Two recent posts on blogs I read regularly have been bothering me: most disturbing is Time for the West to Close its Borders to Muslim Immigrants over at The Kvetcher, and the other one is DadaHead's post linking to Prof. Brian Leiter's "This is how we shall preach to the converted" manifesto.

I'll take on Leiter's first, because it lays the foundation for my response to the other post. Sayeth Leiter:
block|
It has, on occasion, been noted that gentleness is not the hallmark of my postings on this blog, at least on matters of a political nature … When it comes to politics … reasons and evidence appear to play almost no role in changing anyone's views.

… I am sometimes presented with the following criticism: "Your rhetorical style won't persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with you." That is no doubt true, but, as we've just remarked, it is quite rare to persuade anyone by a careful, reasoned argument …

I shall let the readers in on a secret (though I suspect it is obvious to my regular readers): I am not interested in persuading anyone. … my goal in posting on various political topics is simply to alert like-minded readers to ideas and evidence and arguments which help strengthen their convictions regarding the truths they've already understood or glimpsed, as well as to give some expression to our collective outrage and dismay. I really wish that the unlike-minded folks would simply "go away."
|block
<br>
Not that I can fault a particular personal web-page philosophy, but I think my regular readers know that this is pretty much the exact opposite of this blog's philosophy. I'll take on any argument which, in my private discourse, I might disdain because it's 'stupid' or 'evil.' And do you know why? Because John Stuart Mill told me to, that's why:
block|
There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right…

<i>–J. S. Mill in On Liberty</i>
|block
<br>
No matter how wrong we may think a particular argument, we really should, at some point, address why this argument is wrong. Because to do otherwise merely mirrors the axiomatic belief system of your 'stupid' and 'evil' rhetorical opponents. If we dismiss a point, there ought to be a reason for it.

Clearly not everyone is interested in taking up the obvious case (Elephant has a great dismissive technique–he just declares things "not interesting," which means he doesn't feel like going through the motions of arguing them). But I've noticed two things about myself, which, I suppose, separate me from most people:

1) I don't really ever get tired of arguing, and 2) I come to political and philosophical conclusions by questioning my basic assumptions about an issue and arguing both sides in my head.

Naturally, this leads me to write really long blog posts where I lay out cases for claims my fellows on the left would consider obvious; e.g., why the War in Iraq, racial profiling, or Britney Spears are wrong. (Oops, that Britney Spears post isn't public yet. But someday, when I run out of other stuff, I'll put it up here.)

As Leiter says, "it is quite rare to persuade anyone by a careful, reasoned argument" — and that's true, except that the person I'm most interested in convincing of any particular argument <b>is myself</b>. Let your karma run over your dogma, in bumper-sticker parlance: your concept of truth is worthless if it remains untested. As worthless as your adversary's untested reasoning. Mill concieved of a capital-T-truth which is robust and does not shy away from proof.

Although Leiter is right that successful rational persuasion may be rare, it's not impossible (you need to argue harder, Brian! Just kidding). I convince people by rational argument all the time, although admittedly part of this is that I don't waste my time arguing with what I understand as <i>pervasively irrational people</i>. Absurd <b>people</b> may be rhetorically immovable, but absurd <b>arguments</b> are not only debatable but refutable. Now, is the most carefully reasoned argument going to sway those hypothetical conservative trodglodytes? Probably not. But if you exclusively preach to the converted, you'll never make any converts–and conversion happens all the time.

Call it a delusion of grandeur, but my hope for this blog and the arguments I make here is that <i>somewhere, someone</i> will walk into a bar armed with one of my arguments and use it to convince not some right-winger, but a moderate of weak convictions who overhears their debate.

As I was looking up a certain Latin phrase for the title to this post, I came across this great repository of Latin words and phrases. The alternative title (rejected on the basis on length) is, <i>sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probat</i> — "A wise man declares nothing true unless he can prove it." It's for this reason that I go trolling on right-wing sites for arguments to refute–the worst of thing for a democracy is an unchallenged assertion.

