Treaty Principles Debate: Have a Listen

I don't recommend many podcast episodes here at NOT PC, but here's one I reckon you should put aside some time for: it's the Working Group's latest podcast, featuring an hour-long debate over his Treaty Proinciples Bill between ACT's David Seymour, and Ngāti Toa's Helmut Modlik.

Hosted by commy bigmouth Martyn Bradbury and libertarian liquidator Damien Grant, it's worth a listen not least because the participants speak with candour, in good faith , and with humour — and (for the most part) are listening to each other. And how many political debates can you say that about today, especially this one!

"Debate"?

"Typically, political debate in modern democracies is akin to male walruses fighting over a patch of beach. Abetted by the media, politics is more of a blood sport than a forum for well-reasoned debate."

~ Michael Johnston, from his post 'Palaeolithic walruses in the age of reason'

A debate is not an interview

No, that was not a debate.

Although a surprising number of you seem to think it is is.

A debate is an event in which participants address the issues and each other moderated only a fellow with a bell, not a clipboard full of his own questions. And in a real debate, all that fellow says is things like "fifteen seconds to go," or "time's up." And the candidates get to challenge each other, instead of the fellow with the clipboard trying to do it for them.

A debate is not an interview, which is what we had last night: a two-headed interview, conducted by a lacklustre over-talking interviewer who too often confuses himself for a participant, and too rarely allowed any actual debate to continue. An unscripted two-way interview with pre-coached leaders doing their best to say nothing of any substance. An un-debate. A kind of managed “reality television” in which important issues are safely ignored in favour of the hype, fluff, bluster and insults which are breathlessly reported as evidence that one of the candidates "won," and the other was looking "tired." (As if it matters how things are said rather than what they were trying to say, if anything.) And so we learned about as much from the interview as we do from every interview over which the over-talking fellow presides.

We may have learned as much (or as little) from an actual debate. But we'll never know. Because we don't seem to have them any more.

A debate, an actual debate, might at least give us some idea of the opponents' ability to choose their topics, to focus their attacks, to challenge their opponents' flaws or errors. Something about their character -- which, in an election in which most policy is "me-too!" is about all you have as a point of difference, is becoming all-important.

A debate is not an interview. I'd like to see one. It might be fun -- and even revealing.

PS: I didn't watch either of the other alleged "debates" happening last night --- was any more revealed in either of them?

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The knee jerks, and, after having jerked, what's left?

IN THE WAKE OF the Christchurch atrocity, there are calls to ban outright so-called hate speech, and the pitchforks for it are already out: Already the temporary bans against websites hosting the murderer's video have been extended, and black lists are being drawn up to permanently ban websites, workers, speakers and Twitter feeds for offending against the self-righteous mores of the mob.

Atrocity begins with cheap opportunistic hate speech against minorities [declared the Greens' Golriz Ghahraman at a 'vigil' shortly after the event]. It began with hate speech, allowed to spread here online. History has taught us that hate speech is a slippery slope to atrocity. We now know that New Zealand needs to address this.

This was us, she insists. All of us, not just one Australian with a gun. Hate speech is always a slippery slope to atrocity she proclaims -- erroneously (and narcissistically) offering up as as partial proof of both, in her speech immediately after this atrocity: the barrage of hate she says she herself receives online. The conclusion she draws from the "barrage": that this was not an aberration from overseas.

And address this, she demands: but how? By damning all white people as colonialist oppressors, as her colleague Ms Davidson was at that same vigil? By 'calling out' anyone who expresses reservations about being encouraged to wear a Muslim headdress (a headdresss damned by by many Muslimas themselves as a symbol of feminine oppression)? By decrying anyone as "racist" who adheres to what they call "Islamophobia" (despite the General Secretary of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organisation, declaring it to be"factually incorrect and counter-productive to define Islamophobia as 'rooted in racism'”)?

In any case, the demands are being addressed now, however, by those listening to her calls and those much like them: by the black lists being sent to police, to Twitter, to ISPs and Facebook and to every guardian of real or online communication who can enact a permanent or temporary ban on speech they deem hateful (black lists based almost wholly upon the authors' views of what they themselves just don't like). Addressed by immediate bans on publications and videos. Addressed by the knee-jerk calls to give more power to security services to carry out their own interventions, their own investigations, their own intrusions  -- security services who failed utterly to avert this atrocity despite the millions of dollars and already intrusive power they already possess, and before the just-announced inquiry into their abject failure has even been held. (“When it comes to Simon Bridges calling for enhanced powers for NZ spy agencies," observes security specialist Paul Buchanan, "he is like a guy who says that he needs a telescope because his binoculars don’t work well enough, only to find out that the lens caps are still on the binoculars.”)

