September 18, 2026

Link to Published Article (Washington Examiner magazine Subscription Required)

By Jason Thompson

Americans disagree about almost everything. We argue about very little.

This matters.

Disagreement is easy. I state my position. You state yours. We discover that they are incompatible. If we are sufficiently invested in the dispute, we repeat ourselves, usually with greater confidence. Eventually we may stop talking about the issue and start talking about each other.

Argument asks more of us.

An argument requires me to explain why I believe something. I have to give reasons that another person can examine. If there is evidence, I have to account for it. If someone identifies a weakness in my reasoning, I have to answer the objection rather than simply restate my conclusion. And there must be at least some possibility that the process will cause me to modify what I believe.

Much of what passes for political argument today never gets that far.

We know how to announce positions. We know how to signal which political camp we belong to. 

We are very good at finding contradictions in the other party and remarkably forgiving of similar contradictions on our own side. Political labels increasingly do work that reasoning once had to do. Calling an idea progressive, MAGA, socialist, globalist, extremist, woke, or authoritarian may tell an audience how it is supposed to react. It does not tell anyone whether the idea is right.

Assigning motives is even easier. An opponent wants to destroy democracy. Another hates the country. One side cares only about the rich; the other wants government to control every part of life. Once motives have been settled, the argument itself becomes almost unnecessary.

We should argue more.

Not fight more. Not insult each other more. Not manufacture disagreements for television or social media. We already have plenty of that. We need more occasions in which one person makes a serious claim and another person tries to answer it.

There is an old method of intellectual exchange that captures the difference. Disputatio developed in the medieval university as a structured form of argument. Its rules varied, but the basic idea is straightforward. A difficult question is posed. A speaker defines the important terms and gives an answer. Other participants raise objections. A useful objection cannot amount to “I disagree.” It has to identify a problem in the reasoning or offer an alternative that makes the original answer confront something it has missed.

Then comes the difficult part. The original speaker answers the question again.

The answer does not have to change. But the objections have to be accounted for.

Imagine how strange that requirement would seem in much of our political life. A presidential candidate finishes a debate by explaining which objection from an opponent was strongest. A congressional hearing concludes with legislators identifying which testimony caused them to reconsider part of a bill. A television host asks a guest to explain the best argument on the other side before criticizing it.

The point would not be to make everyone nicer. Some arguments concern matters on which people should be angry. Nor would the purpose be to manufacture agreement. A person can understand an opposing argument completely and still conclude that it is badly wrong.

The discipline lies in having to answer it.

This is not foreign to the American political tradition. Much of our political development came through arguments in which people disagreed about basic questions and then had to give reasons for their answers.

The debate over the Constitution is an obvious example. The Anti-Federalist writer Brutus feared that the proposed national government would gradually consolidate power and diminish the states. Publius answered that the weakness of the existing Confederation made a stronger national government necessary. They disagreed over representation, federal power, courts, taxation, the size of the republic, and the durability of state authority.

Neither side merely announced that the other was anti-American. They argued about what the proposed Constitution would actually do.

James Madison's Federalist No. 10 helps explain why that matters. Madison did not expect Americans to overcome disagreement. Different economic interests, religious convictions, property, ambitions, and opinions would produce factions. Human reason itself was fallible. As long as people were free to exercise it, he wrote, “different opinions will be formed.”

Even political wisdom could not be assumed. “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” Madison warned.

Madison's insight is useful because it sets a realistic standard. The goal of politics cannot be to remove disagreement. The question is what we do after disagreement appears.

Argument is one answer.

At its best, argument makes us put reasons between our conclusions and the exercise of power. It requires a legislator to explain why a proposed law is justified. It gives opponents a chance to identify costs or constitutional problems that supporters have ignored. It allows supporters to answer those objections. Sometimes the bill changes. Sometimes the opposition proves unpersuasive and the majority votes anyway.

That process can look inefficient. It is supposed to take time.

I see the importance of this in legislative work. Bills are introduced because somebody thinks the law should change. Then other people start asking questions. What does this provision mean? Who has to comply? What will it cost? Does an agency actually have authority to do this? What happens in the case the sponsor did not anticipate?

Those questions can be irritating when someone is trying to pass a bill. They can also make the bill better.

A legislature that merely counts votes is missing part of its purpose. Committee hearings, amendments, debate, two legislative chambers, executive review, and eventually judicial review expose an idea to repeated objection. The system assumes that the first version of an answer may not be the best one.

