Seriously, John Leo is great. I've been reading his columns since the eighth grade, when, as a computer lab aide in the school library, I got bored and started looking at magazines. As I flipped through U.S. News and World Report, I happened by his column, which is called "On Society." John Leo was probably complaining about the restrictive "speech codes" at a university somewhere, which is one of his favorite things to do (the other is to shed light on dopey laws). This week's Leo column is about arguing. In this day and age, Leo says, commentators, pundits, editorialists, and everyone of their ilk spend too much time preaching to the choir. He quotes P.J. O'Rourke (another stand-up guy) in this month's Atlantic Monthly: "Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, seems to have gone out of fashion with everyone." Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, and Al Franken aren't writing (or speaking) in order to persuade a group of people who don't think like them to think like them. Their audiences are people that already agree with them!

Leo laments the loss of "arguing," although I'd much rather call it "debate." In my mind, "arguing" is two people expressing their views to each other without any hope of persuasion. In a debate, each person is trying to persuade the other. The end result of this lack of debate is a lack of anything fundamental coming out of arguing. Rush complains about liberals. Michael Moore complains about Bush. Ann Coulter is an evil cyborg from Hell. Where does this all get us? Nowhere! Debate involves Hegelian dialectics: an idea (a thesis) and its opposite (an antithesis) combine, creating a new idea (synthesis). This is how history moves foward: ideas and their opposites coming together (compromising, to use a word that Rush hates) to form a new idea which retains parts of both old ideas. Instead of a fine mixture of new ideas, the culture of argument mixes as much as two cinder-blocks smashing together.

If we never put our opinions to the test of debate, how will we know if they're right or not? When I have an opinion, I perform the test described by Leo:

If we wish to be engaged in serious argument, Lasch explained, we must enter into another person's mental universe and put our own ideas at risk. Exactly. When a friend launches an argument and your rebuttal starts to sound tinny to your own ears, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out that something's wrong -- usually, that you don't really agree with the words coming out of your own mouth. Arguing can rescue us from our own half-formed opinions.

If I can't defend my own arguments, either morally or factually, then I immediately think there must be something wrong with my position. And I'll change it, if necessary. Our atmosphere of preaching to the choir works in a society where we're all the same -- but we're not. John Milton thought that no belief we held could be true until it stood the test of its antithesis. Want to test your chastity? It's not enough to say you're chaste: you have to test it in an unchaste environment (maybe when you're trapped in Comus's lair?). Learning the fine art of "convincing" is all but lost these days.

Entry #100! Woo!