And how good a diagnosis is Golriz's anyway? For what, after all, is this thing Ms Ghahrahman calls "hate speech"? "Hate speech" is so amorphous a thing it is crying out for definition.

And maybe that's the real point of the term: precisely that it is so very hard to define.

You see, for a censor, or for any high priest of the public square, that of course is so much the beauty of this anti-concept of "hate speech." Because if you yourself get to define what "hate speech" is, and this "hate speech" thing is being banned, then you yourself get to ban whatever sort of speech (and speakers) you yourself dislike.

It's a beautiful thing, censorship, when you're the one holding the whip.

Or would like to.

Especially when you've devised this apparently elegant way -- this anti-concept -- of keeping the whip hidden.

TO REMIND YOU (SINCE we've been talking about this idea of anti-concepts several times in recent years), an "anti-concept" is

an artificial, unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate ...
    Observe the technique involved . . . . It consists of creating an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concepts—a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a “package-deal” of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a “package-deal” whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a non-essential. This last is the essence of the trick...
    [I]f a man accepts a term with a definition by non-essentials, his mind will substitute for it the essential characteristic of the objects he is trying to designate . . . . Thus the real meaning of the term will automatically replace the alleged meaning.

This is why "anti-concepts" like "hate speech" and "Islamophobia" are witch-doctored up in the first place -- to dismiss ideas (and those who hold them) without even a hearing in return.

So-called "hate speech" is an anti-concept witch-doctored up to obliterate free speech. The process is working. Observe that "hate speech" itself is so suitably amorphous that even Wikipedia struggles to wrap its head around the concept:

Hate speech [says Wikipedia's authors] is speech that attacks a person or a group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

So we have allegedly three ingredients to hate speech: 

1. speech that attacks; and 
2. the objects of those attacks; and 
3. the attacks are based on "membership" of some group.

The objects of attack are clearly defined. The speech itself: not so much. 

And that itself is really the whole point.

Leave ill-defined in advance what an "attack" looks like -- an "attack" that is wholly and solely verbal -- and there is instantly a chill felt down the collar of anyone who wants to say anything about anyone.

It is doubtful even today that someone could declare that all arguments have been settled and all debate prohibited. It is enough to achieve that aim today, however, simply by declaring that someone or other has or may have been "offended." Or "violated." Or "threatened." Threatened by speech that in itself constitutes on threat. And on that basis of offence alone, every would-be speaker can be silenced, and every debate declared "settled" before it even starts. So it is today after Christchurch:

->Mainstream news sites are announcing a "crackdown" on their online comments sections, and calls to remove so-called "extremist" content.

->Demands are being made for platforms like Facebook and Twitter to "deplatform" people on lists being rabidly drawn up by the woke.

->Commentators as innocuous as Duncan Garner and Sean Plunkett also face calls  to be deplatformed by their media managers. "It's now a public safety issue," declares Golriz.

->Websites are being blocked by ISPs here and in Australia (who, immediately after the atrocity, blocked any website who posted the live video of the murders) but who have since elected to continue those blocks after being asked to by the government.

->And other websites are being blocked, or face blockage, because they just somehow quietly slip onto someone's black list (including this one, gentle readers, which someone elected to place in the category of "hate and racism" on one popular website filter used by companies around the world) and then face up to a future of gentle but gradual suffocation.

->Meanwhile, un-woken workers are being sacked and "panel discussions" are being urgently held around the country about how to do all this grassroots censorship even better: Russell Brown for example leading a panel discussion tomorrow "on how Artificial Intelligence and other technology can help us create safer societies"-- or as Brown himself describes it: "about the place of technical solutions in quelling online hate speech and fake news. Are human moderators enough?" Or (the unwritten implication here) should we immediately implement censorship by robot.

->And of course knee-jerk censorship will already make it almost impossible to determine and understand the views of the only person who actually (presumably) does know why he did it, i.e., the author of the atrocity himself, whose rambling so-called "manifesto" faces disappearance down a near-permanent black hole at the behest of the government.

