual of power by the central government). By the very nature of the term, the provocateur in the conflict cannot be the conservative. A better visualization of the winner-take-all ideological battle Gestell describes, and one with which the modern liberal is more likely to be able to relate, would be the conservative chained to the 200 year old oak tree, standing down the bulldozers of the commercial developers who would demolish it and erect a shopping mall in its place. It is most assuredly a no-compromise situation – either the oak tree will be demolished or it will not – but it is nevertheless a situation that would never arise had the bulldozers never arrived.
The version of the United States in which many conservatives believe, comes, in my view, dangerously close to the weak, fragmented mess brought about under the Articles of Confederation. I routinely read conservatives who think that state nullification of federal law is a legitimate use of the power of states, or even that that our Constitution allows states to secede. Of course, given their policy views, conservatives should understand the United States in such a fashion. The emerging dominance of conservatism in American politics hints at a catastrophe conservatives won’t even perceive until it hits them in the face.
The actual structure of the government prior to the 1930′s would have been “dangerously close” to the weak Articles of Confederation in your view. That’s why you’re painting something of a false dichotomy. The “conservative” vying to preserve a union that lasted all of 8 years and was replaced 222 years ago is nothing more than a strawman caricature that you rather haphazardly apply to anyone who opposes the absolute federal supremacy you seem to believe is enshrined in the constitution. As if the states were administrative districts with their authority bestowed upon them by the federal government in its beneficence. It conveniently makes anyone who believes the federal government has ever, in the history of the constitution, overstepped its authority into an extremist nut case. But, as I said, given the very nature of the term, it’s hard to make the “conservative” fit that narrative.
Usually, I like to take my own shots at conservatives, but this handy little piece was just too good to pass up. Here’s its URL:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:A_Day_In_The_Life_of_Joe_Conservative
Mr. Mulligan and Mr. Wavering did not write this, I swear!
“Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance — now Joe gets it, too.
He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment checks because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.
The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
[Now, the way things should be]
A Day in the Life of a True Conservative
Joe Conservative wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom. He flushes his toilet and brushes his teeth, mindful that each flush & brush costs him about 43 cents to his privatized water provider. His wacky, liberal neighbor keeps badgering the company to disclose how clean and safe their water is, but no one ever finds out. Just to be safe, Joe Conservative boils his drinking water.
Joe steps outside and coughs–the pollution is especially bad today, but the smokiest cars are the cheapest ones, so everyone buys ‘em. Joe Conservative checks to make sure he has enough toll money for the 3 different private roads he must drive to work. There is no public transportation, so traffic is backed up and his 10 mile commute takes an hour.
On the way, he drops his 12 year old daughter off at the clothing factory she works at. Paying for kids to go to private school until they’re 18 is a luxury, and Joe needs the extra income coming in. Times are hard and there’re no social safety nets.
He gets to work 5 minutes late and misses the call for Christian prayer, and is immediately docked by his employer. He is not feeling well today, but has no health insurance, since neither his employer nor his government provide it, and paying for it himself is really expensive, since he has a precondition. He just hopes for the best.
Joe’s workday is 12 hours long, because there is no regulation over working hours, and Joe will lose his job if he complains or unionizes. Today is an especially bad day. Joe’s manager demands that he work until midnight, a 16 hour day. Joe does, knowing that he’ll lose his job if he does not.
Finally, after midnight, Joe gets to pick up his daughter and go home. His daughter shows him the deep cut she got on the industrial sewing machine today. Joe is outraged and asks why she doesn’t have metal mesh gloves or other protection. She says the company will not provide it and she’ll have to pay for it out of her own pocket. Joe looks at the wound and decides they’ll use an over the counter disinfectant and bandages until it heals. She’ll have a scar, but getting stitches at the emergency room is expensive.
His daughter also complains that the manager made suggestive overtures towards her. Joe counsels her to be a “good girl” and not rock the boat, or she’ll get fired and they’ll be out the income.
His daughter says she can’t wait until she’s 18 so she can vote for change or go to the Iraq War.
They get home and there’s a message from his elderly father who can’t afford to pay his medical or heating bills. Joe can hear him coughing and shivering.
