The ethics of rhetoric

by Richard M. Weaver

But a party whose only program is an endorsement of the status quo is destined to go to pieces whenever the course of events brings a principle strongly to the fore. The American Union was moving toward a civil conflict in which ideological differences, as deep as any that have appeared in modern revolutions, were to divide men. As always occurs in such crises, the compromisers are regarded as unreliable by both sides and are soon ejected from the scene. It now seems impossible that the Whig Party, with its political history, could have survived the fifties. But the interesting fact from the standpoint of theoretical discussion is that the Democratic Party, because it was a radically based party, was able to take over and defend certain of the defensible earlier Whig positions. Murray points out the paradoxical fact that the Democratic Party “purloined the leadership of conservative property interests in Georgia and the South.”[70] It is no less paradoxical that it should have purloined the defense of the states’ rights doctrine thirty years after Jackson had threatened to hang disunionists.

The paradox can be resolved only by seeing that the Whig position was one of self-stultification; and this is why a rising young political leader in Illinois of Whig affiliation left the party to lead a re-conceived Republican Party. The evidence of Lincoln’s life greatly favors the supposition that he was a conservative. But he saw that conservatism to be politically effective cannot be Whiggism, that it cannot perpetually argue from circumstance. He saw that to be politically effective conservatism must have something more than a temperamental love of quietude or a relish for success. It must have some ideal objective. He found objectives in the moral idea of freedom and the political idea of union.

The political party which Abraham Lincoln carried to victory in 1860 was a party with these moral objectives. The Whigs had disintegrated from their own lack of principle, and the Republicans emerged with a program capable of rallying men to effort and sacrifice—which are in the long run psychologically more compelling than the stasis of security. But after the war and the death of the party’s unique leader, all moral idealism speedily fell away.[71] Of the passion of revenge there was more than enough, so that some of the victor’s measures look like the measures of a radical party. But the elevation of Grant to the presidency and the party’s conduct during and after the Gilded Age show clearly the declining interest in reform. Before the end of the century the Republican Party had been reduced in its source of appeal to the Whig argument from circumstance (or in the case of the tariff to a wholly dishonest argument from consequences). For thirty or forty years its case came to little more than this: we are the richest nation on earth with the most widely distributed prosperity; therefore this party advocates the status quo. The argument, whether embodied in the phrase “the full dinner pail” or “two cars in every garage” has the same source. Murray’s judgment of the Whig party in Georgia a hundred years ago: “Many facts in the history of the party might impel one to say that its members regarded the promotion of prosperity as the supreme aim of government,”[72] can be applied without the slightest change to the Republican Party of the 1920’s. But when the circumstance of this status quo disappeared about 1930, the party’s source of argument disappeared too, and no other has been found since. It became the party of frustration and hatred, and like the Whig Party earlier, it clung to personalities in the hope that they would be sufficient to carry it to victory. First there was the grass roots Middle Westerner Alf Landon; then the glamorous new convert to internationalism Wendell Willkie; then the gang-buster and Empire State governor Thomas Dewey. Finally, to make the parallel complete, there came the military hero General Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower can be called the William Henry Harrison of the Republican Party. He is “against” what the Democrats are doing, and he is admired by the “best” people. All this is well suited to take minds off real issues through an outpouring of national vanity and the enjoyment of sensation.

The Republican charge against the incumbent administration has been consistently the charge of “bungling,” while those Republicans who have based their dissent on something more profound and clear-sighted have generally drawn the suspicion and disapproval of the party’s supposedly practical leaders. Of this the outstanding proof is the defeat of the leadership of Taft. To look at the whole matter in an historical frame of reference, there has been so violent a swing toward the left that the Democrats today occupy the position once occupied by the Socialists; and the Republicans, having to take their bearings from this, now occupy the center position, which is historically reserved for liberals. Their series of defeats comes from a failure to see that there is an intellectually defensible position on the right. They persist with the argument from circumstance, which never wins any major issues, and sometimes, as we have noted, they are left without the circumstance.