It has become so insane that Martyn Bradbury (yes, Martyn Bradbury) is looking like a fount of wisdom in summing up some of the (over-)reaction:

Attempting to connect the violence on Friday with right wing opinions, the defence of free speech or concerns about immigration and conflate that with all white people as racist murderers is a sure fire way of eroding the solidarity in sorrow that has bound many.

MUCH OF IT MAY be well-meaning (if not "Davidson and Ghahraman's ... determination to leverage-off the Christchurch Mosque Shootings to unleash an uncompromising anti-racist campaign encompassing the whole of Pakeha New Zealand"), but the chilling effect of the suffocation is real enough. And real even if bans, black lists and blocking don't work out. If I may paraphrase a post by Amy Peikoff on this principle, it occurs to me that this down-home version of Attack Watch is a case study in the application of Ayn Rand’s observation that force stops thinking:

In Chapter 8 of his book, 'Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand,' Leonard Peikoff writes, “[I]f and to the extent that someone’s gun becomes a man’s epistemological court of final appeal, replacing the law of identity [A is A], then the man cannot think.” 

    So, to those who have not joined the chorus conflating all white people with racist murderers, or who still have reservations about Islamists and Islamic culture, or who identify and condemn the seething identity politics of both right and left as being culpable: When you think thus independently and then hear about these sackings, de-platformings and black lists, do you say to yourself, even for a millisecond, that you will now have to be more careful when criticising Golriz or Islamism or the Prime Minister publicly? Never mind that, if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably the kind of person who would go ahead and act as you had before anyway. That’s not the point. People decide to resist the institution of government controls all the time, but that does not mean that those controls, if and to the extent that they are imposed, do not stop thinking. 

    Some might argue that this kind of grassroots 'Attack Watch' doesn’t threaten the use of force of any kind, nor the imposition of any penalties, so this is in fact not an example coming under the principle. (The black lists and block lists, for example, are not being drawn up by governments but by networks of private volunteers.) But if you think about it, the only reason that people even care about the existence of these lists, is because they know that, even if there has not yet been a threat of penalties of any kind, such penalties might not be far behind. [Sections 61 and 131 of the ill-named Human Rights Act 1993 for example already threatens you with severe punishment for what it calls "Inciting Racial Disharmony"--and this is even before Ms Ghahraman et al get started on revising it, as they will.] 

    This is why phrases like “enemies list” might occur to you when reading these approving and widespread calls for this grassroots censorship. If you feel the slightest bit intimidated by the creation of these lists, for example, or these "technical solutions"–even if you tell yourself you will not be affected by it, that you will continue on, as before–then you have experienced a small taste of what Ayn Rand meant. [As have, for example, the websites already blocked by ISPs for hosting, wittingly or unwittingly, the live video -- and the ISPs themselves who are "asked" by the government o continue the ban to please the government, even though there is not, at this point, any legislation compelling them to do so.) 

    The initiation of force, or threatening to use force, is evil. This is why even a fairly heavily veiled threat of force by our government is cause for concern.

You should never compromise with those who want to use acts of violence to extinguish freedom, reminds Margaret Thatcher, because if you do you then the very things for which you stand are extinguished.

Let us resolve not to extinguish freedom here. Especially not by the jerk of this knee.
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Never in the field of human interaction has civilised debate been so important....

Perhaps never in the field of human interaction has civilised debate been so important -- and so rare.  

Thank goodness then for Olivia Pierson's exciting project to change all that, which, as she explains in this guest post, deserves your support....

PSA: Your New Debate Forum: 'Dear Cicero'

Guest post By Olivia Pierson

Welcome!

I am now in the process of fundraising for an upscale forum to hold in-depth and entertaining debates in Auckland. New Zealand speakers for a New Zealand audience.

Dear Cicero Debate Forum seeks to become New Zealand's liveliest platform to debate ideas. They will be intelligent debates to indulge in our democracy's gift of freedom of speech and self-expression. A place where people can ride into battle, but only with their wits!

This will be a platform for clear thinkers and strong speakers to engage in classy, civilised debates and discussions on matters which are important to New Zealanders, both culturally and politically. Two or three debaters on each side of a stated motion will be hosted by an objective moderator. Well known speakers will be sourced from New Zealand's media, political landscape, academia and also from our speaking circuit.

