Why Conservatives Fetishize Debate
It's a way to launder their terrible politics into the mainstream.
This post is for premium readers. If you’d like to access it and support my work, you can upgrade your subscription for any amount. You can even subscribe for $1.
Thank you for your support! Without it, JoeWrote wouldn’t exist.
In Solidarity — Joe
Person A: “Your dog is scaring me. I should be allowed to kill it.”
Person B: “Absolutely not. That’s insane!”
A: “Oh, do you not like that idea? Well, then explain why you disagree.”
B: “I’m not going to explain why you don’t get to kill my dog! That’s a terrible idea, and you’re psychotic.”
A: “You’re resorting to personal attacks because you’re unable to refute my facts and logic.”
B: “You’re crazy. Get lost.”
A: “If I’m so crazy, why don’t you debate me? The winner gets to decide whether your dog lives or dies. If I’m as ridiculous as you claim I am, you should easily win.”
Interactions echoing the one above are common in the political sphere, especially online. Ideas that are self-evidently terrible (in this case, killing someone’s dog) are positioned as neutral and worthy of debate. The party that seeks to promote the bad idea will issue a challenge to intellectual battle, which will supposedly settle once and for all Who Is Right and Who Is Owned.
As you’re probably aware, this is the preferred tactic of conservatives.
Right-wingers fetishize debate for more reasons than one. As conservative provocateurs such as Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos discovered, debating uninformed undergrads and posting videos on YouTube with intriguing titles is a great way to build a brand. Clips entitled “BEN SHAPIRO DESTROYS WOKE COLLEGE KID” are guaranteed to generate ad revenue while giving the culture war-obsessed Republican base the red meat it craves.
While clicks and owning the libs is the lifeblood of modern conservatism, the right’s fondness for debate has a deeper source.
Many Americans are instinctively put off by Republican policies. Project 2025 states the next Republican president should seek to outlaw pornography and remove the term “abortion” from every piece of federal legislation and guideline. These are widely unpopular opinions that poll worse than drinking sour milk on a hot summer day. While Americans might not be fond of porn or abortion, they certainly don’t want the government scrubbing terms from health guidelines or monitoring which websites you visit. So, to skirt the barrier of public decency, conservatives sneak these policies into the mainstream by making them debate topics.
To quote every boomer on Facebook:
“If outlawing porn is such a bad idea, why don’t you debate me on it?”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to JoeWrote to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.