Our political culture increasingly rewards the opposite instinct.

Changing a position after hearing an objection is often treated as evidence that the original position was insincere. Admitting that an opponent made a good point gives the opponent material for an advertisement. A politician who says “I was wrong” risks more than one who simply moves on to another talking point.

So we learn to defend.

The same habit exists outside elected office. Consider how political discussion often proceeds online. Someone shares a claim. The first response identifies a fact that appears to contradict it. Instead of addressing the fact, the original speaker finds something objectionable about the source. Someone else finds an old statement by the person who posted the criticism. Within a few exchanges, nobody is discussing the original claim.

Everyone disagrees. Nobody argues.

The cost is larger than bad conversation because the ability to argue is connected to the ability to govern ourselves.

Frederick Douglass understood this under circumstances far more serious than most of our political disputes.

When the Supreme Court decided Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, Douglass regarded the decision as profoundly wrong. Yet his response was an argument. He challenged Chief Justice Roger Taney's history. He challenged his interpretation of the Constitution. He returned to the text and the principles of the Founding and made the case that Taney's reading should not control the country's understanding of its Constitution.

Douglass did not soften his condemnation in order to be civil. He tried to show why Taney was wrong.

Abraham Lincoln did something similar. He opposed Dred Scott while distinguishing between obeying the Court's judgment in a particular case and treating its constitutional reasoning as permanently beyond political argument. In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln warned that if national policy on questions affecting everyone became irrevocably fixed by Supreme Court decisions, the people would have “ceased to be their own rulers.”

Neither example supports the idea that every question can be resolved by discussion. Slavery is the clearest warning against such a comfortable conclusion. Americans argued over it for decades, and argument failed to resolve a conflict tied to enormous economic interests, political power, and the denial of human liberty. The Civil War followed. Constitutional amendments eventually abolished slavery and changed the constitutional status of citizenship and civil rights.

Argument has limits.

But that history gives us little reason to prefer a politics in which we stop arguing earlier.

A constitutional republic has to make decisions among people who continue to disagree. 

Elections settle who holds office. Legislatures vote. Courts decide cases. Constitutional amendments can remove some questions from ordinary politics. None of these mechanisms requires the losing side to conclude that it was intellectually wrong.

It does require losers to have some way to continue their argument.

That is one reason Lincoln's First Inaugural remains useful. He acknowledged that “unanimity is impossible.” A majority had to govern, but it had to remain “held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations,” while political majorities themselves remained capable of changing as public opinion changed.

Today's minority can argue its way into becoming tomorrow's majority.

That possibility changes politics. If I believe I can persuade my fellow citizens, I have a reason to explain myself. If I believe the other side can never legitimately govern, persuasion matters much less. The objective shifts from winning an argument to preventing the opponent from exercising power at all.

We should expect more argument from our political institutions.

Congress and state legislatures should conduct hearings where the purpose is to test legislation, not merely generate clips. Committee chairs should invite witnesses capable of making the strongest case against a proposal. Legislators should be willing to explain which objections changed a bill. Candidates should be pressed to identify weaknesses in their own positions rather than simply repeating the strongest argument for them.

Political journalism could do more of the same. Asking a politician why an opponent is wrong is predictable. Asking the politician to state the opponent's best argument first is harder. So is asking what evidence would cause a change in position.

Citizens have responsibilities here too, but they are practical ones.

Before responding to an argument, make sure the other person would recognize the description of it. Ask for the reason behind a conclusion. Separate disagreement about facts from disagreement about principles. When someone offers evidence, deal with the evidence before investigating whether the person who offered it belongs to the wrong political tribe.

And occasionally say, “That changes my thinking.”

Those words should not be humiliating. They are evidence that a conversation had consequences.

None of this asks Americans to become less partisan. Political parties organize real disagreements, and many of those disagreements matter. Nor does it ask people to pretend that every argument is equally good. Some arguments collapse quickly when tested. Others rest on false facts. Some political positions deserve strong moral condemnation.

A culture of argument should expose those weaknesses more clearly.

The alternative is what we increasingly have now: enormous quantities of political disagreement in which the underlying claims receive surprisingly little examination. We know where everyone stands. We know which side everyone is on. We know which words will provoke which reaction.

What we often do not know is why.

Disputatio begins with a question and an answer. Then somebody objects. The objection has to address the reasoning, and the person who gave the answer has to respond.

There is no requirement that anyone leave persuaded.

There is a requirement that they argue.