Freedom in One Lesson

68.

The Case against Name-Calling

John Miltimore (2018) writes, “There are a great many logical fallacies we see in modern discourse. But of all fallacies, the ad hominem is king (and probably always will be).” Further, “the ad hominem has found particular prominence in the current age, which combines plummeting intelligence with instantaneous, character-limited communication. (A toxic mixture, indeed.)”

As someone who teaches many public-policy issues, my students and I frequently encounter these fallacies—arguments that attack the person rather than the argument. For instance, I explicitly make a point of saying that bad people can be right in an argument and good people can be wrong. I also note that while I do sometimes come to an ad hominem conclusion about someone involved in public policy, I do not make ad hominem arguments. I also teach students to raise their level of scrutiny when reading an argument by looking for such red flags, especially ad hominem fallacies found in the very first argument (given that authors usually consider this to be their most powerful argument).

My teaching and interest in the use of such arguments explains why I found Leonard Read’s “The Case against Name Calling” (Read 1964b), from the July 1964 Notes from FEE, of great interest. I believe it is worth anyone’s serious consideration.

Those individuals who urge the force of government to carry out their claim to ‘a fair share’ of your income are inclined to resent any and all opposition. They hurl such terms as ‘extremists’—with disparaging overtones—at those who dissent from their designs. These people who would communalize the product of all by coercion tend to smear their opponents. Name calling is part and parcel of their make-up.

When a policy gives benefits to one group and takes them away from others, most of us think it is unfair because those who enact the policy are supposed to serve the public rather than take from them. It becomes tempting to demonize these public servants to alleviate one’s qualms.

Name calling, however, is an unconquered tendency of many who should know better. Individuals who put their faith in freedom and who, by practice and discipline, have learned how to live by their precepts are sometimes stirred to anger, disgust, contempt, discouragement—yes, to name calling— when they see others violating the principles of simple justice which they hold to be proper. . . . [But] name calling is not simply noncorrective: it actually hardens the ‘so-and-so’s’ in their sins. . . . Is there a way, then, rationally, to avoid this . . . distemper?

In other words, those who believe in liberty should be better than coercionists. After all, libertarians do not want to “win” the ability to violate others’ rights to benefit their own special-interest group. We want to win, against a deluge of ad mercatus (against the market) assertions, their willingness to open their minds and hearts to everyone’s equal rights and the miracles that freedom can erect on that foundation.

Read follows up with an analogy to those who are color-blind or have less ability to detect various scents: we “hurl no invective” at them. Read argues that the “relative underdevelopment” of someone’s moral nature (which should consist of “an abstract sense of right and wrong, the enlightened concession that others have as much right to life, livelihood, liberty as one’s self, appreciation of the beautiful, awe, reverence, sense of duty or responsibility, sympathy, compassion, faith”) should not be attacked with name-calling either.

While nearly everyone in so-called higher civilizations will agree that the Golden Rule is a good maxim, only now and again can a person be found who has a sense of justice adequate to its daily practice. Merely reflect on . . . “leaders” who call on the police powers of government for forcibly take from some that theory own compassions may be satisfied. Tax money represents money taken, not money given, and its forcible redistribution feathers the nests of some at the expense of others. No intelligent sense of nonretributive justice here! Many people have not as yet acquired this new faculty: a false philanthropy is the result.

. . . Careful reflection will reveal that it is a missing or poorly developed sense of justice in others which infuriates so many of us [libertarians] and evokes our disparagements and name calling. But observe how irrational is the distemper on our part. . . . Indeed, when we find ourselves name calling, we are staking out the meager dimensions of this rare, elusive, and as yet, evanescent faculty in ourselves.

If the goal is to persuade people to think honestly and deeply about our rights and the wonders achievable by “anything that’s peaceful”—as a superior alternative to using force to get what they want at others’ expense— then name-calling is not only irrational but also highly counterproductive.

While [name-calling] “lets off steam,” it has its origin in a soul-searing force. The cause of freedom would be better served were silence to take its place; this damaging tactic on the part of any antisocialist discredits everyone who is on the freedom side of the argument; it creates a mean, irrational reaction because name calling is a mean, irrational action.

. . . A sense of justice rests partly, as does the moral nature, on rationality, on man’s ability to will his own attitudes and behavior. . . . Man’s creativity in this respect can be helped along by preparing a climate conducive to its growth. Is it not self-evident that this preparation consists of discovering truth and how to present it and of detecting false ideas and how to expose them? Of relying on reason, persuasion and example?

And, is it not . . . folly to become angry at color blindness, taste dullness, a decrepit moral nature, or an arrested sense of justice? Each is but an undeveloped faculty. Denouncing a person because of an unacquired faculty— regardless of which one—is no more rational than damning oneself because of not being perfect in all respects.

Leonard Read came to a similar conclusion against name-calling earlier that same year in “Liberated!” (Read 1962d), published in the March 1962 Notes from FEE.

It is interesting to reflect on the preliberation notions. . . . Lying at their root [is] the primitive doctrine that man derives his rights to life and liberty from some man-concocted collective—the tribe or the state. . . .

When an individual is liberated, he becomes aware of the miracles which come to pass once creative human energy has no organized, man-concocted force standing against it. An unwavering faith in free men expels any lingering, misplaced confidence in little men playing god.

The omnipotent state—authoritarianism—will not be liquidated except by liberated individuals. It is only they who go in search of freedom’s answers. . . . Only liberated individuals can be of any help in reversing the trend away from freedom. . . .

. . . The individual not yet liberated is no more educable as to the free market, private property, limited government philosophy than you or I are educable on subjects in which we have no interest. Thus it is patently absurd to scold or rant at them, to be impatient, to regard them as not bright, to try poking our ideas down their necks. Such tactics will only send them scurrying.

Leonard Read recognizes what is often forgotten about political battles in which one side tries to force its will on the other: ad hominem arguments are fallacies, but as long as they convince people to vote your way, they will persist in politics and can even be the centerpiece. But campaigning for freedom from all coercers means attracting rather than attacking people. That is a much higher standard to meet, but aren’t devotees of liberty trying to advance a higher standard of human conduct toward one another?