The Lost Art of Argument

 In this episode of Roots, Rights & Reason, Lee Smith speaks with Professor Gregory Roper about why the ability to argue well is essential to the survival of a constitutional republic. Drawing on classical rhetoric and the ancient Roman concept of stasis theory, Roper explains how rational debate once shaped civic life—and why modern culture has largely abandoned the discipline of logical argument in favor of emotional manipulation and political tribalism. The conversation explores how education, media, and social platforms have contributed to the decline of meaningful debate, and what it will take to restore the art of persuasion that once sustained the American republic.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

From the brave roots of our founding. To the unstoppable force of American ingenuity, to the sacred inheritance of freedom we must protect. This is our legacy. Join investigative journalist Lee Smith on Roots, Rights, and Reason. Powered by America's future.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Hi, I'm Lee Smith. Welcome and thanks for joining us for this new episode of Roots, Rights, and Reason. This week we're discussing something so fundamental to the character of our republic that we typically ignore it. How to argue. As today's guest, Professor Gregory Roper, wrote in a recent article, maybe the problem with a rancorous republic isn't with our politics. Maybe it's that we've educated students for the past 40 years without teaching them how, calmly and patiently, to argue with their opponents. Instead of teaching students that debate is impossible, let's teach them how to do it. Roper suggests that the solution to our republic's woeful political culture lies in taking a lesson from the historical world power that our founding fathers modeled America after, the ancient Roman Republic. Rome was a place of astonishing cultural diversity, stretching from Spain to Gaul to North Africa to Egypt and Asia Minor, and all had to find a way to do business together. That meant law, and that meant lawyers finding ways for them to argue effectively on behalf of their clients. That meant teaching the art of rhetoric, the technical skill of persuading others with one's words to think something, to change their minds, and to make something happen. For example, no Syrian could afford to come to Rome and say, well, I can articulate this only from my Syrian epistemic position, and you italics trained by Greeks will never really enter into my cultural mindset because of your biases. Furthermore, your conceptions of rational argument are oppressive. So I will speak in a Syriac way that neither rational nor logical nor presents evidence as a way to support its arguments. No. Every Roman or foreigner who sought to win an argument had to learn how to structure an argument, how to present it well, and how to appeal to his or her audience. That meant they had to answer a series of questions, starting with what are the facts? What is this? What caused it and what effects did it have? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Finally, what should be done? Roper says he began teaching this series of questions to help students to understand how to make an argument and how to organize their thoughts in logical succession. He reports that he's had great success in the classroom and outside it too, where his students have learned to apply their learning to their lives. He's building not just the next generation of lawyers, but thoughtful, responsible, and well-informed citizens, Americans who know how to argue. Gregory Roper is an English professor and dean of students at the University of Dallas, his alma mater. He is also author of Mastering the Four Arguments, the classical technique that will help you write persuasively. Professor Gregory Roper, thank you for being here with us today on Roots, Rights, and Reason. And I want to ask right off the bat, why do we, as citizens of a constitutional republic, why do we need to learn how to argue?

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Because that's the basis of a constitutional republic. Because we have uh we have the institutions that are based on that very notion, is that we elect people who get together, who discuss the issues of the day and attempt to persuade one another. And the way we, as rational human beings, persuade one another is through rational argument. That that's uh, you know, as opposed to every other form of government in the world, this is the form of government that that focuses upon our rational nature, that prizes that as the best. And therefore, the way rational human beings um honoring the rationality of the intellect of the other, honoring the views of the other, um, but nevertheless wishing to uh persuade that other person rationally rather than manipulating them, rather than uh exerting one's force against them, is through logical, clear argumentation. That's that's what makes our form of government so wonderful, is that it appeals to what's highest in us. And and if we do it well, then we have a healthy and wonderful republic.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

