Like many of us, I appreciate Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL). I also appreciate Michael Moore. I think Moore's film SiCKO set the stage for health care reform. Rep. Grayson returned to that core and, like Moore, didn't back down from criticism. Both men know how to make good arguments.
Unlike some, I don't see what either does in terms of "kicking ass," "smacking down," or "out-bullying bullies." It's easy to misread their arguments that way; it's confirmation bias and it's one of the ways we stop ourselves from learning new ideas. Nor are their arguments merely about "telling the truth," although both try to do that. Their genius is that neither simply invites his audience to be "right." They invite their audiences to be "good."
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Two Good Arguments (Non-Cynical Saturday)
This week Morning Feature has looked at arguments, which I've defined as "dialogues with the intent of finding and agreeing on better solutions for problems." Arguments are not always adversarial debates with different speakers taking opposing positions; sometimes arguments are collaborative, with speakers helping each other to craft the best position they can. They can and often should be passionate, but they needn't be bitter or ugly. Thursday we explored why we, as citizens in a democratic society, have a civic duty of political argument. Yesterday we look at six common bad arguments. Today we'll consider two good ones.
First, though, I'll explain why I don't look at Rep. Alan Grayson's or filmmaker Michael Moore's arguments as "kicking ass," "smacking down," or "out-bullying bullies." Those violent metaphors reinforce one of the most common bad arguments we discussed yesterday: I May Not Be Right, But I'm Dangerous. That is a dominance-based argument whose subtext is "Submit or I'll hurt you." We see that argument almost daily on cable news and elsewhere. When our side seems to come out on top, we may cheer. When their side seems to come out on top, we call it bullying. It's bullying, both ways.
Neither Rep. Grayson nor Moore seems like a bully to me. Both learned to make good arguments, to lead "dialogues with the intent of finding and agreeing on better solutions for problems."
Most people want to be good.
The key to that is the phrase "better solutions." The word "better," as we all learned in school, is the comparative form of "good." That's what both Moore and Grayson invite their audiences to be. Not just "strong," although both certainly have the moral strength to withstand criticism. And not just "right" either, although both to cite true facts and draw logical inferences. Their arguments express moral value-statements, and by so doing they invite their audiences to be "good."
And most people want to be good, or to believe they're good. We can't always be right, no matter how diligently we research. Some facts remain out of reach, and often they turn out to be critical. We can try our best and still reach wrong answers for lack of information. Nor can we always be strong, or at least not strong enough. We all have our moments of weakness, from exhaustion, injury, illness, or just that in that moment something hit a raw emotional nerve. At some level, we know we can't be right all the time, or strong enough all the time.
But we can be good, we hope. Being good is about our values, and we think of those as choices. If we choose good values and try to apply them as best we can, we're being good. If we don't have enough facts, or we fall short, at least we were trying to be good. When we believe we've done that, we don't have to be ashamed of that person in the mirror, even when we get bad outcomes. Life being what it is, we'll get some bad outcomes, inevitably. Trying to be good is our only real security against that.
"Who are we?"
Most of us have seen Moore's film SiCKO, and many of the people I've talked cite that question as the most powerful moment in the film. It comes right after the story of the mentally ill woman kicked out of a Los Angeles hospital and dumped at the curb in front of a shelter. The shelter's security cameras captured her wandering the sidewalk and then into the street, obviously disoriented, until a shelter employee spotted her on the camera and went out to bring her inside. It's a gut-wrenching series of images because we've all felt that way: confused, disoriented, wandering, needing someone to take our hand and care for us. It's a story older than the Good Samaritan, and it resonates emotionally long before we process it analytically.
Indeed, Moore doesn't give us time to process it analytically. He jumps in with the core question of the film: "Who are we?" How can we as a society do this to each other? Would a moral society dump a confused and ill woman at the curb?
The tears that well up, even as I write this, can be easily mistaken for tears of anger. They're not. They're tears of shame. Throughout that film and Moore's entire body of work, but for me most poignantly in those grainy security camera images, we see a society that values profits over human life and dignity. We feel ashamed because that value-statement - "I value profits over human life and dignity" - is immoral, and because we share responsibility for a society built on that value-statement.
"It's very simple: we have a conscience."
Rep. Grayson used those words to introduce his address at the 2009 Florida Democratic Party convention. That wasn't the beginning of his speech; he began with some humor to warm up the audience, as if he needed to. But that's how he began the core of his address on what he believes it means to be a Democrat. "It's very simple: we have a conscience."
He then invites his audience to be good, continuing, "Everyone in this room who has a conscience, get on your feet." After a casual barb tossed at the opposition, he says, "When we see someone in need, someone who needs to see a doctor, someone who's hungry, when we see someone in need, something within us says 'I need to do something to help that person.' That spark within us is what makes us good people. And that's something we need to nurture."
Note that last sentence. Like Moore's question "Who are we," Rep. Grayson's argument expands morality from an individual issue to a social issue. It's not just about my own moral value-statements and what I do, but about the moral value-statements at the core of our societal structures and what we do. Like Moore, Rep. Grayson invites us to be responsible not only for our individual morality, but for the morality of our nation. If we as a nation don't try to help those in need as best we can, we're not being good and we should be ashamed.
Reasoning from that moral value-statement, Rep. Grayson can stand on the House floor and describe the Republican health care plan as "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." Reasoning from that moral value-statement, he can return to the House floor the following day and apologize, not to offended Republicans, but to people in need who get no help under our current health care system.
How can anyone disagree?
Many progressives watched Moore's films or Rep. Grayson's speeches, and wondered - sometimes aloud here on DKos - how could anyone disagree?
Of course, some in the media claimed Moore got some facts wrong, although if you fact-check their fact-checking you find his facts were correct or they are quibbling over trivial details. Likewise, some have claimed that Rep. Grayson was incorrect in describing the Republican health care plan (arguably true as they don't seem to have a plan), or quibbled at the statistics of how many people die each year in the U.S. because they can't get health care. Often conservatives rebut such arguments with the unverified and probably apocryphal tale of Harry, a man who supposedly died on a park bench in Britain because he was on a waiting list for national health care. We've seen conservative ads here on DKos, warning that government health care will work like the DMV.
Those ads are sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, and that should tell us something about why they disagree. The core moral value-statement that Michael Moore advocated in SiCKO, and Rep. Grayson advocated in his speech, is "I value human life and dignity over profits." Americans for Prosperity, not surprisingly given their name, base their arguments on the opposite value-statement: "I value profits over human life and dignity."
If you start from that second value-statement - "I value profits over human life and dignity" - the conservative arguments against health care reform are not illogical. Nor are their charges of "socialism," as they see any society that doesn't value profits over all else as "socialist." Health care reform, cap and trade, regulatory reform for the financial industry, unions, anything that doesn't value profits over all else is "socialism" as they define that term. All are the opposite of capitalism, where the core moral value-statement is "I value profits over human life and dignity."
To make good progressive arguments with friends, neighbors, colleagues, and family, we need to be explicit about our progressive moral value-statements, including "I value human life and dignity over profits." If we can reach agreement on our moral value-statements, it's far easier to make a fact-based policy argument. And if we can't reach agreement on our moral value-statements, all the facts in the world won't convince anyone.
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Happy Saturday!