Why America Needs To Be 'Open to Debate

Clea Conner on the need for healthy conflict

- By Nick Gillespie

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that," John Stuart Mill wrote in "On Liberty" (1859), laying out the essential case for open, robust, and systematic debate. If you don't test your beliefs by engaging with people who disagree with you, you're more likely to make weak, incomplete, self-serving, or irrelevant arguments, leading to ruinous outcomes in policy matters or acrimonious misunderstandings in social life.

That's where the group Open to Debate comes in. Founded in 2006 as Intelligence Squared U.S., Open to Debate has hosted hundreds of debates with the goal of "restor[ing] critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to American public discourse." Through a mix of online and in-person events, Open to Debate brings together artists, officials, public intellectuals, scientists, and entrepreneurs from across the ideological spectrum to work through contentious, heated, and seemingly irresolvable issues of the day.

Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward, for instance, was part of a debate that asked, "Is Capitalism a Blessing?" and Reason's Nick Gillespie has argued for legalizing all drugs and against Medicare for All, net neutrality, and forgiving student loan debt. Open to Debate invites audience participation, and it airs all its programming on NPR, YouTube, and the group's own website, where it provides voluminous notes and materials, all designed to help audience members reach an independent and informed conclusion.

In February, Gillespie talked with Open to Debate CEO Clea Conner about her group’s mission, its name change, and its push to host actual presidential debates rather than “joint press conferences with really rehearsed talking points.”