Rhetorically, the non-Ground Zero, non-Mosque, non-controversy furnishes rich ground on which to build our understanding of how argument works. We therefore return to it to till the soil and see what grain (of truth) it produces.
Let's start with the name: The "Ground Zero Mosque." At the stasis of fact, this simply isn't true. What's being built, or proposed, is an Islamic Cultural Center, equivalent to a YMCA or a JCC. And it's supposed to be built two blocks from Ground Zero, hidden behind several taller buildings.
But labeling, or commonplaces, serve to "bumper sticker" an argument, reducing it to a catch phrase that frames the debate, frames it in a way that often excludes relevant facts or issues. (There's a website devoted to framing, frameshop. George Lakoff and Frank Luntz, from widely different perspectives, have written about it. Perhaps the most accessible summary is in Thank You For Arguing, p, 101-107.)
The controversy also highlights that, in argument, the present usually beats the future. That is, when one side uses demonstrative arguments - language about values and the group's identity - and the other side uses deliberative argument - language about policy or choices - the argument will usually settle in the demonstrative. Call it the rhetorical path of least resistance. Here, too, a relatively unimportant issue has trumped, at least in much of the media, discussions of the economy, for instance.
Even when both sides frame their arguments in the demonstrative, the present tense appeal to values, we can see how unproductive such an argument can be when the fact and placement of the argument aren't recognized. We've seen it in the framing of the abortion debate. We see it here: sanctity and sensitivity on the one side, equality under the law and freedom of religion on the other. At one level, what we see in conflict are inarguable beliefs. At the stasis of value, then, this argument is a lose-lose. The argument must be moved down a level, into a different stasis - fact or definition.
The issue also furnishes an opportunity to observe what doesn't work, to weed out the fallacies and remove the stones from the soil of argument.
And so I return to one of the most powerful tools of rhetoric, and its misuse (not abuse) by Charles Krauthammer, an otherwise careful reasoner of conservative values. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/19/AR2010081904769.html
His argument asserts the following, to which almost all would agree:
Radical Islam is bad
Radical Islamists destroyed the Twin Tower at Ground Zero
Ground Zero is hallowed ground - sacred because of what it represents to Americans (and not just Americans)
Then comes his conclusion: Therefore, any monument to Islam "in this place is not just insensitive but provocative."
To get to his conclusion, Krauthammer makes the following assumptions:
The Islamic Cultural Center is a "monument to Islam." Or primarily a mosque.
That, although "Radical Islam is not, by any means, a majority of Islam" (constituting 7 percent), because it is "a very powerful strain," any acknowledgment or legitimization of Islam itself, within any Ground Zero context, is "insensitive and provocative."
The Islamic Cultural Center is being built at Ground Zero, or in such close proximity as to be "at" Ground Zero.
The objection claims the same moral imperative as did the objection to a convent at Auschwitz or would a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor. Hence his title, "Moral Myopia."
Much is rhetorically wrong with the above points.
1. To also argue from analogy, if an Islamic Cultural Center is a "monument to Islam," than a YMCA (or YWCA) is a monument to Christianity and a JCC a monument to Judaism. Would Krauthammer agree to that definition? More to the point, would either organization agree to having itself defined that way? (As a side note, if there is a mosque in the Pentagon, which was subjected to the same attack on 9/11, why cannot there be a mosque near Ground Zero? What is the difference between the locations? Is it that one is functional and the other hallowed?)
2. Krauthammer admits it is wrong to equate radical Islam with all of Islam (just as it would be wrong to equate all of Christianity with say, the Ku Klux Klan). But by claiming an Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero is "insensitive," he does just that. More telling is another false equivalency: The Islamic Cultural Center is being built by Americans, for Americans. This point bears repeated emphasis: The Islamic Cultural Center is being built by Americans, for Americans. Who happen to be Muslims.
(There is a subtext to Krauthammer's argument, not subtle at all: "radical Islam...is the reason every airport in the West is an armed camp and every land is on constant alert...and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world." In other words, the controversy has more to do with the perception of Islam in the West, the role of radical Islam within the Islamic world, United States foreign policy (which surely has an effect on the growth or removal of radicalism of any kind), etc. But the only way for this subtext to enter the argument is to do what Krauthammer says he is not doing - equate radical Islam with all of Islam.)
