Four Myths About Debating Politics

I’ve spent my career talking about politics, discussing politics, and publicly debating politics. I’ve debated CNN’s Piers Morgan, chatted illegal immigration with CNN’s Sally Kohn, come to rhetorical blows with members of the Black Lives Matter movement, talked minimum wage with a Seattle City Council socialist, argued the vagaries of government healthcare with Cenk Uygur, discussed atheism with Sam Harris, disputed abortion with radical feminists, talked religious liberty with atheist professors and liberal pastors, duked it out with both Antifa and Alt-Right protesters, and smacked down biased mainstream media hosts.

Because I debate so often, the question I’m asked most is how to debate. What are the best strategies? What information should people learn in order to debate more effectively? What facts and figures must they memorize?

But before you get into the weeds of various political topics, it’s first necessary to understand a few things about debating itself — a practice that’s widely misunderstand in the current cultural climate. Below are four common myths about debate.

Myth 1: Every conversation is worth having.

Fact: Pick your battles.

You don’t have to debate everybody — that makes you annoying. You don’t have to shut down debates if you think you’re going to lose: it’s losing that makes you more likely to bone up for your next debate. But you do have to decide what the purpose of a debate is.

If you’re engaging in a purposeless debate, you’re wasting your life, your opponents’ life, and your emotional and mental energy. You’d be better off reading, watching TV, or — if you’re arguing with a college professor responsible for your grade — smacking yourself in the head with a hammer.

The purpose of a debate can generally be boiled down to one question: Who’s the audience?

Your opponent is almost never the audience. If your opponent is the audience, first decide whether your opponent is open to being convinced. If not, you’re wasting your time unless you’re just practicing debate to hone your skills.

If the audience consists of third parties watching the debate, then your goal is to convince them. That means determining what they are looking for and calibrating your argumentative style to them. Some audiences just want a debate on content; others are looking for punch-throwing. It’s up to you to determine which tactics to use.

Myth 2: Don’t argue character, argue fact.

Fact: Argue character so you can get to fact.

You’ll constantly hear when learning about debate that you should never argue character. That’s a wonderful idea in an ideal world in which your opponent doesn’t argue character. But when arguing with people on the left, that’s almost never the case. That’s because the Left’s entire rhetorical playbook rests on character arguments. And character arguments always defeat content arguments.

Imagine this scenario. You’re talking about racism in policing, and you begin citing statistics demonstrating that the proportion of people in prison by race reflects crime reports. Your opponent immediately labels you a racist.

You have two tactics.

First, you could argue that the statistics show that this person is wrong, that you are not a racist, and that you have said nothing racist.

Second, you could simply say, “Stop being an ass. You’re calling me a racist without evidence, and that makes you an ass.”

The first tactic is bound to lose the argument. That’s because it’s inherently unreasonable for your opponent to call you a racist — and if you countenance the argument that you are a racist, you are calling your opponent reasonable, which means that he is reasonably calling you a racist, which means you could be a racist. It’s self-defeating.

Calling your opponent an ass is factually correct, particularly since you have backed up your allegation. It also removes the character argument as a tool for use by your opponent, reducing him or her to arguing fact. And once you can argue facts with a leftist, you’re likely to cruise to a relatively easy victory.

Myth 3: Always take the high road.

Fact: Change your tactics depending on your opponent.

Your mother always told you that in an argument, you ought to take the high road. Your mother would have made an awful debater. Ask Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or the other 12 Republicans who were on stage with Donald Trump in the Republican primaries of 2016. Taking the high road is all fun and games until your opponent places a rhetorical IED.

In debate, ability to shift tactics is necessary. You can’t debate protesters — you can only mock them. You can’t out-argue somebody who is trying to out-macho you. You must be prepared for anything, which means you must have an arsenal of verbal weapons at your disposal.

Trump’s chief tactic was bulldozing his opposition, giving the impression of power and knowledge. His opponents shouldn’t have argued around him. They should have gone right at him, aggressively. For strategic reasons, they didn’t. And so they lost.

The high road will only work with a small coterie of analysts. But it won’t work with the general public, since people respond viscerally not merely to argument but to the attitude of the argument. Confidence, aggression — these are tactics not to be left in the locker room if your opponent chooses to wield a mace instead of a rapier.

Myth 4: You must know everything to win a debate.

Fact: You must know your principles — and your opponents’.

You don’t have to know everything about everything in order to debate (but it helps). You won’t have read every study ever published; you won’t be familiar with every counterargument. But contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to be. You can win a debate without knowing every historical and statistical fact that supports your every political view. The way to win a debate is to know your opponents’ arguments better than they do — and know your own principles better than they do.

If your opponent brings up a fact you don’t know, you’re perfectly within your rights to simply state, “I didn’t know that — I’ll have to look it up and confirm, and if you’re right, I’ll be happy to change my opinion or view on the issue.”

Ignorance isn’t a gotcha. Ignorance of principle is a gotcha.

That means you should be sure of everything you say. Don’t go out on a limb. Don’t say things like “I’ve heard that” or “somebody once told me.” Know your sources. Know what you know. And what you don’t know, defer. That’s honest and factually correct. You can’t be caught with your pants down unless you pull them down yourself.

Besides, principle arguments tend to work better than reciting litanies of statistics. That means you should always know why you’re arguing what you’re arguing — and boil down your philosophy to several central principles that hold together in coherent fashion. That’s the research that matters most: finding your value system and holding to it.