Thanks to Graham Young for faxing me the article.
I have three comments to make about this article:
1. Michael Warby is no slouch when it comes to character assasination himself.
2. He belabours one essential point for the whole length of an article.
3. He seems to believe that opinions are formed independently from the person
forming them and therefore are no reflection on them.
Trudy
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
IPA Review
May 14, 1999
Low tactics mar towering opinions
How to abuse the public debate
by Michael Warby
Noel Pearson has the courage and political maturityto speak out against the
adverse effects of welfare on indigenous Australians and what is his reward?
Personal abuse by Pat O'Shane {"Pain but no gain for Aborigines on Pearson's
posture’, Opinion, May 11).
O'Shane agrees there are deleterious effects wrought on people by the uncritical
applicationof welfare policies. She also agrees we need critical analysis of
such policies and cannot resist drawing our attention to her own past soundness
in this regard.
But suppose Pearson was completely wrong in what he said, what would that imply
about him as a person? Absolutely
nothing.
Yet 0’Shane, like many Australians commentators, apparently cannot separate
disagreement about ideas from personal
attack. Such personal abuse is hardly a necessary part of public debate.
One can disagree with someone about an issue – even think their ideas or
policies are stupid – without it following that you think they lack intellectual
integrity or are morally deficient.
Indeed, since the quality of an opinion and the quality of a character are
completely independent. even if you proved someone was a creep without any sense
of personal
honour that would imply nothing at all about their opinions on any issue under
the sun. Even dishonourable creeps can be
completely correct about issues of public life.
So, such a debating style only makes sense if one somehow believes the quality
of a person does determine the quality of their opinions: if you believe that
proving X is a creep does indeed show X's opinion is wrong.
This is – except in those cases where a person’s behaviour casts doubt on
whether they believe what they say – a very strange thing to believe.
But, suppose you do believe such a thing, what does it imply? That opinions
maketh the person.
So a person with good opinions is a good person. Displaying good opinions is
proof you ate a good person and disagreeing with such opinions is proof you are
a bad one,
Suddenly, all is revealed.
What we see ln the behaviour of O’Shane and her ilk is a defence of their moral
assets.
If certain marker opinions show one’s status as a good person, to accept debate
about such opinions undermines their ability
to provide status because it raises doubt their worthiness. To preserve the
moral a and to punish transgressors, one is driven immediately to personal abuse
and attacks on integrity as argument style. The greater the moral vanity - the
greater the use of particular opinions to display your high moral status and to
mark yourself as a member of a moral vanguard - the greater the bitchiness and
personal nastiness to opponents.
Thus the self-identified progressives' fervent tendency to attempt to prove
opponents are racist, label them as traitors to their community or in any other
way mark them as people of no account - anything to avoid serious debate about
the issues.
This is an attitude deeply inimical to reasoned debate and the functioning of
democracy. It is the point neither the more simple-minded critics of political
correctness nor the people whose position might be characterised as anti-anti-PC
quite grasp.
It is perfectly true that, outside the academy, there has been no explicit
censorship of political incorrect opinions, though it is worth noting that
someone whose opinions are wellrepresented in public debate may not be aware of
how much contrary opinions are filtered out by various
gatekeepers.
There has been, however, a concerted attempt to delegitimise certain types of
opinion and to avoid debating issues on their
merits, a problem particularly rife for issues such as multiculturalism,
immigration, indigenous affairs and the environment.
This undermining of reasoned debate is the main harm that rampant moral vanity
and moral status-seeking - and the political correctness that flows from it -
have done
to pubic debate in Australia.
Use of personal abuse and unwarranted attacks on people's intellectual integrity
of the sort O’Shane has unleashed on Pearson are not contributions to debate but
attempt to close them down and to buttress the moral vanity of the abusers.
Michael Warby is editor of the IPA Review,
a quarterly magazine of public policy.
-------------------------------------------------------
RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at
http://www.mail-archive.com/
To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body
of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce
This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission
from the
copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under
the "fair
use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further
without
permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use."
RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/
