The secret formula for progress. (Bird's Eye).(importance of debate)

Americans are not especially big on formal debates. We tend to be a practical and modest people, and so long as is running smoothly, most everyday citizens would her not spar over esoteric principles. Ronald Reagan reflected this when he teasingly defined an intellectual as "someone who sees something happen in practice and then begins to argue about whether it would work in theory." Most Americans will happily leave those sorts of intellectual jousts to French academics, Indian philosophers, or British parliamentarians.

On the other hand, Americans have a deep tradition of deciding things for themselves, of making up their minds after hashing out evidence first hand. Have you heard the joke about why Unitarians are such lousy singers? Because they're always looking ahead in the hymn to make sure they agree with the next verse. Americans are not inclined to accept something as true and binding just because the local squire, or political boss, or priest, or eminence says it is so. On our frontier the fiercely defended operating principle was "every man his own master," and today just as much as then we insist on judging the important questions for ourselves. That means listening to, and taking part in, lots of debates.

Those of you who have subscribed to TAE for a while know that one of our signatures is to present multiple, sometimes even contradictory, views on a given theme. Once in a while someone will ask, "Shouldn't you agree on an institutional position, a house policy, for all important questions?" Much more often, though, people tell me they like that our articles include varying swipes at the same subject.

A stark example of us debating with ourselves is the opening feature in this issue, where Patrick Buchanan and Ben Wattenberg face off over the subject of immigration. Both authors agree that the topic is of critical importance to our nation over the next generation. From there, they race off in polar-opposite directions. These two protagonists could hardly have staked out more different positions if we had put guns to their heads. (Don't worry: No weapons were used during the production of this particular issue.)

We haven't tried to solve this argument for you. All we aimed to do in our editing was to make each man's case as clear and hard and vivid as possible. TAE subscribers are grownups who can draw their own conclusions. Our job is to supply strong arguments and accurate data.

There is an important goal behind all this head-butting. Debates aren't bullfights; they are (at least in this country) much more than entertainments or intellectual spectacles. They are how we arrive at good and lasting decisions; they are a means of solving our most urgent and prickling problems. In the political arena conflict is useful. It exposes errors and lies; it hones truths to a fine edge.

The point of a serious debate isn't to find validity in each of the views on display, but rather to discard views--to dump the hypotheses that don't weather well after you've run them up the flagpole and let them flap in the breeze and bright sunshine for a while. The aim of political discussion and competition, as Thomas Jefferson said, is to insure that "truth and reason [maintain] their ground against false opinions in league with false fact."