Diary: meta-advocacy

This is a rough outline for future advocacy toolbox diaries. I want to put this somewhere online where I can get to it at all times. If you bump into this and have some thoughts, go ahead and send 'em my way.

1. This is going to cover fallacies, the order of things and recognizing dodges. (where a dodge is a device used by the other party to change the flow and tone of the discussion away from the matter at hand.)

2. Labels are at their core, generalizations. After the fallacy discussion, avoiding them should be obvious, but I'll go ahead and leave this here for the proper time: When you use a lable, you are speaking through a proxy. Where a proxy exists, your meaning is not clear to the other party in that the definition of the label is not the same for all. You also run the risk of speaking for others without realizing it.

3. We make value judgements when we try to understand if a given point of discussion is valid. If we are to understand what the other party is really trying to say, we must know their value judgements and also our own. It works like this: nothing else matters but....

(what follows is a value judgement)

If value judgements differ, this is where advocacy is most effective. If one can argue successfully the merits of core value judgements, other higher level things will follow.

4. Our founders had a vision of government that includes these elements. These should be primary value judgements that you build on for your advocacy. In this, you reinforce our shared goals of a free and liberal society. Freedom, by definition is liberal!

Example: Freedom is worth more than security. Many today argue the reverse is true. The problem with this really is that we have to give up freedom in order to keep terror at bay. This means the terrorists win! (not ok)

5. Another example: Why legislating morality is wrong. In a free society, that adhers to the core elements of freedom, equality and democracy, there are only two reasons for laws; namely, to reinforce freedom and address harm. That's it. Everything else should be allowed by definition. From here it's very easy to build a case for what is proper law and what is improper law: violates freedom, equality, democracy or does not address harm.

On the topic of harm, there are two kinds:

Civil harm

This is harm that is universally recognized by all and that can be tied to core elements of truth. Theft, child porn (and there is a reason I have that one in here, trust me), murder, etc... all are civil harms properly addressed by law.

Moral harm

Is harm that cannot be tied to core elements of truth, but instead is built upon beliefs. A good example is an action that someone finds offensive or believes is wrong (such as abortion), but cannot establish the case for the harm sans beliefs.

The concept of freedom demands we not infringe on freedom, unless civil harm is involved. To have freedom, we must also have tolerance. This is the core of the liberal philosophy.