argue please

"...we need space for peaceful yet passionate outrage."

Deborah Tannen has a beautiful discussion of civic debative involvement up at the CSM (thanks, Lily, for sending the link). Tannen writes much more coherently than I ever could on what would be, in our more ambitious moments, our collaborative effort here at Owens Rhetoric--the search for a not-stupid public discussion. That thoughtful debate over public policy has whithered into prepubescent evoking talking points vacant of logic has now, I think, reached a decent universality of agreement amongst reasonable people. What we do about that, though, has been touched on less than a hot potato in competetive circles.

Tannen, who wrote of the problems of certain argument in her book, "The Argument Culture," observes the American rhetorical crisis and calls for more argument. In detailing the method of how we should debate, she is exactly right.

Her key point is to distinguish what she calls "agonism;" that is, "ritualized opposition, a knee-jerk, automatic use of warlike formats."

Agonism grows out of our conviction that opposition is the best, if not the only, path to truth. In this view, the best way to explore an idea is a debate that requires opponents to marshal facts and arguments for one side, and ignore, ridicule, or otherwise undermine facts and arguments that support the other side.

Here is a healthy taste:

With all the shouting, we have less, rather than more, genuine opposition - the kind that is the bedrock on which democracy rests.

...

Many journalists prize two types of agonism: One is the valuing of attack over other modes of inquiry, such as analyzing, integrating, or simply informing. The other is a seemingly laudable search for "balance," which results in reporting accusations without examining their validity.

Expressing passionate opposition to - even hatred for - the policies of elected officials is a legitimate, necessary form of engagement in public life.

...
Attacks on an opponent's character distract attention from the issues that will be decided in the election. Attacks on an opponent's proposed and past policies are appropriate; we need more of such attention to policy.

...

This downplaying of genuine opposition is mirrored in our private conversations. In many European countries, heated political discussions are commonplace and enjoyed; most Americans regard such conversations as unseemly arguments, so they avoid talking politics - especially with anyone whose views differ, or are unknown, lest they inadvertently spark a conflict or offend someone who disagrees.

As a result, we aren't forced to articulate - and therefore examine - the logic of our views, nor are we exposed to the views of those with whom we disagree. And if young people don't hear adults having intense, animated political discussions, the impression that politics has no relevance to their lives is reinforced.

In sum, we are overfocused on 'knowing' the attack-like back and forths of a public policy discussion. The sources of the problem and the focus of remedy are multifaceted. The media, of course, is rightly to blame because its irresponsible focus on stupidity and its refusal to fact check. But we really can't do anything about that save look in the mirror. To the extent we demand more thoughtfulness, we have to be ourselves more thoughtful. There is exactly one way to do this: divorce ourselves from preaching to and listening to our own choirs. Do that, and the worst of our news sources die (sorry about that, Rupert and Randi).

One more paragraph from Tannen:

A single-minded devotion to "balance" also creates the illusion of equivalence where there is none. For example, as shown repeatedly by journalist Ross Gelbspan as well as in a recent article by Maxwell and Jules Boykoff in the academic journal Global Environmental Change, news coverage of global warming actually ends up being biased because news reports of scientists' mounting concern typically also feature prominently one of the few "greenhouse skeptics" who declare the concern bogus. This "balanced" two-sides approach gives the impression that scientists are evenly divided, whereas in fact the vast majority agree that the dangers of global climate change are potentially grave.

let it

it snowed, then was maytime weather, and now cold as a witche's again. what gives?

Who's Afraid of Unenumerated Rights? (Lily)

Who's Afraid of Unenumerated Rights? (posted by Lily after conversations with Andrew)

"Unenumerated rights are expressly protected against federal infringement by the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment and against state infringement by the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite this textual recognition, unenumerated rights have received inconsistent and hesitant protection ever since these provisions were enacted and what protection they do receive is subject to intense criticism. . . . [A]ll liberty may be reasonably regulated (as opposed to prohibited), and that we need ascertain the scope of unenumerated rights only to identify wrongful behavior that may be prohibited altogether because it invariably violates the rights of others."

This is part of an abstract from a paper by Randy Barnett, ideas from which formed the basis for a talk he gave at U Penn Law School this past Friday. APO has a distaste for Barnett's originalism (he says it's "bunk"!)... Nonetheless, overall I think the concept of numerated versus unenumerated constitutional rights is a fascinating topic. The rough outlines of the controversy are these: the Federalists, who formed the majority of the original authors of the Constitution, wanted to found a government based on the premise that the people are sovereign, and any power that the government holds, it holds only by the consent of the people. Therefore they envisioned the Constitution as a document that listed the various things the people allow the government to do. Anything not on the list, the government can't do -- the residual power lies in the people. From this perspective, the Constitution was complete without the Bill of Rights: for example, the Constitution doesn't mention that the government has any power to make an establishment of religion, so we don't need to TELL the government it can't do so. Similarly, there's no point in telling the government that it can't restrict the freedom of the press, since the Constitution doesn't ever bestow that power upon it.

