Communicating Nose to Wall

Ben Bateman responded to this post in a way that deserves elevation above the comment section:

The communication gap runs deeper than most conservatives realize. The gap between right and left has grown to the point that they're effectively separate cultures. The problem is not just that right and left begin the discussion with different premises and arguments. Right and left don't even agree on how the discussion itself should work.

Western Culture has specific ideas about how we should resolve disputes. It starts with the idea that truth exists, and every reasonable person's goal is to act in accordance with it. The trouble is that people disagree about what the truth is on any particular subject. So we try to move closer to truth through intellectual discourse. We present facts and arguments. We try to persuade the other side and at the same time leave ourselves open to being persuaded. Ideally, we don't care whether our side wins or their side wins; what's important is that one side, and usually both sides, are better off from the effort because their opinions moved closer to truth.

This idea of intellectual discourse is one of the proudest achievements of Western Culture. It's so axiomatic to conservatives that they have trouble imagining how anyone could reject it. Yet it's almost unique to Western Culture. Most cultures do not share it. They believe that the side with more power will—and should—prevail in a dispute.

And a growing number of Americans agree with some form of that view. For decades it has been fashionable for academicians to deny that truth exists at all. They have convinced a great many Americans of that view, despite its obvious internal contradictions. A natural consequence of that idea is to destroy the traditional understanding of intellectual discourse. If truth doesn't exist, then there's no point in pursuing it. For these people, everything is about power, including conversation.

If your only goal is power, then it makes sense to pretend to engage in traditional intellectual discourse. Doing so softens up your targets and makes them more receptive to what you're going to say. But that doesn't mean you're actually participating in the discourse in the sense of opening your own mind up to what the other side is saying. You're like a missionary in darkest Africa: You're glad that the other side will let you try to convert them, but converting to their view is simply not possible.

Most liberals don't consciously agree that there is no such thing as truth, but they often believe it subconsciously or hold views that amount to the same thing: Truth is defined by whoever has the power; truth exists but we can't know anything about it; truth exists but it's different for each person; or truth exists but it doesn't matter in a moral sense. These and many variants amount to the proposition that truth doesn't exist. The mind's capacity for self-deception is limitless.

The painful conclusion for conservatives is that there's no point pretending to have a traditional intellectual conversation with someone who doesn't share your idea of what an intellectual conversation should be. They are not part of your culture; they have rejected it. They have embraced the much more primitive and historically common idea that the only important goal is power. If facts will get them power, they're happy to embrace them. But if the facts are inconvenient, then lies, half-truths, and personal insults will do just as well.

To keep your sanity as a conservative debating liberals, you need to be ready to rise above the specific topic and look at the conversation itself. You need a clear idea of the rules of traditional intellectual discourse. If the liberal you're talking to won't abide by those rules, dump 'em and find another one. As conservatives desperate to preserve the country, we don't want to admit to the depth of the divisions within it. We would like to imagine that every reasonable-sounding American shares our cultural traditions, especially those as fundamental a intellectual conversation. But the fact we can no longer ignore is that a great many do not.