And what a beautiful way to put it. That's really moving. Um, yeah, or right, of course. I mean, where it's not a matter of force and coercion, it's a matter of like you must understand that this is the best way to do things, and you get a couple of people in a room or mil or hundreds of millions of people at the ballots, and that's what it's supposed to be about, right? An argument about the best way to do things. Um, but in lots of ways, Americans, not not that we've become uh tyrants or totalitarians, but I think that you make the case, you make the case in and in your book and other writings that um that we've sort of lost the gift for argument or or the ability to argue well. What happened?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Oh, I'm I'm not a historian or a sociologist, I'm an English professor. Um, but I think as I see it over the course of my life, um uh you know, uh we've lost confidence in the fact that argumentation can actually work. Um and so we resort to appealing to what is lower in us. We we resort to either name-calling, you know, the ad hominem attack, or or manipulation, right? Which is what uh is is a uh you're subverting the rational to go for um an emotional appeal or or you know some sort of appeal to one's lower nature. Um and so I I think part of it is that we we somewhere in the in the 60s and the 70s, uh we we lost some sense of that. Um and so there was a sense, and I and I think part of that is related to our educational culture, um, is that our educational culture um didn't didn't promote, didn't teach, and and that's what I really am trying to talk about in my book, is that if we can return to teaching students more clearly how to argue, how arguments work, and how they can be effective in their arguments, um what I found is students really, really enjoy that and really cling to that and really begin to see the power uh of their of their arguments.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

It's fascinating because we see the result of this. We see it on on um in the media and social media, we see it on street corners when you know uh one side will accuse the other, you're fascist, you're communist, you're this and that. Um, and the idea of getting back to be able to to to debate, to argue, to hear the other side. How did you do it with your students? And did you have trouble convincing them, making an argument to them, that this was a better way to do it than to scream at each other across the street and say, you're this, you're that, you're red, you're green. What works with students? What will work, uh, what will work with all Americans?

SPEAKER_02 7:37

So um the book was actually born out of um sort of a desperate pedagogical need. Um I was at Northwest Missouri State University at the time um and had these these marvelous students from you know, uh farm kids from small towns in the Midwest, city kids from from Omaha and Kansas City, um, and um needed to help them learn how to write. And I came upon this ancient Roman method, um, and uh that was in a few of the composition books at the time. I didn't I didn't think they were very well organized, but I sort of boiled it down and I began taking them through um these four kinds of arguments, and they really began to latch onto it and see that it gave them a certain power in engaging with what they were trying to say. I think young people desperately want to be able to say things well, and they want to be able to have an effect with their words on others. Um, the turning point came for me when um one of the few times I did this um was out at a student bar um and um a somewhat older student, he'd been in the military, came back to school, um, came up to me, and I remember Me probably had a couple of beers into him, and he and he said, Hold on a minute, and he pulls out of his pocket an article he'd written for the local newspaper, um, and it was about ensuring hunting rights on a new lake that they were building. Um, and he slammed it down in front of me and he said, I made a problem solution argument, and look at this, it got published in the newspaper. And he was so proud of himself, and he was so uh happy that he said, I did what you told me to do. I built the argument in the way that you told me to do it. Um, and and I found that sort of joy that he had participated in the republic. He had, you know, he had voiced his views. Yeah, that's true and said that it was given a hearing, you know, at the local zoning meeting, that that argument was given a hearing. So I think that I think I also find that um, so I'm now at a very different sort of school, right? The University of Dallas, a kind of great book school. Students here love to argue, they love to argue about Plato and Aristotle and everything else. Um, but when I teach the class on argumentation, and I use this, I teach some different models of argumentation. Um, but what I find is that they come once once we really present the methods of good argumentation, um, they'll they'll come back to me and they'll say, Hey, Dr. Opi, it was two in the morning, and I finally realized that you know we were, we we'd been arguing for an hour and a half, and we hadn't even really identified clearly what we were arguing about. And I finally just stopped stopped and said, Hold on a minute, you know, are we clear about you know X, Y, and Z? And and their again, their joy in seeing that this doesn't have to be just endless, you know, yammering at one another. Um, or our president calls it, you know, uh uh arguing without quarreling. Um, and and I didn't even realize this when I began writing the book. I just want to write a book really for teachers um to learn to use this method that I had found effective in my classes. But I found that I myself was making an argument that this is actually a good thing for our republic to help students you know learn the joy of this, but learn that that um people knew how to do this 2,000 years ago, and they and they found that this was a necessary art for you know moving forward one's culture. And so that that joy that students find in learning to identify what is the thing we actually are or should be arguing, where is the point of our disagreement, and then being able to have a productive argument rather than saying you're a fascist, well you're a you're a liberal, you're a you know this.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Um I I I we we gotta know what is the method? What do you teach them?

