Liz Cheney’s Agony
When I was an undergraduate in the late 1960s, I underwent a kind of transformative experience during a classroom debate with another student that I believed I was clearly winning when the philosophy professor corrected me. He reminded me that when engaged in a philosophical debate, as opposed to the 9th-grade Debating Challenge, the point is not simply to vanquish one’s opponent but to find the truth. In order to do the former one may use any means fair or foul to destroy the opponent. For the latter one must do the exact opposite and represent one’s opponent’s position in the strongest terms possible. One represents the opponent’s position as charitably as only then attempts to refute that stronger position.