The debates are to be filmed for internet & television (Face TV: Sky Channel 83), these will be in-depth debates with an interactive audience, created to enlighten, to inform and to entertain. They're to be done in a similar style to Intelligence Squared Debates overseas. First one to be held in early 2019.

Money raised will be spent on: venue hire, expenses pertaining to the speakers and moderators, security, filming for internet and for Face TV screening, ticketing and front of the house ushering and also for sound/audio expertise and live streaming.

Money left over from crowdfunding the first debate will go towards the second debate.

So please head on over to my PledgeMe page, and if you can contribute via crowdfunding to help me get this forum off the ground and regularly running amazing debates, I would be most grateful!

Why the name "Dear Cicero?" To find out more about who Marcus Tullius Cicero was, click here.

Once again, the PledgeMe page is here.

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Debate? Bring back the bell.

Was that really a debate last night? It would have been more instructive if it were.

A televised election debate is a unique opportunity to size up two or more opposing candidates: to watch them lay out their own views and challenge their opponents’. How they present (and what) are as important as how (and what) they choose to oppose in their opponent. Their skill and judgement both in what and how they choose to make their case is as important as what and how they choose to engage and challenge their opponent – as is how they mount their defences.

What do they challenge? What do they let go? How effective is their challenge? How effective the defence?

These are all very helpful in judging a candidate’s effectiveness.

We did not have that opportunity last night. Nor have we enjoyed that opportunity in any of the other staged televised pseudo-debates aired in recent times.

These are not debates; they are little more than candidate interviews held in parallel.

In a formal debate, which is how this and these other pseudo-debates are billed, each candidate is allotted a certain time to make their opening, a certain time to respond to their opponent, and a certain time to sum up – at the end of which a bell is often rung. The candidates challenge each other; they question and answer each other; they address each other and their audience. They do not answer or address the moderator. He is just there to ring the bell.

That was not what was presented on prime-time TV last night.

Instead of their own choice of what to present, which may have revealed what they themselves see as their strength, the candidates were asked selected questions by a moderator – and not even the same questions  to each. The questions were chosen by the moderator.

Except when (rarely) invited, instead of the chance to formally respond and challenge their opponent, which may have revealed where they see the oponents’ weakness, the candidates instead had to realy upon the moderator to challenge their opponent – and I was not aware the moderator was up for election. The only opportunity the candidates themselves had to challenge was to make faces in the background (something at which Ms Ardern seemed more accomplished than the more wooden Mr English) and to interject at what they considered appropriate moments: making the test of a candidates’s skill not one of being able to sum up and then skilfully demolish an opponents’ point, but essentially one of who can shout louder and deliver the wittiest “zinger.”

There were few zingers last night. Nor was there very much wit.

But there was a a moderator, and he was far too visible, and much too voluble.

There was much online discussion before this pseudo-debate began about the suitability or otherwise of Mike Hosking for the job of moderating this “debate” because of his alleged political views. But if the format of a debate were followed as faithfully as it should be – which would, I submit make much better television than last night’s yawn-fest – the political views of any moderator would be entirely irrelevant. The moderator could be the resurrected corpse of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin himself, but as long as they were able to read a watch and ring a bell on time, their own political views would be entirely irrelevant.

Make Hosking irrelevant. Bring back the bell.

PS: So who won the “debate”? Assuredly, it won’t be the taxpayer.

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Pants on fire

 

Q: How do you know when a politician is lying?
A: Their lips are moving.

Yet despite this, and despite everyone knowing this, millions tuned in to watch and then talk about two liars in a debate that isn’t one*, that is then reported as if it were a boxing match instead of two candidates making up their own facts.

Here’s a (not entirely impartial) roundup of around two dozen of the biggest lies.

PS: And here’s an annotated transcipt of last night’s lies, boasting and failed innuendo of both participants, which has the added bonus of not having to either look at or listen to either of them.

* A debate is neither a two-way interview nor a panel discussion. In a debate, the moderator says nothing and carries a timepiece. And that’s all.

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There will be no adult on stage during this afternoon's presidential ‘debate’

 

“There will be no adult on stage during [this afternoon]'s presidential debate,” observes Reason magazine. And let’s be honest, there’ll be no actual debating either – since by debate is meant an event in which participants address the issues and each other moderated only a fellow with a bell.

That’s not at all what’s on offer this afternoon.

