It’s good to find common ground with folks who differ from us when possible in our polarized day.
Let me attempt to do that with Mr. Carlton’s column from last week (“The Debate over Debates.”)
I have known Roger for years and consider him a friend. We do, however, have differing worldviews – and thus, different perspectives on many political/societal issues.
I understood the primary point of Carlton’s column to be that debate is good and necessary for healthy democratic countries. I might quibble with the specifics in his column, but I wholeheartedly embrace this premise and desire to see it consistently applied.
One of the main problems in our day is a lack of understanding rhetoric. Many Americans can’t follow the logic of an argument to help them turn away from error and to truth.
We need to learn rhetoric and logic. My oldest son has been privileged to take online classes in his final year of high school. His rhetoric teacher had the class go through the recently leaked Supreme Court decision to see Justice Alito’s many uses of classical rhetoric.
Early in the document, Alito wrote, “In defending this law, the State’s primary argument is that we should reconsider and allow each State to regulate abortion as its citizens wish.” So their main argument to overturn Roe v. Wade is to send the debate of this highly-contentious issue back to the states, where the citizens actually have a voice.
The White House says this would undermine federal law. The problem with that argument is that federal legislature never legalized abortion; it was an overreach of a previous Court.
Responding to the document, Biden said, “The idea that we’re going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child, based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard…”
The main premise of his statement is blatant disinformation. It’s the kind of falsehood that Biden’s “Disinformation Governance Board” will never correct. That’s the danger with any biased entity attempting to police free speech; it skews good debate, obscuring the truth.
The truth is that overturning Roe v. Wade won’t ban any abortions; it will give the right to allow/restrict abortions back to each state. While I think abortion should be abolished and criminalized, this leaked opinion will not do either. It probably won’t even reduce the number of abortions much, since most abortions already occur in states where they will continue to be available.
But, let’s give Biden credit for truth-telling in part of his statement. He admits that what’s aborted is “a child.” This truth – which is the heart of the abortion debate – is usually avoided by liberals. Typically this truth is hidden behind euphemisms like “my body, my choice” (however, the “child’s” body isn’t the woman’s body).
Let’s engage in this debate with civility. Anyone can be persuaded by truth if they are willing to follow the logic of a good argument and if we can make one.
Scott Kamps writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, thestableguy@frontier.com.