Immediately following the ratification of the Constitution, though, the Anti-Federalists proposed the first nine amendments of what we now call the Bill of Rights, a document that, under the Federalists' theoretical framework, was manifestly unnecessary at best. The Anti-Federalists conceived of government in diametrically opposing terms: the government has whatever power the people don't reserve for themselves. Naturally those of this persuasion were terrified by the original Constitution without the Bill of Rights attached -- it seemed like a carte blanche that placed virtually no restrictions on governmental power at all.

The main body of our Constitution thus stands as theoretically inconsistent with its first nine amendments. From a Federalist perspective, the first nine amendments were not only useless, but dangerous: if the federal government has free rein to do anything NOT listed in the Constitution, there's no telling what amount of tyranny it might come up with! The drafters can't be expected to think of everything ahead of time and enact zillions of provisions in an attempt to ward off future politicians' power grabs! Thus, we have the Tenth Amendment, enacted December 15, 1791, which was an attempt by the Federalists to recapture the upper ground in the battle between the competing intellectual frameworks:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether it was the Federalists or the Anti-Federalists who ultimately gained the upper hand, is hard to say. On the one hand, the US Supreme Court has used the Bill of Rights to construct an elaborate system of jurisprudence that touches all of our lives -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, due process. It might have seemed unnecessary to some in the early days of the Republic, but today it has become a cornerstone of our national identity. On the other hand, Americans have preserved throughout the centuries an inherent distrust of "big government." It's a topic that comes up in every Congressional and Presidential campaign to this day. Other countries, such as Canada and Great Britain, don't share the American distrust -- in those countries, sovereignty traditionally flowed from the Crown, and the people hold whatever rights they have by the grace of the government. (Obviously the modern world has mitigated the effects of this, but bear with me...) These nations were not founded on the concept of sovereignty residing in the people, and the public in those countries tends to be more comfortable with the concept of big government. Witness their national health care systems and other manifestations of socialist leanings.

Personally I kind of enjoy the tension inherent in our Constitution -- kind of for the same reason I think it's good to have the Executive and Legislative branches in Washington to be controlled by opposite parties. Keeps everyone on their toes, and gives the delicate balance of power the flexibility to make minor adjustments depending on the needs of the moment.

OR Reading Circle

OR Reading Circle (posted by Lily)

Our latest reading project at Owens Rhetoric encompasses two books:

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault (1975)

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, edited by Lola Vollen and Dave Eggers (2005)

Please feel free to read along with us and/or join in with your comments! Meanwhile, here are some of our initial thoughts.

LILY:
In his first chapter, Foucault talks about how the body has increasingly disappeared as the major target of penal repression, and punishment has become the most private/secret part of the justice process. I was thinking about how perfectly Foucault's observation reflects what the first couple of guys describe in the Eggers book - that the worst part of prison, especially death row, is the loneliness; and 2/3 of prison suicides occur in solitary confinement situations. In writing about the paradigm shift from punishing the body to punishing the soul, Foucault writes that, instead of inflicting physical pain, the new trend has been "to supervise the individual, to neutralize his dangerous state of mind, to alter his criminal tendencies."

What's interesting to me here is how this program of "neutralizing the dangerous state of mind" works out when the state of mind you're attempting to neutralize is not actually dangerous - as would be the case for the wrongfully convicted. What happens to an individual when you embark on an aggressive campaign to "alter his criminal tendencies," but he doesn't HAVE any criminal tendencies? To use religious terminology, it's an interesting exercise in futility to try to purge a mind/soul of sin when there is no sin in it.

Hey, and also -- who do y'all think Foucault is talking about when he mentions the "minor civil servants of moral orthopaedics" who thrive on the shame that inflicting punishment causes? I thought it was an interesting turn of phrase.

ANDREW:
My initial response is that it is simply a bummer. Wrongful imprisonment is simply that.

I reckon, though, your question rests its inquiry on the further question of what is happening in the prison. Is it to correct a
criminal propensity? Or to punish?

That, as it turns out, is my question after reading most the first Foucault chapter. His main thrust is that the Justice system disassociated itself from the body. It became something that found guilt, but then ushered over the punishment to administrative entities. It seemed the example of the guillotine was the perfect illustration here . . . that this was the moment where the State became hardly involved with the Punishment. Switch a lever, and hands are clean.

Still, Foucault asserted a few times in the initial chapter that the State still imposes bodily punishment, doesn't he? I carried away a point about ANY deprivation of body was still a state's hold on the body. We limit liberty of movement, food, intimate relations, and so forth. I was hoping to get this clarified. What is his final point on the state/body. It seems to be that Justice has moved from the public spectacle, but that the hold of the body somehow remains?

LILY:
When he poses the question, what would non-corporal punishment look like?, I guess he's getting at the point that we don't have any other way to access the soul, as it were, except through the body. So, any attempts to punish/correct the SOUL must necessarily be done by doing something to the BODY, e.g. solitary confinement, restrictions on liberties, etc. Maybe that's sort of why he says that all punishment, no matter how mental a level it is intended to take place on, must retain a kernel of physical torture.