Accelerating cultural mutations in the West are casting troubling shadows over the future of consensual democracy.
In the United States and Canada, entrenched majorities presently support nanny state management, excessive government spending, upwardly shifting debt ceilings, high taxes, mass immigration, unsustainable entitlements, job-killing climate change obsessions, media censorship, limitations on free speech, a China-centric global order, and draconian pandemic measures.
The Value of Opposition
Adversarial debate, in both legislative bodies and the public square, was once considered a foundational principle of democracy.A willingness to engage in ordered discourse led citizens to consider different points of view and arrive at well-informed conclusions.
The main role of a political opposition was to question the government of the day and hold it accountable to the public.
This permitted a ruling party to correct policy courses taken in the heat of exceptional circumstances.
The term “loyal opposition” allowed minority parties to oppose those in power while remaining faithful to the constitutional legitimacy of a sitting government.
A Combination of Loyalty and Opposition
As Michael Ignatieff, a former opposition leader in the Canadian House of Commons, said in a 2012 address at Stanford University:“The opposition performs an adversarial function critical to democracy itself. And governments have no business questioning the loyalty of those who oppose them.”
This combination of loyalty to the nation with the duty to question the incumbent government is intended to make room for alternative policy development and peaceful transitions of power. The concept of a loyal opposition permits the informed dissent necessary for a democracy to function.
A decade ago, Ignatieff spoke as a Liberal, but recent trends are leading our body politic in another direction.
Today, what Ignatieff called “an adversarial function critical to democracy itself” is rapidly being replaced by what Polish political scholar Ryszard Legutko has called “totalitarian temptations in free societies.”
The Art of Debate
For political debates to be productive, effective ground rules have to be established.In an 1858 campaign for an Illinois congressional seat, a series of debates were arranged between the incumbent Stephen A. Douglas and his challenger Abraham Lincoln.
In each of seven debates, one candidate would start by giving an hour-long speech. The other would follow with an hour-and-a-half speech. The first was then given 30 minutes of rebuttal time. As the incumbent, Douglas was permitted to go first four times.
The topic chosen by the candidates was pivotal for the future of the nation. Lincoln argued against the spread of slavery, while Douglas maintained that each territory should have the right to decide whether it would become free or allow slavery.
Although Lincoln lost this election, the debates gave his case national prominence, which eventually led to his election as president, followed by a civil war, and the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that ended slavery in America.
Formats Designed to Fail
Fast-forward to the second decade of the 21st century, where any semblance of logic, value, philosophy, or fairness appears to have been scrubbed from the practice of debating.If the purpose of a debate is to inform voters, our contemporary formats have been designed to fail.
Debate commissioners and media referees control the format of the debates and the topics to be discussed.
Chris Wallace of Fox News, who adjudicated the opening presidential debate in 2020, began the event with the following declaration: “The Commission has designed the format, six roughly 15 minute segments with two minute answers from each candidate to the first question, then open discussion for the rest of each segment.”
He then added, “For the record, I decided the topics and the questions in each topic.”
A Candidate and a Journalist Gun for a President
What transpired that night is history. Readers can judge for themselves by accessing the transcript of the debate at Rev.com.The evening opened with aggressive questioning about the president’s decision to name a new Supreme Court justice during an election year.
Wallace began a discussion about the pandemic by asking the president why the American people should trust him with public health after there had been 200,000 deaths attributed to the virus. Joe Biden said Trump had no plan for dealing with COVID-19 and suggested that no one should trust a “Trump vaccine.”
What was supposed to be a discussion about the economy quickly pivoted to specious allegations about Trump’s tax returns.
Biden was given an opening to blame job losses on Trump rather than the pandemic.
“You’re the worst president America has ever had. Come on,” shouted the challenger.
On the topic of race relations, Wallace asked why federal agencies had been directed to end “racial sensitivity training” that addresses “white privilege” or critical race theory.
“I ended it because it’s racist,” said Trump. “A radical revolution that was taking place in our military,” the president added.
Wallace shot back, “What is radical about racial sensitivity training?”
“He’s the racist,” declared Biden.
Ultimately, the debate moderator assumed the role of prosecutor, and it was abundantly clear which candidate was on the docket. Trump was accused of being a science denier, a racist, and a proponent of right-wing violence. Biden’s assertion that “Antifa is an idea, not an organization” went unexamined.
The Need to Restore Substance Over Circus
In America today, the value of free and open debate is deliberately discounted. Even parents expressing objections to controversial education policies at local school board meetings have been portrayed as domestic terrorists by the U.S. Department of Justice.In a functional democracy, candidates for high office have an obligation to clearly and coherently present a vision for the nation, principles to be respected, challenges to be faced, plans to be developed, and past mistakes to be overcome.
These obligations can’t be fulfilled in two-minute responses to tendentious questions followed up on by hectoring journalists with their own partisan dogs in the fight.
Responsible citizens don’t tune in to important political debates to watch a media circus. Voters require a full account of the issues from the candidates themselves.
The Debate That Matters
The woke imperative to prepare minds for a new cultural status quo has replaced the idea that free and open debate produces better policy options and superior leadership.The principle of tolerance toward peaceful political opposition is in danger of extinction. Half of America seeks to silence the other.
Much like the procedures we depend on to arrive at just decisions in courts of law, democracy demands orderly debate in the public square.
Candidates should be given sufficient time and freedom to put an uninterrupted case before the people. There’s plenty of time for carping and raising questions after a formal debate has been fairly concluded.
Today, the debate that matters is between those who seek to return to America’s founding principles and the neo-Marxist social justice warriors who presently set the tone in the nation’s formative institutions.
For the survival of the American republic, a second look at the Lincoln–Douglas format might well be worth considering.