Joe turns on the radio and the top story is a proposal in Congress to raise the voting age to 25. A rare liberal opinionator states that it’s an attempt to keep power out of the hands of working class Americans. The conservative host immediately quashes him, calling him “a utopian idealist,” and agreeing that people aren’t mature enough to make good choices until they’re at least 25.
Joe chuckles at the wine-swilling, cheese eating liberal egghead and thinks, “Thank God I live in America where I have freedom!”
I suppose when you have absolutely no argument left to make it’s fun (not to mention convenient) to just make up utterly unrelated dystopian fiction to reinforce your ideology. I’m sure there’s a stereotype about liberal argumentation that could be discussed here, particularly in the context of the actual article, but instead let me try your way:
A Day in the Life of the Good Liberal
(Or: The Politics of Histrionics versus The Politics of Hyperbole)
Joe Liberal wakes up in the morning 10 minutes before the communal alarm in the public housing building. He walks down the hall to the communal bathroom before the rush. He only has enough water credits for a 3 minute shower, and the water isn’t hot because the sun hasn’t been up long enough to energize the solar-powered heater, but he makes the most of it. His lunatic conservative neighbor across the hall keeps whining for private housing where he can drill his own well, but everybody knows that no one man should ever be allowed to steal public resources like that.
Joe goes outside to read a book in the sunlight since the electric CFL lights in the public housing complex haven’t been turned on for the day yet. The air is crisp and clean the way Gaia intended it. Why shouldn’t it be? There haven’t been any cars on the road since congress passed the new retro-active national fuel economy bill outlawing all non-electric vehicles, and the industrial plant was closed by government regulators 5 years ago when it failed to achieve carbon neutrality by the deadline.
Joe doesn’t much enjoy the book he’s reading. He heard from a radical conservative activist that it was a classic, but it’s very difficult to follow the plot because at least 25% of the words have been redacted for public safety.
Normally this time of the morning, Joe would be taking his son to school, but the rest of the academic year was canceled when the teachers’ union went on strike demanding a 275% cost-of-living adjustment per year instead of the usual 250%. Even if Joe could afford private school on his Minimum Standard of Living Stipend, non-public education was outlawed years earlier by the Equality of Educational Opportunity law. Instead Joe’s government Child Safety Supervisor would be by later to take the child to universal day care.
Frustrated with his book, Joe decides to see a movie instead.
The public high speed monorail is broken down again, and the union maintenance engineers will not arrive to work for 5 more hours, so Joe sets out for the theater on foot. The only thing playing is “The New Crusade”, a documentary on radical Christianity. He’s already seen it 10 times on Universal Public Broadcasting, but since he lost his job as a chemical engineer when the industrial plant closed down he has nothing better to do anyway, so he buys a ticket.
On the way home, Joe stops to grab a tofu burger with his Guaranteed Minimum Nutrition card. He would prefer beef, but it hasn’t been available since meat production was outlawed as torture under the Animal Personhood and Organic Organism Protection Act. “Tofu is better for me anyway” he thinks to himself. “At least the environment is safe now”. It doesn’t matter anyway – they’re out of tofu and won’t have any more until the next shipment is cleared by the National Food Safety and Healthy Families Council.
Joe arrives back at the public housing complex. Still 10 more hours until his son gets back from Universal Day Care. The apartment has been lonely since Joe’s wife Jane died. The cerebral hemorrhage had taken her life within days – long before she could make it through the backlogged waiting list for a CT scan. His parents had died years earlier when the Nation Terminal Care Board had suspended their treatment based on their quality-adjusted life years. But at least now he didn’t have to worry about the cost of medical care.
Bored, Joe heads to the community TV room to see what’s on Universal Public Broadcasting. There’s a panel discussion about a bill in Congress to raise the Minimum Standard of Living Stipend. The heartless, ultra-conservative Democratic Party representative is shouted down by the host and the other guests for his opinion that only a 35% increase is necessary to maintain minimum living standards.
Joe chuckles at the smug, cold-hearted snob and thinks, “Thank Allah I live in America where I have security!”