SPEAKER_02 11:24

How do they so it's um it so even in um some of what's sort of the the world of classical rhetoric, it's a little it's a little world that was very popular um in the the the republic, sort of sort of uh through um through the empire and really all the way through the renaissance. Um but it it for reasons I'm not really sure about, it kind of has faded a little bit. Um, and the older uh model is now sort of seen, even in some of the textbooks of classical rhetoric, um, it's it's it's really faded somewhat. It's called stasis theory, and it was probably started in about the second century BC by a man named Hermagoras. We don't have any of his writings, but we have others referring to him. Um Quintilian and Cicero picked up on some of this, and then a guy named Hermogenes, who was seen in the second century AD as the greatest rhetorician in all of ancient Rome, really formulated it better. And and it sort of goes like this is that there's a method to figuring out what it is we're actually arguing about. Now, this came because of the law courts. This came because in Rome, this vast empire where people were coming from all over the place, um, there were always legal disputes over land, over property, over one's uh rights to land, property, or or anything else. Um, you had to you had to have a lawyer who argued for you, or you had to learn how to argue your case for yourself. That's the whole basis of rhetoric, is is learning how to persuade one another in disputes. And and Rome being a place of a lot of legal disputes, this became a method that was taught. And so that the method is to say, what is it we're actually arguing about? And that means reaching what's called the point of stasis. And in stasis theory is taught, first there's the facts, secondly, there are definitions. So what is the issue at hand? What are we actually arguing about? Um, the third is causes. The four the next is evaluation, and the fourth is what in traditional stasis theory is called policy. I've switched it to calling it problem solution. So um the example I use in the book is um you come out of a bar and there's two men on in the parking lot. Uh, one is lying down with you know blood pouring out of his nose, the other is standing over him uh and has blood on his knuckles. Well, let's let's take this through. Um, well, what is this? Well, it was this assault? Uh yeah, I think we'd say, okay, we have a simple definitional uh issue. Well, maybe it wasn't. Uh maybe it was self-defense. Maybe we need to stop right here and discuss that. Well, but let's say we we we decided we move on. Well, what was the cause of this event? Uh well, uh, was it a spute um over a man uh hitting on another man's wife? Was it a spute over money in the bar? Did he did he not pay the the uh the bartender? Um or was uh was he doing something um more troubling, uh, you know, um assaulting a young woman? Well, that takes us back down to the definition. So was this was this self-defense? Was it an actual act of justice uh to violently stop this man from doing what he was doing? The next stage is evaluation. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Um, well, that depends on what we have already argued, and there's no point in discussing whether it's a good or bad thing unless we know what actually happened and what caused it. Uh right?

SPEAKER_01 15:14

When when we say when you say stasis, stasis theory, does that mean that you have to stop? Is that does that designate the places where you have to stop and say, okay, we still haven't figured out what happened, so we're still in that part of the process. So what does stasis mean? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