And again, the Golden Rule: if we wish civility to return to public discourse, we have to start. We can't wait for those <b>pieces of shit across the imaginary aisle</b> to start treating us nicely.

So, let me don my "Captain Obvious" cap and turn the death-ray of reason upon my friend Kelsey's assertion that it is " Time for the West to Close its Borders to Muslim Immigrants."

There are six basic reasons why this <operationally speaking</b> is a bad idea.

1. There are already 5-8 million Muslims in the US alone, with tens of millions more throughout the West (and the East, for that matter). As London proved, we are perfectly capable of breeding Islamist terrorists in our own country.

2. The effect of racist official policy is to radicalize moderate Muslims–yes, even those we formerly called our allies. Now, often I will hear people say that they will hate us no matter what we do because we're America and they hate our freedoms (it really, really steams me when liberals make this argument, by the way). This is the kind of thing that becomes increasingly easy to say the less actual Muslims you know. But, if you were to, I dunno, <b>ask them</b>, as detailed in this Washington Post article from 2004 (emphasis mine):
block|
"What we're seeing now is a disturbing sympathy with al Qaeda coupled with resentment toward the United States, and we ought to be extremely troubled by that," said Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor who commissioned one of the surveys.

The other survey, titled "Impressions of America," charts a dramatic overall decline in positive views by comparing current attitudes with those sampled in April 2002.

"In 2002, the single policy issue that drove opinion was the Palestinians; now it's Iraq and <big><b>America's treatment, here and abroad, of Arabs and Muslims</b></big>," said James Zogby, who commissioned the report with the Arab American Institute.

In Zogby's 2002 survey, 76 percent of Egyptians had a negative attitude toward the United States, compared with 98 percent this year. In Morocco, 61 percent viewed the country unfavorably in 2002, but in two years, that number has jumped to 88 percent. In Saudi Arabia, such responses rose from 87 percent in 2002 to 94 percent in June. Attitudes were virtually unchanged in Lebanon but improved slightly in the UAE, from 87 percent who said in 2002 that they disliked the United States to 73 percent this year.

Those polled said their opinions were shaped by U.S. policies, rather than by values or culture. When asked: "What is the first thought when you hear 'America'?" respondents overwhelmingly said: "Unfair foreign policy."
|block

Whenever I hear the canard that "the will hate us no matter what we do," I try to remind people that we actually prompted the remaining 22% of Egyptians to switch sides against us <b>in two years, flat</b>.

3. Stopping legal immigration has the effect of punishing moderate, well-intentioned Muslims, while it does comparatively little to stop the illegal immigration of terrorists, who will find a way in no matter what. Now, if one of your base assumptions (and I mean base in two ways) is that <i>all Muslims want to kill us</i>, this point doesn't matter as much as the next one, which is that

4. "Stopping Muslim immigration" is a poor, poor substitute for actual national security measures. And the reason is that al-Qaeda was neither the first, nor will it be the last terrorist group concerned with American soft targets. It isn't just that successful terrorist acts breed copycats, and sympathizers, but also groups looking for cover.

To explain the last point, remember the anthrax incidents? They killed several people and shut down the Capitol building. The FBI profile pointed towards domestic terrorists who tried to cover their tracks by claiming they were Muslims when careful analysis shows they're probably just right-wingers who hate liberal Congressmen. What about that kid who crashed a small plane into an office tower in Florida? Or Oklahoma City? Or Eric Rudolph?

5. It would totally and completely undermine all of our (admittedly sparse) overtures toward the Muslim world, and put the lie to our claims of moral superiority.

6. There are an estimated 19 million refugees around the world, many of them Muslims fleeing nominally Muslim states. Compare the hundreds of thousands who died (and are dying) in the Sudanese holocaust to less than two thousand killed by terrorism in the US. But then, we all know that American lives are intrisically worth more than anybody else's, right?

In closing, let me leave you with the motto of the Confederacy: "DEO VINDICE," which meant, "<b>God will prove us right.</b>"