Discourse with others only works if you both share basic assumptions. That point seems to have escaped Garrett West as he wrote last week’s op-ed “Discourse: better than debate.” In the piece, West chided me for portraying, in a previous editorial, the majority of American political science students as progressives, cultivated to become cogs in the administrative state. He insinuated that I had obscured “truth with vitriol” and presented an arrogant caricature of non-Hillsdale students. He continued, arguing that a truly liberal education must abandon combative debate for empathetic discourse. I disagree with both claims.
West, by all accounts a brilliant student, yearns for a world populated with thoughtful, reasoned, and mature scholars, like himself, who are able to collectively acknowledge the merits and demerits of other thinkers through respectful conversation. The problem? That world doesn’t exist outside isolated pockets of academia.
If I claim that human beings have a right to life and liberty, how am I supposed to have reasoned discourse with those who believe they are the world’s rightful masters, entitled to exterminating anyone they find undesirable? The truth claims at stake are fundamentally opposed. Debate is the only option available, and indeed, if neither side submits and those in favor of slavery decide to impose their will, a conflict of arms is inevitable. We Americans are blessed to live in a country where healthy debate is largely possible without violence and gross violations of personal liberty. Nevertheless, when two sides are truly incompatible and the claim is serious enough, it is impossible to simply kumbaya our way out of disagreement.
West does not recognize this reality. You see, one time he met a nice Marxist and they had a meaningful conversation. It caused him to become more tolerant and introspective. Hearing that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside right up until the moment I remembered that the 20th century is littered with the 70 million corpses of those who died at the hands of communist regimes attempting to put Marx’s words into practice. Sure, many communists abhored mass starvation and gulags, but their intentions mattered little in the world of harsh historical reality.
Ideas are not playthings in the hands of children. They have an incredible power to animate or destroy, but West seems only to focus on their creative capacity. For him, liberal education needs to be “empathetic” and “ecstatic,” a drawing out of oneself toward the other and the truth. That’s very poetic but in need of qualification.
A liberal education should not be so dazzling that you become blind to the world. Not so empathetic that you can no longer draw firm lines between good and evil. Not so humbling that you are unable to make strong truth claims about the injustice of murder, theft, and tyranny. Prudence is a virtue; dreamy ambiguity is not.
I don’t completely understand the denunciation of my comments on the nature of modern college education. To use but one example, this year in America over a million unborn children will be killed in their mother’s wombs, yet apparently, I needed to be taken to task for criticizing the educational system that continues to produce the thinkers and politicians who enforce that status quo. Right.
Perhaps West merely disagreed with my choice of words and attitude. Fair enough. In my defense, while I value respect, I simply felt no need to tiptoe around those bent on destroying true freedom and good government. The ideas perpetrated by the modern left have culminated in an increasingly intrusive government adrift from its original mooring in the defense of liberty. I do not empathize with that project, and I do not expect to convert its diehard supporters. Rather, my hope is to invigorate those who have become complacent in the face of this challenge.
I agree with West that we should seriously approach other thinkers, but I do not believe such an attempt demands we shunt aside consideration of the effects of the ideas we confront. I caution my fellow students not to become so lost in abstraction that they can no longer see clearly the very real ramifications of destructive systems of thought. We cannot afford blindness. The consequences are simply too great.