There have been great presidential debates before that have been actual debates with genuine moderation, i..e, events in which the moderator is timekeeper not interviewer. There have been great political debates before moderated along those lines, most notably the justly-celebrated Lincoln-Douglas debates in which third-party candidate Abraham Lincoln famously denounced slavery, demolished his opponent, and set the stage for his later selection and inauguration.

But in this afternoon’s “debate” neither real debate nor third-party candidate is wanted – and in the selection of Trump and Clinton by their respective parties no sane, serious adult is welcome either.

So what we’re talking about instead is really an unscripted two-way interview with morons on both sides and little of substance separating them. An un-debate. A kind of managed “reality television” in which important issues can be safely ignored in favour of hype, fluff, bluster and insults, every one of which will be breathlessly reported while every important issue is wiped clean from every single headline.

The following is an incomplete list of at least seven issue areas in which sensible and frequently popular viewpoints will not be offered by either of the "major"-party presidential candidates tonight, because a contrary Libertarian who will be on the ballot in all 50 states will nonetheless sit excluded, 28 miles away.
    1) The country's grim long-term fiscal outlook… This reticence to grapple with the America's perilous balance sheet is new, and actively dangerous…
    2) Federalism [& the Constitution] …. the only presidential candidate talking about it is Gary Johnson. [The others would prefer to shred it.]
    3) Trade. Forget for a moment the controversies (libertarian or otherwise) over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and instead drill down into one salient and gruesome fact: Both candidates on the debate stage tonight are campaigning on promises to punish U.S. companies for relocating…
    4) Military interventionism… Hillary Clinton … has spent the 21^st century as a largely unrepentant warmonger. Donald Trump [merely continues the theme].
    5) Domestic surveillance. Hillary Clinton still defends the PATRIOT Act, wants to ban encryption and give the feds access to your iPhone, and denies that Edward Snowden is even a whistleblower. Donald Trump supports re-authorizing the PATRIOT Act, supports the National Security Agency's bulk metadata collection, and has repeatedly called for Snowden's execution.
    Gary Johnson would repeal the PATRIOT Act, dismantle the NSA, and pardon Edward Snowden…
    6) Free speech… "Both candidates have abysmal records on First Amendment issues."
    7) Prohibition… [You couldn’t slip a cigarette paper between the two on this one either, and even as the jails continue to fill up with Prohibition’s victims and police increasingly use it as an excuse for shooting and tasering the innocent, it will be a question noteable only by its absence from the un-debate stage.]

“It's worth noting too,” notes Reason, “that some of the most critical questions were edited out long before the debate began.” So subtract these seven issues from those that should be talked about and you have a recipe for a slinging match based on contentless fluff, as all the while “the[ir] nation careens toward fiscal calamity.”

In an era in which reality TV stars are king (and nearly president) ’m sure it will be “great television.”

But count me out.

PS: So what will the “contrary Libertarian candidate who will be on the ballot in all 50 states” be doing this afternoon instead? He’ll be live-Facebook-interviewing, and he and his running mate will be live-tweeting – which may both prove far more entertaining, and undoubtedly more informing.

• Follow the former Governor on Twitter here.
• Follow running mate Governor William Weld here.
• Follow their Facebook live interview here.

..

Debate

The whole setup was ridiculous.

In a proper debate – in a properly moderated debate – the moderator sets the topic, the first fellow then gets a minute or two to address it, the second fellow gets the same time to address it and to  respond, and then the first fellow gets a very short time to respond. If they want to challenge their opponent’s facts, then they do it in their appointed time, integrating it with their planned response. Contestants alternate with each topic, giving it at least the appearance of fairness

That’s a debate.

It’s not a debate when contestants are simply invited to talk as long they like, over whomever they like. Sure, they can talk over each other even in properly moderated debates, but then at least it’s clear who is supposed to be talking, and viewers can decide for themselves what that tells them about those who butt in.

Sheesh. Moderators in high-school debates do the job better.

And that’s not all.

Did last night’s debate change the Australian election?

If you abused a popular Prime Minister, you’d lose.

So…

[Hat tip Catallaxy Files]

Wrestling with a pig—debating intellectual property

For the last three or four years, an oaf called Stephen Kinsella has poisoned the libertarian world on the subject of intellectual property, persuading naive libertarians and Austrians about the supposed “virtues” of intellectual communism, i.e., that it is okay to steal someone else’s ideas, work, writing, inventions, software, trademarks, films, designs, logos … in short, everything that constitutes intellectual property.

