My three sons have been high school debaters with four state titles between them. They’ve been trained to marshal facts and respond to countervailing opinion with clear-eyed, irrefutable truth.
It has often won the day, although I wonder whether it’s a skill no longer needed.
I’ve spent my career chasing facts. I try to boil info down to the source: How do you know that? Who said that? Did you actually see it? Or did someone tell someone who told you?
But with recent events, I’ve wondered: Do facts matter any more?
I called Edward Panetta, a UGA communications professor who led debate teams for nearly 30 years and was National Debate Coach of the Year.
Facts still matter, he said, but he has noticed a change in students through the decades.
“Technology has made them more knowledgeable, but less well-read,” he said. “Now they know a lot and can focus more deeply. But they don’t have the wider knowledge.
“They’ve been taught to study but haven’t necessarily been taught how to think.”
In debate, every argument has a claim (your position on an issue), data (the backing evidence) and a warrant (why the data proves the claim — or at least does so for rational people.)
“Every argument should have a truth you should be able to articulate,” Panetta said. “Most people can make claims but can’t articulate the guts that they think make up that claim.”
Butting heads in honest debate performs a service, he said.
“Be willing to risk yourself and test your ideas with people who are smart and who can test your ideas,” Panetta said. “But we don’t do that anymore.”
I called Michael Hester, longtime debate coach of University of West Georgia, a school with a history of national success. That success goes back to the 1970s with a debate coach named Chester Gibson, who also helped hone the skills of an ambitious history professor there named Newt Gingrich.
I asked Hester whether the truth matters in public discussion.
“No way,” he shot back. “On rhetoric we don’t talk about truth, we talk about framing. It’s how you say it. People make up their minds before they go through the fact gathering. And the niche marketing of media means everyone has a version of the truth.”
Structured debate is, of course, different from public discourse.
“The ability to say whatever you want doesn’t work like it does in politics,” Hester said. “It’s a bit scary. I don’t know where the bar is now.”
What he does see, like Panetta, is deeper knowledge, but not wider wisdom.
Before, when researching a topic, you’d go to the library and read magazine articles and books and absorb a wider cache of information and understand subjects more deeply.
“Now I type into Google, ‘Arguments against NAFTA.’ It serves as an artificial intelligence,” he said.
I called Drew Westen, an Emory psychology prof and author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”
Westen’s research shows that if people supported a candidate, they were virtually unable to change that opinion — facts be damned. They know who they want in their gut, “and now if you can get sources to support that feeling, then you’ve bolstered that 1,000 percent.”
When picking a candidate, it comes down to two basics, he said: Do you understand and care about people like me? And do you share my values?
“If so,” said Westen. “We don’t care about the minutia.”
Westen pointed out that in an early Republican debate, Donald Trump talked about campaign donations and articulated a “truth” that under-girded just about everything that went forth.
“I give to everybody,” Trump said. “When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That’s a broken system.”
He pointed out Jeb Bush, the ultimate insider, raised $100 million and “that means he’s doing favors for so many people.”
So Trump’s “I bought guys like you” took hold and anything else after that didn’t matter to many voters.
Westen said Democrats have long abided by the advice of consultant Robert Shrum, who was an outstanding college debater.
“He advised to get as many facts out there to convince people of your argument,” Westen said. “He relentlessly got Democrats to memorize as many facts as he could. He got the logos but never got the pathos.
“So, in a way,” Westen said, “high school and college debate caused Democrats to lose elections.”
Finally, I called Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory professor and author who is the subject of the recent movie “Denial.”
In 1996, she was sued by a British author after she portrayed him as a Holocaust denier. During a trial, (the burden of proof in England in libel falls to the defendant) she did just that. She proved the Holocaust happened and the Brit was a prevaricator.
“There are some facts that are simply true,” she told me. “The world is not flat. Slavery happened. World War II happened.”
“We are seeing lies masked as opinion,” she said. “Stephen Colbert called it truthiness — if I believe it, it must be true.”
Case in point, Lipstadt pointed to our own Newt Gingrich on CNN after Trump’s nomination.
The CNN reporter suggested Trump was overselling fear. “Violent crime across the country is down,” she said. “We’re not under siege.”
Gingrich waved that off: “The average American, I will bet you this morning, does not think crime is down, does not think they are safer.
Reporter: “But we are safer and it is down.”
Gingrich: “No, that’s your view.”
Reporter: “It’s a fact.”
Gingrich: “The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right, but it’s not where human beings are. People are frightened.”
The reporter noted figures from the FBI — no liberal bastion — say crime is down.
Gingrich: “No, but what I said is equally true. People feel it.”
Reporter: “They feel it, yes, but the facts don’t support it.”
Gingrich: “As a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel and I’ll let you go with the theoriticians.”