That's that stasis means that the two decides in dispute uh have come together and decided what it is we actually have a dispute about. So after you've decided whether somebody's so maybe we've decided that uh that as we work through, well, based on what we've already determined, is this a good or a bad act? Well, we based on what we found out, we may have decided that in fact the the puncher uh was doing something very good. He was keeping this man from assaulting a young woman. We pin a medal on him. We don't actually arrest him and put him in jail, we pin a medal on him. Um, and then the policy is what do we do about this? Do we do we send this person to jail? Do we convict this person? Uh, right? Uh what is it, what is the actual action that is then taken from this? And this was all over. This was, as I say, in some ways, the most prominent way of un of understanding things and the prominent way of teaching young lawyers how to argue their cases all through ancient Rome, all through the Renaissance, really up until the 19th century. And I I I think my next book might be studying like where did this go? Um, and as I say, there were a few books that I learned it from um at when I was teaching in the 90s, um, but but it really has faded in some ways, and I find it just so practical and so effective. So um people say, okay, give me another example. And I say, let's call, let's talk about climate change. Um, one side says, um, we know exactly what it is, definition, says we know exactly what causes it, right? Anthropogenic acts uh of man that are making the environment. Uh is it good or bad? Yes, we know it's terrible, it's it's awful, it's about to bring uh you know all of civilization crashing to the ground. Then what's the policy? Well, we must immediately suspend use of all fossil fuels, we must spend trillions of dollars in you know many other ways, right? The other side says, well, hold on, I don't even know what this is, because it's it was used to be global warming, now you're calling it climate change. So tell me exactly what it is. I I'm not even sure that I agree with you that anthropogenic causes are the main causes of any of this. Therefore, I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't, I don't know, I don't have enough information on whether it's good or bad. And therefore, I'm sure not ready to spend trillions of dollars and stop driving my in in you know internal combustion engine car um to to solve a problem that I'm sh I I I would like to go. Can we please go back to just the definitional phrase? Can I just get clear on on what it is you're talking about? And it seems to me that we never we never really had that argument. Um we never really clearly are are allowed to do that because one one side says, uh you're a climate denier, you're you're an evil person, and the other side says, I I don't even like I don't even know where we're going with this. Um I mean the fundamental you know moral issue of our time is abortion. And I hope you could see very quickly, like the definitional argument was never really happened. It was it was elided. Um and or we could even sort of turn it a different way, like, okay, causes. Can we argue about the causes of young women when women put in the difficult situations that they put? Well, what is what is causing those situations? Could maybe we could have an argument and address those things in a positive, fruitful way. Um, but but somehow we're not allowed to have those those sorts of arguments.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Well, I want to come back to climate change because as we started, I don't want to, I don't want to argue climate change, by the way. I'm saying no, I'm I'm talking shouldn't be another argument of how we argue these things. I mean, it would be fun to have an argument at some point. Um, but I how much how much of this depends on on good the goodwill of the two parties saying, look, I'm starting from the I'm starting from the place where I believe that you're not a monster, you don't want to destroy the planet, whether you believe in climate change or whether you don't, that you you love life, you you love your family and your friends and your community and your country. So and but but it takes it takes a fair amount of of good faith, doesn't it? With the people you're arguing with. And and I don't I I I I can just imagine a lot of people thinking, well, yeah, I sure I'd like to have that argument. I think the climate change people on either side that are crazy. So how how do you sort of get back to that place where we have where we have good faith? Because it strikes me when you give your examples about about um about the Roman Republic. I mean, there was a lot at stake there lots of times. So it's not like every it's not like it was this wow this wonderful uh place wherever, I mean, there were people, you know, you would get stabbed of you went but most famously Caesar himself, if you wind up on the wrong side of a debate. So the Romans didn't have uh the Romans didn't have it easy either. But we're talking about, yeah, we're talking about how this process comes from there. And it it did work in the Republic and until it didn't. Um so how do we get to that place if we can where there's some good faith at the at the heart that we invest in our interlocutor?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

