If You Can’t Explain the Opposition to Your Case

Posted on December 5, 2023 By Rachel MacNair

by Rachel MacNair

Our student group organized a program explaining what was wrong with nuclear energy back in the late 1970s at Earlham College, a Quaker school where I majored in Peace and Conflict Studies. We did such a fine job of explaining the dangers that a student in the audience asked a very sensible question: how on earth could anyone support this?

So I launched into a three-minute pro-nuclear diatribe. And I did it so effectively that my fellow activists started worrying that I needed to stop and explain what was wrong with what I was saying.

On another occasion, several of us Earlham students were putting together a program to educate about what was wrong with nuclear weapons. Unlike nuclear energy, which is intended to be helpful, the whole point of nuclear weapons is to kill a huge number of people. One of my friends thought that was quite sufficient to make the case against it.

So a member of the audience asked the question: wouldn’t it be dangerous for us to not have such weapons for deterrence as long as the Soviets have such weapons?

This wasn’t an out-of-left-field question. There might be all kinds of questions an audience member could come up with that you might not have thought of before, but this isn’t one of them. This was basic. This was about as common a question as there was from the people who supported nuclear weapons. And my friend had no answer for it.

I’ve often thought that if I taught some kind peace studies course, this would be one of the assignments: Pick a topic about which you care passionately. Write a three-page paper making the case for that position. Then write a three-page paper making the case against it. If, when I read both, it’s painfully obvious which one is your position and the one for your opponent is mangled, you flunk the assignment.

All this was brought to mind recently when I was in a large room with about 150 people who understood themselves to be peace activists who were discussing taking a pro-access position on abortion. I wasn’t squelched entirely – I got about two minutes to make the most basic consistent-life pacifist case and point out how there were more complexities they hadn’t considered.

That they went against my view wouldn’t have bothered me so much – I mean, am I so arrogant as to be so very assured that I’m right and they’re wrong? What bothered me is that they only acted against my view. They didn’t argue against my view. As far as I could tell, they didn’t even understand that there was a counter-view that they needed to grasp and articulate.

My position is that on any of our issues, and anything that’s controversial, anyone who wishes to take a position of any sort should regard it as part of taking that position to first educate themselves on what other perspectives are, and feel confident in being able to make the case while taking those perspectives into account. Either argue against them well, or address underlying interests that could make someone holding those interests know that you’ve considered their point of view.

I fear that taking a position while utterly ignoring what opponents of that position think isn’t conducive to peace-making.