I shall suggest that this story has more than an academic interest for an age which has seen parliamentary government exposed to insults, some open and vicious, some concealed and insidious. There are in existence many technological factors which themselves constitute an argument from circumstance for one-party political rule. Indeed, if the trend of circumstances were our master term, we should almost certainly have to favor the one-party efficiency system lately flourishing in Europe. The centralization of power, the technification of means of communication, the extreme peril of political divisiveness in the face of modern weapons of war, all combine to put the question, “What is the function of a party of opposition in this streamlined world anyhow?” Its proper function is to talk, but talking, unless it concerns some opposition of principles, is but the wearisome contention of “ins” and “outs.” Democracy is a dialectical process, and unless society can produce a group sufficiently indifferent to success to oppose the ruling group on principle rather than according to opportunity for success, the idea of opposition becomes discredited. A party which can argue only from success has no rhetorical topic against the party presently enjoying success.

The proper aim of a political party is to persuade, and to persuade it must have a rhetoric. As far as mere methods go, there is nothing to object to in the argument from circumstance, for undeniably it has a power to move. Yet it has this power through a widely shared human weakness, which turns out on examination to be shortsightedness. This shortsightedness leads a party to positions where it has no policy, or only the policy of opposing an incumbent. When all the criteria are brought to bear, then, this is an inferior source of argument, which reflects adversely upon any habitual user and generally punishes with failure. Since, as we have seen, it is grounded in the nature of a situation rather than in the nature of things, its opposition will not be a dialectically opposed opposition, any more than was Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution. And here, in substance, I would say, is the great reason why Burke should not be taken as prophet by the political conservatives. True, he has left many wonderful materials which they should assimilate. His insights into human nature are quite solid propositions to build with, and his eloquence is a lesson for all time in the effective power of energy and imagery. Yet these are the auxiliary rhetorical appeals. For the rhetorical appeal on which it will stake its life, a cause must have some primary source of argument which will not be embarrassed by abstractions or even by absolutes—the general ideas mentioned by Tocqueville. Burke was magnificent at embellishment, but of clear rational principle he had a mortal distrust. It could almost be said that he raised “muddling through” to the height of a science, though in actuality it can never be a science. In the most critical undertaking of all, the choice of one’s source of argument, it would be blindness to take him as mentor. To find what Burke lacked, we now turn to the American Abraham Lincoln, who despite an imperfect education, discovered that political arguments must ultimately be based on genus or definition.

Chapter IV
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ARGUMENT FROM DEFINITION

Although most readers of Lincoln sense the prevailing aspect of his arguments, there has been no thoughtful treatment of this interesting subject. Albert Beveridge merely alludes to it in his observation that “In trials in circuit courts Lincoln depended but little on precedents; he argued largely from first principles.”[73] Nicolay and Hay, in describing Lincoln’s speech before the Republican Banquet in Chicago, December 10, 1856, report as follows: “Though these fragments of addresses give us only an imperfect reflection of the style of Mr. Lincoln’s oratory during this period, they nevertheless show its essential characteristics, a pervading clearness of analysis, and that strong tendency toward axiomatic definition which gives so many of his sentences their convincing force and durable value.”[74] W. H. Herndon, who had the opportunity of closest personal observation, was perhaps the most analytical of all when he wrote: “Not only were nature, man, and principle suggestive to Mr. Lincoln; not only had he accurate and exact perceptions, but he was causative; his mind apparently with an automatic movement, ran back behind facts, principles, and all things to their origin and first cause—to the point where forces act at once as effect and cause.”[75] He observed further in connection with Lincoln’s practice before the bar: “All opponents dreaded his originality, his condensation, definition, and force of expression....”[76]

Our feeling that he is a father of the nation even more convincingly than Washington, and that his words are words of wisdom when compared with those of the more intellectual Jefferson and the more academic Wilson strengthen the supposition that he argued from some very fundamental source. And when we find opinion on the point harmonious, despite the wide variety of description his character has undergone, we have enough initial confirmation to go forward with the study—a study which is important not alone as showing the man in clearer light but also as showing upon what terms conservatism is possible.