So it's yeah, it's a marvelous question. I and I think maybe the ultimate question. Um I think um this might take us back to the very beginning of what we said. I think a republic depends upon um that sense of goodwill, that sense that if we are going to have a republic, a republic can only work when we believe that rational debate is possible. Um and that I think um that um that if we don't have the faith that rational debate is possible. And and this could be an answer that I was not able to get at. I I do think over the last few decades um we've lost um confidence in the fact that we can actually have rational debate with one another. So we have to, you know, exert things on the policy level, we have to invert uh exert things on the um I I think it's a a great deal, it has to do With the devolvement of the powers of Congress to the executive. I mean, Obama saying, I have a phone and a pen and I'm going to use them. Um, is is saying I don't really believe in the rational debate that um that properly in our constitution resides in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Um, and uh and not just to blame Obama, I think on the right, uh, some of this faith has been lost as well. Um the I think the my my um my answer would be uh I do think um, and maybe I'm a naive optimist to say this, but I do think it can begin in the schools, and I think it can begin in, I think that we have ourselves um um you know uh kicked ourselves by uh an educational system that itself I think has lost the sense of the best ways to teach young people how to argue well. Um and and look, I um I don't want to slam people in um that are trying to do their best uh throughout um teaching. I mean, I I as I said I I taught you know rhetoric and composition myself, and it is hard work, it is difficult work to get students to you know be able to lay out their words, to I think it's the most challenging teaching that one can do. You're you're not just teaching them how to read literature or whatever, you you're teaching them clear thinking. Um, but I think that um if you are not teaching them to argue well and how arguments are built well, um, and and we have had some paradigms in sort of composition and things like that that um that have undermined uh good argumentation, that not only have not done it well, but that have undermined argumentation, then I think um you reap what you sow. Um now the the classical schools movement that has been returning to this gives me a great deal of faith because I see students coming out of many of these classical schools who have been schooled in um the classical art of rhetoric um and how that works and and come to love it in the way that they come to love many other things. Um but if we are if we are teaching history and um as you know merely the the tools of power, if we are teaching you know the principles of the American Republic as um, well, simply a lot of white landowners who uh manipulated a system uh to get what they wanted, um, you know, rather than um, you know, some people got together in Philadelphia and had real debates with one another out of their own knowledge of history, going all the way back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome, about what, you know, and and their experience in the English parliamentary system about how best to do this. And there were vigorous debates uh in Philadelphia. Um and we tried something called the Articles of the Constitution that didn't work, and we had to get back together and say, and and then had more vigorous debates saying, um, how do we do this the right way? Um, and came up with a pretty darn good system that's lasted 250 years. Like the teaching, so even teaching our history in a way that says argumentation really does work. Um, I'm so honored to come in. I was just listening to your podcast about Lincoln, right? Lincoln was our our greatest president, I think, um, after Washington, perhaps, in in so many ways, but largely because his own faith in in his own words, his own ability to construct words, and he was the he was the best. Um, his own his own faith in debate. He, you know, he and Douglas went up and down Illinois um debating. And if you know um Neil Posin's book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, those debates went for hours. And and you know, farmers with a sixth-grade education were were expected to be able to follow the intricacies of their debates for six, eight, and eight hours at a time. Like there was there is a time, there is a way, if you have an education system that trains people to follow strong arguments, to understand arguments, to see the weaknesses in others' arguments. Um, and and we have we have 2,500 years of knowledge about how to do this and how to teach this. And I think if we're willing to listen to that 2,500 years, and and my book is a very slim book. I tried to make it very, very light for that for you know busy teachers and others, and I tried to make it very practical so that people can begin to experience the power of argumentation and begin to use, you know, use the tools not just to build their own arguments, but to see strengths and weaknesses in others' arguments. Um, I think we can rebuild uh a confidence um that I think has partly been lost. I I I do want to say another thing. Um uh in the run-up to this podcast, you all asked me, like, you know, what are your social media handles? I don't have any. And and partly it was my own frustration around the time that I was putting this book together that I um I was on Facebook for a little while, but I just became too frustrated that the the mode of you know, the comboxes and everything else do not reward a kind of continuous logical debate. They reward the bomb thrower, the person who could come in and make this thing go branching off into four different angry directions. And I just on a personal level, I just said I I don't I don't really want to participate in that because the the structure, you know, I'm I'm kind of a Marshall McLuhan. Like the medium is the message in some ways, and the medium uh created a message that said to me, there this is not a medium that allows for sustained, thoughtful debate about the issues with someone I might disagree. It it it's um it's a and and it's I think it's something we need to be thinking about and and exploring and cautious about uh about some of these uh media and the tools that actually undermine our ability to have a thoughtful debate with someone we we honestly disagree with.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

I think that's an excellent point, and I think you're absolutely right. It does not reward uh it does not reward argumentation, it doesn't it doesn't reward careful thought, the articulation of thought. And look, you you said before, like maybe I'm a naive optimist. I don't think so at all. These I think especially the image you give us of your uh elder student who wanted to make an argument and got his argument published in the paper, it's like that's that's how it's supposed to go on. You have to start like that, reintroducing everyone or encouraging those people who do believe in in making logical arguments, how important this is. We see this in uh not only in social media, but we see it in media all the time. It's like we're I don't understand the argument if you're making an argument or here are the problems with it. And um, no, I I I I I think it's very important to set that, to set what you're talking about, uh this kind of rhetoric against what is not argument, what's in in some ways mania. And I'm so glad to you, Professor Gregory Roper, for coming on really to help distinguish, to distinguish those two different, uh, those two different forms of discourse, real argumentation, real debate, and also I think that debate, we're talking about friendship as well, uh, comedy and what comes from you talked about the the the arguments, uh the arguments that made our constitution, right? These people, these people were building a country. So that's what it is. Out of debate, out of argument, uh often comes something extremely beautiful and durable, uh, like our conversation. Professor Roper, thank you so much for joining us today on Roots, Rights, and Reason. And thanks to all of you for watching. Thanks so much. Thank you, Professor. And we'll see you all next week in our next episode of Roots, Rights, and Reason.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

From the brave roots of our founding, to the unstoppable force of American ingenuity, to the sacred inheritance of freedom we must protect. This is our legacy. Join investigative journalist Lee Smith on Roots, Rights, and Reason. Powered by America's future.