Unwilling to wrestle with a pig on the basis they’ll get muddy themselves, most saner folk have demurred debating the oaf.

But on April 1st, economist Robert Wenzel agreed to get into the ring in order, at least, to show Kinsella as nothing more than “a glib guy talking out of his hat” who “attempts to dance away when he is cornered,” whose 70-page booklet against intellectual property is littered with errors.  They do all their sparring without a moderator, unfortunately, and I don’t think Wenzel puts up a decent extended argument for intellectual property itself (in my estimation, the likes of Adam Mossoff and Greg Perkins do that far better)*, but after a poor start (you would be well-advised to skip straight to 18 minutes when the debate proper starts) he still does do a fairly robust job of showing Kinsella’s  sloppy thinking; his general evasiveness; and his ignorance even of those like Rothbard from whose ideas he claims support. **

Something that might help naive libertarians realise their defender of intellectual communism has no clothes.

When you’ve finished (or even before you start) enjoy the continuing debate in the comments at Wenzel’s blog.

* * * *

* The basic argument being based on the moral principle that creators are entitled to the new wealth and new values they bring into the world. (More quotes on this point here.)
    Ultimately, what we’re creating with our good judgement is new values. By identifying and rearranging what nature has given us, we raise materials from a lower value (as measured by human beings’ independent evaluations) to a higher value (as measured by human beings’ independent evaluations); they move from being materials to being resources; from being things to being goods.
    It is their creation as new goods that is the economic component. It is their creation as new values that is the moral component.

** Wenzel identifies “16 serious errors” in Kinsella’s tiny 70-page booklet promoting intellectual communism, of which e only attacks 5 in this debate. But he “will be out with a booklet detailing in a more formal fashion the 16 errors I found in Kinsella's writings.
   “From this debate [says Wenzel], it's clear Kinsella is sloppy in his thinking and writing, the booklet hopefully will put a nail in the coffin of this nutty notion that ideas aren't scarce and therefore we should just "take" from people who do not want to be taken from.”
   Until then, why not take advantage of Strangerous Thoughts’s 17 fallacies of of intellectual communists, from the most common to the most bizarre.

Dealing with politically sensitive topics in the classroom

Guest post by education writer Jillian Terry

Dealing with politically sensitive topics in the classroom

Presidential campaigns, political scandals, the world economy, healthcare,and controversial social issues: topics like these can incite some pretty vitriolic arguments among even the most civilized adults.I know I've seen my fair share of arguments about the issues both on and offline, the majority of which are far from polite and even further removed from substance. I'm sure you can think of any number of incidents of such explosive arguments.

It's that kind of occurrence that makes me wonder if any two apparently reasonable adults with opposing views on a subject can ever have a decent discussion about it. And while I was an educator in the US teaching a classroom full of middle school students, I wondered how they would handle such information. If the vast majority of adults I know couldn’t talk about current events without getting worked up into a lather, how might young students handle them?

In this writer's opinion, it's the job of every responsible educator to create an environment within their classrooms where students can feel safe to express their ideas and opinions without fear of ridicule or criticism. It's normally not hard to maintain this sort of safe environment when a teacher is talking about geology or grammar mechanics, but it can become quite a different matter when current events come up.

Such was the case in my classroom during the US presidential election season in 2008. At that time I was teaching at a prep school in what was then considered a “swing state” (meaning that the state didn’t lean towards any particular party), and the views shared by my students during the election certainly reflected the pervading divided views. Some students expressed worry about Barack Obama being elected president for a number of reasons, while others felt equally worried about John McCain's candidacy.

I could tell that much of what my students were saying was merely a regurgitation of what they heard from their parents at home. Students spoke of the uncertain economic climate, foreign policy, and healthcare reform with scant attention to detail, but with all of the passion of someone opposing or supporting each issue. A few times debates between students would devolve into out-and-out shouting matches a la cable news, but those incidents were in the vast minority.

My challenge was to act as a completely impartial moderator during these sometimes heated exchanges. As the teacher in the classroom, I held an almost uncomfortably powerful influence over my students—they looked up to me both for their education and for general life advice. There was no way that I could share my own political beliefs with them without running the risk of affecting their intellectual development. When it seemed appropriate—like when a student would rattle off "facts" that were clearly fabricated or misinformed—I would correct students and tell them about empirical and irrefutable data surrounding a subject. But I rarely if ever gave my own take on the subject.

