The Mistake You Make in Every Political Argument

fee. org/articles/the-mistake-you-make-in-every-political-argument/

It's a long article, but worth reading for everyone. I'm going to quote one part of it. This part deals with abortion, but only as an example. THIS IS NOT AN ARTICLE ABOUT ABORTION, it's an article about the structure of all political arguments. Abortion is just the obvious choice for an example because it's something everyone is an extremist about. You're either for or against, with little gray area. He uses other issues as examples elsewhere in the article. This is one of the best things I've read in a long time. Here's the quote, and you can see where he's going with this,

You’re Disagreeing Over Facts, Not Values

I’m going to illustrate using a concrete example—abortion. I choose it because it’s so divisive and, being so morally weighty, reveals the power of a proper understanding of the logical structure of political disagreement to influence an opponent’s position. Using terms loosely, let’s say Laurie is pro-life. She believes abortion is wrong because an embryo is a human life so aborting it is murder. For her, that is a matter of simple logic, as is the fact that anyone who would have an abortion is a murderer.

The syllogism that captures her conscious and sincere belief (even if she wouldn’t articulate it with this formality) is simple:

Premise (Moral value): The intentional killing of an innocent human being (murder) is evil. Premise (Empirical fact): Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. Conclusion: Abortion is evil.

And that’s a pretty watertight bit of logic, which explains reasonably why pro-lifers deem those who defend the right to abortion to be complicit in murder. (And to be fair to pro-lifers, why should anyone give a murderer the time of day—let alone the respect of a serious political discussion?)

But how does the issue look to Charlie, who is pro-choice?

Premise (Moral value): The use of force to prevent someone from making decisions governing their own body infringes upon their fundamental liberty. Premise (Empirical fact): Criminalizing abortion is the use of physical force (through law) to control someone’s body. Conclusion: Criminalizing abortion is an infringement of a fundamental liberty.

That’s a pretty watertight bit of logic too and explains why pro-choicers deem those who would lock them up for an abortion to be aggressing against them. (And to be fair to pro-choicers, why should anyone give someone that would deny your right to your own body the time of day—let alone the respect of a serious political discussion?)

To Laurie, Charlie is a murderer. To Charlie, Laurie is abusing government to infringe upon a fundamental liberty. To each, the other is doing something obviously and clearly wrong.

Each holds his or her view with the clarity that comes with clear facts and simple logic. For each, the argument is of the following form.

Premise (Moral value): A is bad (Murder is bad; controlling someone by force is bad). Premise (Empirical fact): B is an instance of A (Abortion is the taking of a human life; preventing abortion is controlling someone by force). Conclusion: B is wrong (Abortion is wrong; preventing abortion is wrong).

The critical point is that even in this massively morally charged discussion, the moral premise is not where the disagreement lies. And if you look closely at those two syllogisms, you can see that it can’t be—because the moral premises do not overlap. One is about murder; the other is about controlling someone by force.

In fact, Laurie can agree with Charlie’s moral premise, and Charlie can agree with Laurie’s. (Almost everyone agrees with both.) They just disagree on the relevance of the moral premise to the issue, and, as we shall see, that is because of something in the empirical premise."