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Just Another Essay



The Value of True Debate

Essay Posted August 28, 2007 by James E. Nelson

There’s an annual political event (“where free minds meet”) with strongly libertarian leanings, called Freedom Fest, held in Las Vega every year. The primary mover and shaker of this event is Libertarian spokesman, Austrian economist and philosopher Mark Skousen. This year’s Freedom Fest featured a debate of two conservatives vs. two libertarians that Skousen calls “the best debate he has ever heard in his life.

The whole debate is available on YouTube. It is in seven segments and can be found here.

Libertarianism

First, although I have covered this several times before, a word about Libertarianism, because it is frequently misunderstood. I was reminded of this when I was recently taken to task by a well meaning Christian who reminded me that Paul condemned Libertarians in his epistles. In fact, Paul condemned, not Libertarians, but Libertines—people who rejected nearly all rules and regulations as an excuse to live lives apart from the discipline God requires of us. The words sound alike and come from the same root, so it is understandable how the mistake was made, but the two ideas are worlds apart.

Modern day Libertarianism is the term currently applied to “Jeffersonian Liberalism.” As a political philosophy, it is committed to limited government (and the limited taxes that are a corollary of that), individual freedom, and a basic distrust of bureaucratic solutions to anything. At different times in history the two dominant political parties have seesawed back and forth between which is the defender of authentic liberty and limited government. Ronald Reagan, the last great libertarian, illustrates the dynamic beautifully. He began his political life as a Democrat, but as he observes in his biography, he did not leave the Democratic Party, it left him.

In the 1960s there was a huge swing in political sensibilities and the Republican Party took over the role of the political party committed to limited government and individual liberty while the Democrats became enamored by the ability of government to solve social problems. Of course, since Reagan, the Republicans have made a 180° turn and are now the party of intrusive control and loss of freedoms. George W. Bush, under the cover of the war on drugs and the war on terror, has waged a systematic war against the liberties we thought were guaranteed in the constitution. But the Democratic Party has not come to the defense of liberty and so in this day and age the followers of the spirit of Ronald Reagan have to distinguish themselves from both Democrats and Republicans. Libertarian is the title most commonly used.

Among Libertarians, it is generally conceded that the only Libertarian remaining in Washington is Ron Paul, Texas Republican congressman and current presidential candidate.

To be fair, Libertarianism isn’t quite that simple. Because it is primarily committed to limited government, it inevitably becomes a “big tent” political philosophy that can be made to include an odd assortment of crank political ideas. In short, “libertines” tend to call themselves political libertarians because it covers all their sins. But at the heart of modern day Libertarianism is the belief that big government cannot solve all our problems, and often causes more than it solves.

Authentic Debate

I personally blame political correctness for the state of political debate in America today. Some of my friends blame the rise of the sound bite and the dumbing down of all discourse that inevitably comes with a medium like television. Whatever its genesis, the simple fact is that we no longer know how to disagree.

I started seminary at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Kansas. It was a microcosm of the American Baptist denomination. The most liberal (and quite frankly, anti-Christian) professor I ever had in any seminary (he rejected pretty much every line of the Nicene Creed as mere human imagination) taught there. On the other hand, the general sensibility of the community was quite conservative; most of the faculty were actually quite Evangelical. But since Baptists are non-creedal, there was no real standard for dealing with bad ideas and heretical professors. But I digress.

Every other year Central hosted a debate between Christians and Jews. It was the sort of debate that could never happen at a place like Harvard or Princeton, where a theology of niceness competes with a brutally analytical search for the truth. In those enclaves of political correctness, serious critical thought is lost in the jumble of polite acquiescence. (Prof. Reist dubbed it “sloppy agapé” and would have none of it in his classes.) Eschewing a false veneer of agreement, the conference began with a Rabbi standing up and stating the obvious: “You believe Jesus is the Messiah; we do not. No serious discussion can ever take place between us if we ever forget that fact.”

In turn, John Reist, Professor of Systematic Theology, stood up and said, “If we sweep our differences under the rug, we will have forsaken our traditions. I would cease to be Christian in my thinking if I ever thought there was not a gaping chasm between us. But, my insistence that you are wrong is the correct place for me to start if I hope to learn from you.” (Neither, are direct quotes, by the way.)

That conference on Jewish/Christian relations was one of the best conferences I have ever attended because no one shied away from the reality of fundamental disagreements. And because everyone was willing to say it like it was, I learned a great deal about how things actually are instead of some vague platitudes about how things might be between the two religious traditions.

That sort of debate is almost non-existent today. When someone lays out the clear differences between two positions and why the one position is superior to the other, people start whining about personal attacks. The idea of relishing a heated debate with a worthy opponent is mostly lost in today’s world.

And this may be a completely unfair criticism, but from the perspective of my darkened Libertarian sensibilities, it’s the thing I hate about arguing with Democrats and Environmentalists. They take everything personally and they cry far too easily. After you disagree with them you have to pause to nurse their wounds, because any sort of disagreement with their perfect and holy ideas is terribly wounding to them.

And that is precisely what is so wonderful about this debate between Libertarians Ron Paul and Doug Casey vs. Conservatives Larry Abraham and Dinesh D'Souza. It’s a no holds barred discussion of the pros and cons of the Iraq War. They have clearly different perspectives. When Ron Paul chooses to ignore certain historical realities, Larry Abraham calls him out on it. They have clearly different sensibilities. Doug Casey is an incendiary blowhard, but even he has a few important points to make. Furthermore, even though Casey chooses to be a donkey's behind, everyone else acknowledges it and gets on with the debate. I don’t agree completely with Dinesh D’Souza, but he is (in my opinion) is the best debater of the group.

As a result there are no clear cut winners and all hope of easy solutions get completely doused. But in the end a much clearer picture of reality is presented. It’s no thirty second sound bite, but it is one of the best pro and con presentations of the Iraq war I have ever heard. Again, the whole debate can be found on YouTube in seven parts.