Political advocacy means flawed political thinking

Garbage in, garbage out

Politics consists of a lot of garbage in. Its not surprising that most of what comes out is the same. We get garbage from pundits, politicians, ideologues and special interests. For them, politics isn't about informing the public. It is about winning arguments and influencing opinion. Standard tactics include deceiving the public with irrational arguments, false conclusions and bad facts, i.e., it's much easier to cheat than win on the merits. For the most part, partisan politics is pure, raw advocacy. In the context of lawyers fighting in court, pure advocacy may be OK or even necessary. But, in the context of politics it usually leads to waste and failure. Failure is what we have today - in abundance.

What are garbage and bad facts?: Those are fair questions. From the point of view of service to the public interest over special interests, garbage is reasonably defined like this: Garbage is political arguments based on bad facts and flawed reasoning. When a partisan ignores, denies or distorts information and rationales that undermines the partisans' desired point or logic, you have bad facts.

That is standard politics. Of course, partisans/special interests would dispute that characterization of reality. For them, bad facts are good facts because winning the argument and votes in congress (or elsewhere in government) is the point, not informing the public or serving the public interest. It all depends on your point of view.

An example

Now that don't ask, don't tell is no longer an issue, the next gay rights battle is probably going to be over gay marriage. Some religious social conservatives are arguing that allowing gay marriages will infringe on their free speech and/or religion rights. The rationale is that if gay marriage is allowed or legalized, clerics will be subject to hate speech lawsuits for preaching that gay sex and gay marriage are evil, sins, abominations and so on. If clerics are subject to such legal threats, they will no longer be able to freely exercise their speech and religious rights.

On its face, that sounds like a legitimate argument. But is it the whole story? Is anything missing?

Of course, something is missing. That argument, like most in politics, is pure advocacy. What is missing are facts and context that undermine religious attacks on gay marriage and gay sex. Here is some context, a couple of facts (not opinions) and an opinion that put this "logic" in a different light.

Context: Many churches condemn all sorts of activities that are common and legal in our secular society, e.g., birth control, abortion, fornication, gambling, pornography, belief in false Gods or prophets (Jesus, Allah, Vishnu) and so on. 

Fact: Churches have been preaching, sometimes vehemently, for decades (centuries, actually) that gay sex is a mortal sin and a horrible, evil abomination. 

Fact: With very few exceptions* no U.S. church has ever been sued for (1) hate speech or anything else like that because of preaching or belief that gay sex/marriage is a mortal sin or (2) the other legal things that U.S. churches like to condemn.

Opinion: If a church were to be sued for hate speech, the church would win in court and once that was finally decided, the issue would be completely dead. No court, not even a "liberal" court, is going to touch any church's capacity to hold or advocate almost any religious belief. This stuff is outside the court's jurisdiction for the most part.

Assuming you agree that my context, facts and opinion are relevant, how persuasive is the church's argument that if same sex marriage is legalized they will be prevented from doing what they already routinely do? Less persuasive, isn't it? That's why you will almost never hear the contrary context or facts from advocates against gay marriage.

Context and facts weakens or completely kills their "rationale", which is based on religious faith for the gay marriage issue. That might carry weight in a theocratic dictatorship like Iran or Saudi Arabia. However, America is a secular democracy. In that context, religious faith alone usually just doesn't cut it.

That is why churches and anti-gay rights advocates ignore, deny or distort valid context and facts. Their arguments can't win on the merits alone. To win public opinion, they have to cheat. Partisan advocates give essentially no weight or credibility to opposing opinion, regardless of how much weight or credibility it may have from a fair and neutral point of view. They argue for their special interest, not the public interest.

Uninformed and deceived

The gay marriage issue is just one example of pure partisan political advocacy. It leaves the public uninformed and misled, which is exactly what it is intended to do. Unfortunately, partisan advocacy happens all the time. It is routine. The advocacy tactic applies to almost all other political arguments you hear from almost all partisans nearly all of the time for all contested issues. Partisans are rarely or never honest about context or facts that undermine their political positions or agenda. 

The dominance of that kind of partisan advocacy is a big part of why our political institutions and policies have failed so badly. That is why we are up to our eyeballs in nasty alligators.

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* The exception is the bizarre case of the Westboro Baptist Church. It is being sued for celebrating the death of a U.S. marine at the marine's funeral. The Westboro Baptists believe that when our soldiers die in combat, that is God's punishment of America for tolerating homosexuality. The marine's family sued the church for invasion of privacy and a few other things. That behavior isn't just preaching from the pulpit - it is an in your face celebration of death at your son's funeral. That arguably is hate speech depending on the facts of the case, e.g., how far from the funeral were church members picketing and what exactly were they saying. Let the courts decide.