Of course it's impossible to remain completely impartial or "unbiased," no matter how hard one tries. I'm sure there were instances where I inadvertently expressed my views on an issue, but there's no use beating myself up for it. What matters most is that educators approach controversial subjects with their students in a frank and open-minded manner—assuming the students are old enough to handle such subjects. I'm of the opinion that if students learn how to engage these issues with a level head in their youth then they'll be much more mature and informed citizens when they grow up.

What's your take on educating younger ones on controversial political/social issues? Do you think it's something best left for parents to discuss? Or can educators help shape the conversation?

Jillian Terry is a former educator turned freelancer who writes about higher education, the college experience, US history, and much more for teachingdegree.org among other sites. Feel free to send any comments her way!

Making opposing commenters disappear? [updated]

I’ve been appalled to visit the comments section of Kiwiblog and FrogBlog recently. Not because of the standard of the comments, which hasn’t changed, but because both now boast a new system in place by which regular readers can rate each other’s comments, and by so rating make them either become more prominent or disappear. 

It’s fair enough, I guess, that comments rating well with regulars get a highlight that makes them more prominent, but a feature that hides all the comments that don’t rate well makes me distinctly uncomfortable.

The Standard (unusually) captures how I felt about seeing that particular innovation:

This type of innovative hiding of comments based on anonymous voting . . . removes all level of personal responsibility for what is effectively a ban. It significantly reduces the feedback that follow-up comments by other commentators or moderators would give. As such you’d have to question its value . . . You’d have to say that this system, while low maintenance in terms of moderating effort, is very good at stifling robust debate on Kiwiblog to a relatively small cohort of possible opinion sets. . .  Before, there was at least a chance the uniformed might glance at ‘non conforming’ comments on their way to have their prejudices reinforced. Now they can be made to disappear . . . ”

And I’m not sure I like that, especially if it’s going to be a growing trend. 

Sure, we all know the problems with trolls, and every blog has their own way of dealing with (and defining) them. But I really hope other blogs I frequent don’t pick up this particular innovation.

I like the cut and trust of healthy, open debate on a blog—rather than the quiet concealment of views to which a blog’s particular “goon squad” are opposed, on whom a blogger with such a system might be expected to vote for censure at appropriate moments.

Better, it seems to me, to answer opposing comments than to pretend they don’t exist.

In effect, the enforced conformity of such a system is a variant of what Ayn Rand called The Argument from Intimidation. Commenters at both Kiwiblog and The Standard should enjoy her observations on the phenomenon:

    This method bears a certain resemblance to the fallacy ad hominem, and comes from the same psychological root, but is different in essential meaning. The ad hominem fallacy consists of attempting to refute an argument by impeaching the character of its proponent. Example: ‘Candidate X is immoral, therefore his argument is false.’
    “But the psychological pressure method consists of threatening to impeach an opponent's character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: ‘Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X's argument is false [and therefore needs to be hidden].’
    “In the first case, Candidate X's immorality (real or invented) is offered as proof of the falsehood of his argument. In the second case, the falsehood of his argument is asserted arbitrarily… offered as proof of his immorality [and used to conceal his point of view].
    “In today's epistemological jungle, that second method is used more frequently than any other type of irrational argument. It should be classified as a logical fallacy and may be designated as ‘The Argument from Intimidation’ . . .
    “In our political life, the Argument from Intimidation is the almost exclusive method of discussion. Predominantly, today's political debates consist of smears and apologies, or intimidation and appeasement. The first is usually (though not exclusively) practiced by the liberals, the second by the conservatives.”

Feel free to comment. :-)

UPDATE: A few people suggested David Farrar might have switched the system off over at Kiwiblog. Not so, as David clarifies in the comments below:

    Not switched off but I keep adjusting the thresholds so you now need 50 negative votes to be hidden (not removed).
    “It is an experiment and not a very successful one at the moment as there seem to be around 40 or so people who vote on every comment.
    “The highlighting of very high scoring posts is working somewhat ok. Can be useful in a long thread.
    “I may keep adjusting the hide threshold upwards so no one can ever be hit with it. It is being abused too often.”

As it always will be. All new is not always all good.