About seven score and twelve years ago, a man was president who nearly always carried with him a set of Shakespeare’s plays, which helped this man absorb the power of rhetorical persuasion.
This man, Abraham Lincoln, understood that reason and argument, combined with eloquence in speech and delivery, could transform a nation and bring progress and prosperity. He studied the best ideas from the best thinkers. This nation was born from reason, from fruitful debate, and most importantly, from disagreement. The Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates during the framing of the Constitution and the Lincoln/Douglas debates in 1858 are just two examples of major rhetorical events in our nation’s history. Our country has been formed by rhetoric and debate, with firm argument the backbone of our political and cultural development.
Now fast forward to 21st century America, where rhetorical argument is all but gone and is replaced with Tumblr blogs and Internet memes.
Today’s internet-obsessed culture has brought major changes in how we argue, especially among the current generation of college students. We spend so much time hiding behind screens, commenting on articles and sharing our thoughts in less than 140 characters that we seem to think that the real world ought to work the same way. We begin to engage in the real world the same way many of us engage in the virtual world: without any rationality or maturity.
We make our points by banning things. We automatically call ideas we disagree with “hate speech,” and people we disagree with “bigots.” We burn city blocks to the ground. Ultimately, we act like kindergarteners.
We can choose to act like kindergarteners on the Internet. That’s fine. But the problem is that we have started acting like kindergarteners everywhere else too. We no longer know how to maturely respond to things that we disagree with, so we either call for something to be banned, like the Confederate flag that went from historical artifact to pariah in less than a week; destroy or boycott something, like someone’s small business; or call people names.
We have become so detached from reality and have regressed so much intellectually that, unable to effectively attack ideas, we attack pretty much everything else. It works on the Internet: on Facebook and Twitter we can choose to block the stuff that makes us upset. On Tumblr and Reddit we can launch the bigot card at people we disagree with rather than engage their ideas.
I wonder how different history would be if, instead of engaging with his opponent’s arguments and learning from his own failures, Abraham Lincoln just shouted “bigot” at everyone who disagreed with him. We have lost the art of rhetorical persuasion, and the only thing we seem capable of is screaming and shouting. We need to rediscover this classical art and start maturely disagreeing with people. Disagreement and debate once made this country great. It’s time to get beyond our phase of tantrums and name-calling.
Joe Puchner is a senior majoring in Spanish and mathematics. His column runs biweekly.
