Is Political Moderation Overrated?

The Wisdom of Crowds, a Substack website, blog, email newsletter and podcast featuring Shadi Hamid, a Washington Post columnist and editorial board member, and Damir Marusic, an opinion editor at the paper, has a distinctive ethos: it’s against consensus. It doesn’t consider political polarization bad. Even though it regards agreement as nice, it argues that disagreement is better.

We inhabit a society that tends to regard civility, compromise, conciliation and consensus as positive goods. “Live and let live” might be our national motto. Such an approach has, over all, served this country well.

At a time when the political center appears to be shrinking and extremes seem to be gaining, when a kind of political and ideological tribalism looks to be ascendant, many fear, with good reason, that this country’s ability to sustain tolerance is ebbing.

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Hamid and Marusic consider calls for forbearance and broad-mindedness misguided. In their view, there is no substitute for heated debate and argument. Only by confronting opposing opinions can we truly understand what’s at stake in a controversy.

What’s worse than heated, even bitter, argument is for groups that differ to retreat into their own ideological bubbles.

As the two Substackers note, a prolonged period of unprecedented tranquility within Western societies has ended. Our holiday from history is now over as the American-led world order frays. The world, we increasingly recognize, “is dangerous and unforgiving” and all of us must “prepare for the storm clouds that are coming.”

Why do Hamid and Marusic believe that civility and consensus are overrated?

For one thing, because “consensus is only possible in homogeneous societies with a strong, shared national identity, something that most Western democracies can no longer claim.” Diverse, heterogeneous, democratic societies inevitably harbor deep disagreements over core values and public policies.

Secondly, the pursuit of or insistence upon consensus is often dangerously coercive. We may be able to suppress or silence dissenting opinions and alternate perspectives, but that doesn’t make those ideas go away. As one of the two puts this, “Foundational disagreements cannot be transcended through sheer force of will.”

Third, they regard polarization as the only effective “tonic for complacency.” Democracy, in their view, “is messy and unwieldy, just as it should be.” Dissent and independent thought are essential if dogmatism, partiality, bias and narrow-mindedness are to be exposed and overcome.

Their goal—which should be our goal as teachers—is “to develop an ethos and sensibility among people who are like-minded only in the sense that they value unfettered, contentious, but still vaguely respectful debate around foundational questions.” Only frank, forthright, free and unfettered debate can open minds and challenge entrenched beliefs.

In my opinion, we, as classroom teachers, should follow their example. Our job is to help students confront, clarify and refine their deeply felt convictions and explore the reasons for our differences of opinion, whether these are rooted in culture, religion or “seemingly irreconcilable visions of the world.”

In an earlier posting, I wrote in favor of agonism, the idea that that conflict and difference are inherent in social and political life and that the tension between opposing points of view can be productive. Rather than viewing conflicts in values as problems to be resolved, agonism suggests they can be channeled in productive ways that enrich and invigorate our thinking. The goal isn’t to defeat, erase or marginalize our adversaries’ views, but to engage with them.

We should follow the advice of the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe and embrace the reality that democratic societies must recognize and accommodate a plurality of conflicting interests and identities. In contrast to theories of deliberative democracy, which seeks to transcend or resolve political differences through rational discussion, agonism does not believe that such disagreements can be settled.

All very well in the abstract, you might say, but how to we put this into practice in our classrooms? How do we address student sensitivities and their sense of discomfort when they encounter ideas and opinions that they regard as odious, offensive, loathsome or repugnant?

To better understand how we might do this, I picked up Say the Right Thing, two law professors’ advice about “How to Talk About Identity, Diversity and Justice.” With its frequent references to allyship and privilege and a whole chapter describing how to properly apologize for verbal missteps (acknowledge the harm, accept responsibility, demonstrate contrition and take action to correct the harm), some readers will surely dismiss the book as the politically correct guide to progressive speech orthodoxies.

