Healthy debate will tackle a fear of free speech
Many political partisans nowadays have lost not just the art of debate, but also the fun of it. Thankfully, there are still places where disagreement is allowed.
One of them is the Legatum Institute. This week it held an event to gather thinkers from different perspectives and let them argue (under Chatham House rules). What was unusual was the format of each session: a speaker, followed by two shorter responses that critiqued the first speaker in some way.
It brought to mind the years I spent at school and university engaged in debating competitions. I debated in various formats, but the general aim was always the same: take a position and argue for it. It didn’t matter if you believed in that position. Often, you didn’t get to choose. The point was to think quickly, structure facts into arguments, see the flaws in others’ arguments, understand other perspectives and learn to persuade.
These are skills everyone should have. And perhaps they are part of the answer to the growing authoritarian tendencies of socially progressive teachers and university campuses. The “no platforming” trend and the desire to censor “hurtful” or “violent” words stem ultimately from insecurity. The reason students are afraid of free speech is that they don’t feel equipped to push back with their own arguments, to persuade the world that they are right.
Well, the answer is clear: make them debate! From a young age, make them take sides they vehemently oppose. Make them argue with their friends, their rivals, their allies and their enemies. Encourage them to deploy rousing, “populist” methods. Help them study forensic, lawyerly methods. Make them study great speakers and manipulators.
At the moment, formal debating tends to be an exclusive activity. But why should it be? Debating is a chance to shine for intelligent, energetic children who struggle with books and blackboards. It has something for the progressives – it’s “fun” and “interactive”. And it should appeal to the teaching traditionalists, too, reintroducing the classical art of rhetoric to the classroom.
Most importantly, it will give students more confidence to move through the world of ideas without shutting down speakers or heckling, but by making their case. After all, free speech is no great loss for people who don’t know how to speak.
“The question is, is it OK for a PM to take maternity leave while in office?” When the former New Zealand cricketer and radio reporter Mark Richardson asked the country’s Prime Minister that question on air, he was pilloried for sexism. A week later, Mr Richardson now has his answer, and it’s “yes”.
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s 37-year-old prime minister, has announced that she is pregnant. Throughout coalition negotiations between her own Labour Party and the nationalist New Zealand First last autumn, she had been quietly battling morning sickness. “I am not the first woman to multi-task,” she told media. Well, that’s true. Still, public office and birth are both events that take a heavy toll. The number of prime ministers and presidents who have governed while hiding serious health problems (Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, FDR, to name just a few) is probably not a coincidence.
As for the birth side of things, I’m impressed, but can’t also help but feel a little nervous on Ms Ardern’s behalf. She might be one of the lucky women whom I’ve seen sail through birth. But I’ve also seen women laid low for months by the physical ordeal, the flood of hormones, the guilt about letting a baby cry. The sleeplessness will at least be helped by her husband, who will become a full-time father.
Despite all of that, though, it’s happy news. Ms Ardern never hid her desire to have children, despite trouble conceiving. She didn’t quite plan to do it while in office, but sometimes life happens. Over thousands of years, women have borne children and worked their guts out to feed them. They have usually done this in backbreaking places like fields and factories. There is no reason to think that Ms Ardern, with all sorts of help around her, can’t do it in high office.
She deserves our best wishes and, at least from me, a woman with a career, a thumbs up. She has put a new spin on the name “Labour Party”.
This weekend, several major London buildings are being lit up for Lumiere London, a “light festival”. I wandered around some of the sights on the first night and was transfixed before a wall of colourful light projected onto Westminster Abbey.
The projection has been painted precisely so that it effectively colours in one of the Abbey’s elaborate doorways and its huge western façade. Saints that had stood plainly and quietly in their cream-coloured stone suddenly became luminous. The draping of their robes was delicately shaded, the cover of their books carefully filled in magenta or yellow. The monumental aspect of the whole building was suddenly replaced by something more personal and surreal.
Nationwide, the Church’s own investigation has found its cathedrals are being run into a financial black hole. Judging by the numbers gathered before Westminster Abbey yesterday, there’s no lack of interest from visitors. It’s just a matter of getting them to pay up.