Our vanishing culture of argument

A guy I knew in college once told me, as I struggled to make a point in a dorm lounge argument, that I had “the verbal acuity of shampoo” The put-down was so devastating that it immediately ended discussion. I think of the line nearly every time I fumble for a word or write a bad sentence.

- Bret Stephens

This was at the University of Chicago, which has a culture of argument. Some of the arguments are dead serious: In its commitment to free expression, the university has repeatedly stood up to inveigling plutocrats, investigating politicians, cancel culture commissars and encampment bullies. Some of them are not so serious. Every year since 1946, the university's greatest scholars have debated the universe’s dumbest subject: whether latkes or hamantaschen are the better Jewish food. (Latkes, obviously.)

What is the soul of the Western tradition? Argument. Socrates goes around Athens investigating the claims of the supposedly wise and finds that the people who claim to know things don’t. The Lord threatens to destroy Sodom for its alleged wickedness, but Abraham reproaches and bargains with him — that for the sake of 10 righteous people he must not destroy the city. In both traditions, Athens’ and Jerusalem's, the lone dissenting voice is often the heroic one.