I think it’s better understood as a no-nonsense instruction manual about how to discuss highly charged issues in a considerate, diplomatic, respectful yet pointed manner.

The authors, Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, describe their book as a shame-free guide for navigating difficult conversations about race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality at a hypersensitive moment when it is extraordinarily easy to offend, wound or affront others.

As the authors point out, whenever we feel shamed or embarrassed, we tend to respond in unproductive ways: through avoidance, deflection, denial or attack.

Some of the advice might strike some readers as extreme or extravagant or over-the-top. Should someone be shamed for using the phrase “sex-change surgery” instead of “gender-confirmation surgery”?

But much of the advice strikes me as well taken:

• Be generous. Don’t assume ill intent or malice on the part of those who disagree with us.
• Avoid smugness or self-righteousness. Separate an idea from the person who said it and the impact of an idea from the speaker’s intent.

I like some of their practical advice.

• To encourage all students to participate in a discussion, consider asking students to write down a question or comment.
• Don’t patronize. Ask students whether they want your help or advice.
• Paraphrase what you hear a student say: “To make sure I heard you correctly, did you just say ____?” Or, “You’re suggesting _____. Is that right?”
• Ask students to elaborate: “Can you help me understand how you came to that view?”
• Encourage students to educate their classmate, perhaps using the following approach: “I feel differently about that issue. Can I share my perspective?”
• When students feel discomfited or uneasy about something they heard in class, urge them to voice their concern: “I felt uncomfortable about what you just said, because …”
• Show how your own views have evolved: “I used to agree with that view, but after reading _____, I changed my mind.”

The authors offer advice that would certainly make classroom discussions more productive.

• Ask your students: Is a particular disagreement a matter of factual or policy differences or over something else, for example, priorities?
• Ask whether there are any points of commonality or agreement despite any remaining differences.
• Encourage your students to acknowledge ignorance and consider how their gut reaction to an issue might reflect a lack of knowledge about an opposing point of view.
• Locate disagreements on a controversy scale, in which some disagreements are considered acceptable and others are explosive and likely to turn ugly, then ask why the difference of opinion is so heated.
• Urge students to adopt a learning posture by listening generously to their classmates’ perspective.

When I taught at Columbia, I quickly discovered that students had very different styles of argumentation, evident in tone, volume, body language, intensity and directness or explicitness. There was a distinctly New York style: some students were verbally aggressive, adversarial, hostile, antagonistic, competitive and forthright; they argued to win. Others deployed what we might call a Midwestern style, phrasing their arguments indirectly, circuitously and tentatively, typically as questions.

Each style has its strengths and weaknesses. Those with a more oblique, open-ended approach tended to view their more insistent classmates as rude, disrespectful, impolite and boorish, while the more forceful students considered their more reserved or diffident peers as inhibited, deferential, evasive and unforthcoming.

My challenge was, first, to get my students to become more accepting of their classmates’ very different verbal styles—to recognize that neither style was preferable to the other. Then I had to help my students embrace approaches that were less argumentative and more analytic and that placed a premium on persuasion rather than browbeating, hectoring, expounding or speechifying.

You might consider the philosopher Stephen Toulmin’s approach to critically evaluating an argument’s strength, validity and potential weaknesses.

Step 1 is to identify the argument that the arguer wants to prove. Then, Step 2, examine the evidence and other reasons that the arguer uses to support that claim. Step 3 is to ask whether the evidence does in fact support the argument and whether the argument needs to be qualified. Finally, Step 4 asks how the arguer handles objections and counterarguments.

In other words, I had to make students understand that my classroom was not a debate society, but rather a place for shared inquiry and problem-solving.

My goal was not, however, to reach a consensus, unanimity or like-mindedness. The New York Times editor John B. Oakes once said that “Diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of democracy.” Whether that’s true or not, differences of opinion and interpretation are certainly the humanities’ animating force. Our goal as instructors is not to impose a false consensus, but to create an environment in which a thousand flowers will bloom in the pursuit not of truth, but of insight.