The rhetorical unraveling of democracy

As a communication scholar at a large state university, I spent my entire professional career (1974-2019) teaching a course in “argumentation & advocacy” and studying the role of argument in public discourse.

My teaching and research emphasized the importance and necessity of rational and logical reasoning, as well as a willingness by arguers to engage in “self-risk” by standing in the shoes of others and thus be open to persuasion rather than becoming dogmatic and recalcitrant.

Moreover, I assumed that people indeed are capable of detecting, exposing and not being taken in by fallacious reasoning. As I taught my students, spurious and non-rational discourse is practiced by persons of all political and ideological stripes — that unsound and invalid reasoning is an equal opportunity problem. 

Perhaps I have become too skeptical, maybe even cynical. But watching the political events of the past few years makes me wonder whether we now live in a world where the traditional principles of argumentation — dating back to the work of rhetoricians in ancient Greece and Rome — actually guide and govern our rhetorical behavior in the public square.

One need only observe recent volatile political events to understand the severity of my concern. Consider just a few examples illustrating this worry:

• The politicization of the school shooting in Uvalde Texas;
• Heated debates about abortion in the wake of the forthcoming decision by the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade;
• The large number of citizens who accept the “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen;”
• The popularity of a wide array of conspiracy theories;
• An unwillingness by many Americans to accept science on issues such as COVID and climate change;
• The prevalence of extreme hatred and racism;
• The increasing polarization of beliefs and resulting incivility of our interactions with others;
• The erosion of accepted standards of truth in speech and writing.

Obviously, I hope I am wrong. However, if my suspicion is correct, it is not an exaggeration to say that the end of democracy is a real possibility. After all, democracy always has been rhetorically sustained, perpetuated and nurtured by rational deliberation. This has been the case historically, despite sharp political differences.

As a colleague of mine astutely noted, we must always remember that it is entirely possible for a democracy to vote itself out of existence, perhaps deliberately or even unintentionally: It is inherent in the concept of the “will of the people.”

Argumentation and its reliance on reasoning and evidence is the key to maintaining the rational discourse necessary to preserve democracy.

Selfishly, I hope that what I taught and researched for more than 40 years was not done in vain.

As often is said, we are at an inflection point in American history. This demands us to think deeply about how we argue and how our political discourse — whether that of Democrats, Republicans, conservatives or liberals — must be changed to guarantee the survival of this great experiment we call the United States.

Put simply, failure to change our rhetoric almost certainly will result in the unraveling of America’s democratic republic.     

Richard Cherwitz is Ernest S. Sharpe Centennial Professor Emeritus in the Moody College of Communication’s Department of Rhetoric and Writing at University of Texas, Austin, and a founding director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium, a nationally-acclaimed cross-disciplinary initiative designed to leverage knowledge for social good by educating “citizen-scholars.”