Often, classical liberal ideas are communicated through arguments—either adversarial arguments, in which one tries to persuade someone who rejects classical liberalism, or some facet of it, of its truth, or what might be termed promotional arguments, where one is presenting the case for classical liberalism, or a classical liberal position on an issue, to someone who is undecided on the question at hand. Both of these types of arguments, however, share the common feature of engaging with someone else to arrive at a conclusion that is best supported by evidence and argument.
This is important to remember, for otherwise some arguments might just degenerate into the sort of shouting match parodied in Monty Python’s “The Argument Sketch,” where two people simply contradict each other: “You just contradicted me!” “I did not!” “Oh you did!” Moreover, remembering that one is engaging with another person to find the best-supported conclusion will help orient your argumentative approach to be one that is more collaborative than adversarial—even when one is arguing with someone who disagrees strongly with what you are saying!
So, how does one go about such argumentative collaboration? I think that the first and perhaps most important thing to keep in mind is that no matter how deep your differences with your interlocutor might appear you both really want the same thing: A better world than the one we now live in. Of course, how you understand what a “better world” is might be different from your interlocuter’s view, and I’ll address how to overcome (or at least identify) such differences below. But recognizing that you’re both after the same goal should do a lot to de-fuse the heat and antagonism that arguments about political issues can sometimes generate and which often leads to them being less productive than they might have been.
To begin, let's assume that you and your interlocutor agree not just on wanting to make the world a better place, but on what such a better world would look like—perhaps, for example, you both want people to be better off, and share an especial concern for the material well-being of the poor. In such cases, where you share value commitments, much of your argument is likely to be focused on showing empirically how classical liberal approaches to issues will secure the results that you both desire. Here, it would be sensible to draw your data from sources that your interlocutor won’t find problematic: statistics provided by Government agencies can be very helpful here, since your interlocutor will no doubt realize that Government statistics are unlikely to have a classical liberal bias! It is also useful here to draw on statistics that are most likely to be chosen by persons who would disagree with you to support their case. For example, when arguing that the sale of a kidney would be no more dangerous than types of risky employment that we currently allow, I take care to choose statistics that show the highest rate of risk for kidney removal, and the lowest rate of risk for the comparable employment categories. This, I think, is not only simply intellectually honest, but also serves a very useful rhetorical purpose: Look, even the statistics that should undermine my case actually support it!
But what about a case when you and your interlocutor disagree about values? It seems that there are four ways in which such disagreement might arise:
(1) You agree on some basic values, but disagree on how they are to be understood. For example, you both believe that a world in which people are free is a good one, but whereas you believe that this would be realized if people were just free from interference, she believes that it could only be realized if people are free only if they have sufficient wealth to pursue their own interests—and so a concern for freedom means that the State should provide them with this if they lack it.
(2) You agree on some basic values, but disagree as to how these will be instantiated in practice. For example, you both agree that coercion should be avoided, but whereas you do not believe that offers can be coercive, your interlocutor does.
(3) You agree on basic values, but rank them differently. For example, you both value freedom and security, but whereas you value freedom more than security, your interlocutor values security more than freedom.
(4) You agree broadly on a basic value—you both want the world to be a better place—but you have very different views of what a better world would look like. For example, you think that a better world would be one in which people were materially prosperous, whereas she believes that a better world would be one in which everyone had an equal share of wealth.
How to address these forms of disagreement? Taking them in turn, it seems that a disagreement about how shared values are to be understood could take one of two forms. It might be that both you and your interlocutor believe that the value in question is primarily instrumentally valuable: that maybe you both value freedom for what it could secure for those who have it. If you agree that this is why you both value freedom, then you can discuss which understanding of freedom will, in practice, be most likely to secure the good in question. Such a discussion would then cease to be about conflicting values, and instead revert to an empirical discussion, as outlined above. Alternatively, it might be that your disagreement really is about the correct way of understanding the value in question. If so, you’ll need to engage your interlocutor in a discussion of which type of freedom is the more valuable in itself, working as you do to find common ground with her so that your discussion will be a productive one.
But what if you agree on values, but disagree on how they are to be instantiated in practice? Here, you will need to engage in conceptual analysis, working with your interlocutor to refine the scope of the concepts whose evaluation you agree on. For example, you could attempt to agree on paradigm cases of coercion, and then jointly determine what is involved in subjecting a person to coercion. With this in hand, you could then address the issue that originally divided you. It is important to notice here that this approach should serve to defuse the normative disagreements that you have (e.g., whether offers to persons to work in sweatshops are coercive, and that this grounds for their prohibition), since you will first be examining the descriptive concept that lies behind them.
Disagreements over how to rank values, and fundamental disagreements over what the world should look like, might seem to be less amenable to discussion than the two types of value disagreement discussed above. But even in these cases one can gain traction with one’s interlocutors. With respect to disagreements over how to rank values one could take either of the tactics suggested above with respect to the first type of disagreement outlined above, with the second of these focusing more narrowly on why your rankings on the values in question differ, and whether grasping these reasons could lead to a reconciliation of your positions. Of course, the second approach here might be fruitless, for you and your interlocutor might simply disagree about what the world should look like.
Yet even here there is room for reconciliation, for it might be that a classical liberal approach to some issues would be a good way to realize in practice the value preferred by your interlocutor. For example, if she values equality, you could note that removing barriers to trade and immigration would be more likely to lead to this than their continued imposition. Or, if she values peace and security, you could note that peace is also greatly valued by classical liberals, and that security can come about not only through State protection, but through voluntary co-operation among individuals providing them with incentives not to aggress against others. This is not to suggest that such examples will persuade your interlocutors of the truth of classical liberalism whole cloth! But they will serve to show them that a classical liberal approach has something to offer, even if they might disagree with some of its fundamental assessments of value.
After reading this brief account of how to engage one’s opponents on their own terms one might have noted that there’s nothing especially classical liberal about the advice given here. That’s right! It’s simply intended to facilitate argumentative engagement, with the aim of finding the conclusions that are best supported by both empirical evidence and conceptual analysis. That these are likely to be classical liberal conclusions is simply a bonus!