3. The question of location needs to be addressed. Again. What distance is appropriate, and why? What buildings can or should be built in proximity (how much proximity) and why? For example, why is a strip club, within the same proximity, less insensitive and less provocative?
4. The rhetorical basis of Krauthammer's argument, the "moral myopia" he claims proponents have, rests on a false analogy. I analyzed this last time, but Krauthammer returns to it, trying to justify it by extending it.
In order to see the fallacy, we need to first see the argument made clear.
"The Atlantic's Michael Kinsley was typical in arguing that the only possible grounds for opposing the Ground Zero mosque are bigotry or demagoguery." Krauthammer takes umbrage at this false dilemma, and, rhetorically speaking, rightfully so. There are other alternatives, within the realm of demonstrative and deliberative rhetoric (though not forensic, or fact-based). I've mentioned or alluded to these above. (These reasons may be refutable without making them bigoted or demagogic.)
But then he allows a rhetorical question to make his argument, always a dangerous strategy. "Well, then, what about Pope John Paul II's ordering the closing of Carmelite convent at Auschwitz? Surely there can be no one more innocent of that crime [the Holocaust] than those devout nuns." Actually, given the complicity of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust, and the nature of the prayers of the nun, this "remarkable demonstration of sensitivity, this order to pray - but not there" cannot be compared to the "sensitivity" issue touted regarding the Islamic Cultural Center.
(Of course, the convent was moved only after intense pressure, not as a demonstration of sensitivity, but let that be.)
Auschwitz was, and symbolizes, the culmination of centuries of virulent, pathological anti-Semitism. It embodied on a secular level a religious doctrine central to most of Christianity for most of its existence, and central to the Catholic Church at least a generation past the Holocaust, and perhaps beyond that: Jews are damned, Judaism is a sin, and the sooner both are destroyed, one way or the other, the better.
In such a context, the prayer is offensive.
To make the comparison work, Krauthammer would have to argue that Muslim-Americans believe in the destruction of the United States, that Muslim-Americans oppose the existence of our Constitutional form of government, and that Muslim-Americans supported and participated in the attacks of 9/11. Krauthammer doesn't believe that. He clings to the analogy from his previous article, but drops it in favor of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
It's a better attempt historically. One might argue, for instance, that not all Japanese supported the war against America, but the radical Imperialists were such a "very powerful strain" that they dominated the thinking, policy, and identity of Japan as a whole.
But this analogy, too, fails. First, Krauthammer's words:
"He [Richard Cohen of the Washington Post] concedes that putting up a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor would be offensive, but then dismisses the analogy to Ground Zero because 9/11 was merely "a rogue act, committed by 20 or so crazed samurai." Krauthammer then berates Cohen for "obtuseness," arguing that the 9/11 terrorists were "the leading, and most successful, edge of a worldwide movement of radical Islamists."
Concede this is so. What is the connection to the Islamic cultural center two blocks, and invisible, from Ground Zero? To use analogy in a reductio ad absurdum, will Krauthammer also argue that the strip club, in an equivalent location, memorializes "the leading, and most successful edge of a worldwide movement" to degrade and brutalize women?
Here is Krauthammer's conclusion, his triumphant argument by analogy: Just as the people of Japan today would not think of planting their flag at Pearl Harbor, despite the fact that no Japanese under the age of 85 has any responsibility for that infamy, representatives of contemporary Islam - the overwhelming majority of whose adherents are equally innocent of the infamy committed on 9/11 in their name - should exercise comparable respect..."
Let us make the analogy precise: Just as no Japanese Americans today would think of celebrating their history and culture on the island of Oahu, despite the fact that none of them has any responsibility for the infamy of Pearl Harbor committed in the name of Imperial Japan, so too...
Analogy is a wonderful rhetorical tool. Sensitivity is a legitimate Values issue. Concern how we respond to radical Islam deserves careful consideration, within the stasis of Policy. But discomfort is not a demonstrative argument, analogies must be precise, and we should spend our deliberative energies on substantive, not symbolic, choices.
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