Rhetoric Abuse

When people ask, especially on campus, why I'm not more politically active or politically inclined, my first instinct is to say that politics is not, or is no longer, about the rational discussion of issues but about labelling and rhetorical slander. It drives me up the wall that 'interested' groups, in the advocacy or criticism of issues, tend to refuse to engage the concerns of their opposites, and instead they invoke the language of moral superiority. The buzz-words of the partisans are thrown about willy-nilly, meaninglessly, even abusively-- and that in itself I find objectionable. Oh, you know the words: Anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, and on and on and on. Words like those should be used sparingly and precisely. Question anything about Israeli politics, for example, and the 'especially involved' will trot out the charge of anti-Semitism when that charge may or may not be valid-- but they do so with a kind of knee-jerk defensiveness that makes genuine debate impossible. It also suggests to me closed-mindedness and self-righteousness.

Here is a good case in point, a response to a column written by Liberal backbencher John Bryden. Admittedly, I find many of Bryden's assertions tenuous and bordering on the offensive, but he does raise some questions that should be more thoroughly discussed-- the question of judicial versus parliamentary law-making, the question of whether or not the application of the legal term 'marriage' to same-sex couples has broader implications than we might initially expect, the question of whether or not a child raised by parents of the same sex has any sort of deleterious effect, and so on. That last issue is more of a sticking point than one might suspect, not because homosexual couples are any less capable as parents, and there's no reason at all to think that being raised by two homosexual parents would be any more damaging (or beneficial, for that matter) than being raised by two heterosexual parents. But there remains the question of whether or not a child 'misses' something in not being raised by parents of both sexes (after all, so much of our understanding of sexuality and gender is learned in childhood by simply watching the way parents act and react), and whether or not 'missing' that is even all that important. There remains, too, the issue of the semblance of parody that I mentioned some time ago; clearly, Bryden is reacting in part to that, as many Canadians are. Bryden's article is not particularly persuasive to me, and I think he skirts around issues, but I think it's important to recognize two things: that he speaks for many who have concerns about what same-sex marriage legislation might carry with it (however much one may agree or disagree with him), and that this is an issue that has nasty tentacles to it, tentacles that reach into notions of the family, and they further problematize the always contentions relationship between human rights and religious-spiritual beliefs. There remains, too, the serious issue of whether or not such an issue should be defined by the courts (as the protectors of rights and freedoms, as spelled out in the Charter) or by the legislature (as the supposed spokespeople for the populace).

The respondent article, however, is an extended exercise in self-defensiveness, even if the letter writter at the end makes some important points. The web page throws out the charges of 'bigotry' and intolerance (complete with flashing image accusing Bryden of 'child abuse'), and the holier-than-thou association of Bryden and company with the Inquisition. But, at least as far as I can see, most of the criticism of Bryden is based on inferences about what he said rather than explicit statements per se; and just as the letter-writer makes the good point that to be judged based on one's sexuality is hurtful, so too is the page's (but not the letter-writer's, I should clarify) labelling of him, as is the general dismissal of any of his arguments. I should add one caveat: I don't know if there's any truth to the letter-writer's accusation about Bryden's personal remarks to individual constituents. That may be true, or it may be an exaggeration or even misunderstanding.

The thing is, I know John Bryden. I worked for him for a summer years ago, not in a political way, but as a historical researcher. Many of Bryden's views might be described as 'socially conservative' -- and some might say 'redneckish.' But he also represents a significant portion of society (as evidenced by the uproar in the Liberal caucus, not to mention recent opinion polls), and his concerns should not simply be branded with cheap rhetorical labels better saved for discussions where bigotry is more clearly, and more explicitly, the issue. The approach is manifestly pejorative rather than considered-- and, indeed, the irony is that in these two written cases there is a stronger air of 'intolerance' evident in the article claiming the intolerance of the other. But that is the way things are these days: our activists for tolerance of whatever form are often as guilty of intolerance (and righteous indignation) as those they oppose; theirs can be a Puritanism of a different sort, except it's a Puritanism guised as 'social enlightenment.' Archie Bunker was a bigot. Jesse Helms is a bigot. Strom Thurmond was. But I can't say the same applies to Mr Bryden, whether based on my knowledge of him or based on my reading of his article. If there is a bigotry there, it seems to me relatively latent, and perhaps Bryden's coming discussions of the issue may reveal this; but at this point, and based on what I've seen, the response is all-too-typical of the kind of knee-jerk moral-superiority that utterly disgusts me. Instead of engaging concerns and debating them, the tactic is instead to dismiss categorically and arrogantly. And I find that just as cheap and abusive as any form of bigotry, prejudice, or intolerance. To call someone a bigot or a misogynist or an anti-Semite or whatever is, more often than not, not an act of precise statement but an act of snide besmerchment that is often as offensive (and perhaps outright slanderous) as any social epithet. It's an act of dismissing someone as an ignorant social pariah, an act of outcasting as potentially heinous as the outcasting that closeted, oppressed, or otherwise subjugated countless people, mostly minorities, over the centuries. Yes, we should stand against intolerance and so forth, and we ought to call bigotry bigotry. There is, however, a difference between identifying and naming bigotry and brandishing the word so cavalierly that it loses its meaning-- and, worse, we become practitioners of the kind of stigmatization that we purport to denounce. Sadly, we live in a society all too given to casual stigmatization, as many have learned all too well and all too painfully.

This leads me to a larger point about political and ideological rhetoric: be careful what you say, and be careful how you label-- not just for the consequences to others, but for the consequences to yourself, lest you become just another version of that which you oppose, lest you become what I think the most insidious creature, the righteous hypocrite, the immovable figure that cares only about getting its own way and not about what is best or wisest or fairest.