D EAR ... hmm, who is left? The MPs are gone, returned to their homes for the summer; my task of writing to them is done. So what now? There is no one to write to. - These were my thoughts as I sat down to begin a new letter, but while I pondered this question a voice broke into my consciousness. ‘Come now,' it said, ‘what really has changed? You have been writing to absent readers all along! Have you not been mailing out hundreds of broadsheets, printed at your own expense, that your readers would not open? That is what you have been told, by those who know the habits of MPs much better than you do. So what is different now? You have written to readers who would not read you: why stop? Write more, continue! Readers who will not read you, my good man, are everywhere! ‘Do you not see that it is in fact your duty to put forth what the citizens of a free country will refuse to read. If you do not write it, will you not thus force them not to read it? (Who has any freedom to read what has not been written?) Would you force them, Sir, by refusing to write? No, for the sake of Freedom you must continue to write what every free citizen who comes across you will then have the blessed liberty to ignore! Let Freedom ring , Sir!' - Therefore, ... D EAR whomever , DEAR phantom reader , MY DEAR canadian : it is my pleasure to write to you because you are there - faithful and constant! When the MPs to whom I had been writing were gone, I was glad - yes, glad - thrilled to get away from the foul issue , for it had tired me. But my respite from it was brief, much too brief, for a solicitous friend soon enjoined me to pay attention to the Internet. Oh the Internet. Woe, woe, I cry: what creation is this, that we have chained ourselves to it; what treacherous, wobbling stage have we constructed, on which to strut and prance about and flatten our faces? ( But enough of that.) My friend had directed me to an interesting corner of this virtual realm in which a daily Debate was underway on Motion 312: the very subject of my interest in these past months. However, I wisely stop myself here. ‘Daily Debate '? I dare not use the word ‘Debate ' at all, for one of the lessons the Internet has lately confirmed is that we do not know what constitutes debate . No, indeed we do not. And a serious matter it is, too. If Debate broke into our house and ate our dinner, we would not know what was chewing our noodles. If we had to find Debate in a crowd, because its house was burning, we would mistake a thousand other things for Debate before we turned to anything that actually is one. Yes, this conclusion - to which I have at last been led by the wild antics of ‘Debaters' - was recently confirmed in me by the exchange I witnessed at close quarters on the Internet. It has led me to make the following pronouncement: whereby I would see ... the public charged with lamentable ignorance about debate Y es, there you have it: consider yourself so charged. Do You know what Debate involves, and ( very much to the point) what it excludes? Are You among the Enlightened who might lead us in Debate ( for you know what it is) or are you one of the many proclaiming we ‘have had a Debate', when all that you know is that ‘we have argued'. Is Debate simply arguing? ‘Oh, here we go,' you will perhaps say, with that sour look on your face, ‘another abstract disquisition on some lofty Idea!' But I am charging you with not knowing what you are talking about: it is you who are using the word. Look sour about that. Believe me, it is worth your time, to see if you have a grade- school grasp of this word you use, this primary in- strument of Democracy. Do you know that at least: that Debate is an instrument of Democracy, a chief tool and protection of civilization ? What is to be said for a Citizenry that cannot recognize it, and so does not know when its fences and protections have rotted & collapsed? the VEHICLE of debate W hat is debate? If I call it a vehicle , I suggest that it is: a a means of conveyance , b by which we might get somewhere . Imagine a group of people who, aware that vehicles have been invented, propose to manufacture such vehicles, so that we might convey ourselves about in them more cheaply, shall we say. But these Deceitful Manufacturers produce vehicles that, as we who purchase them soon discover, do not work. I would venture to say there is a Fool in this scenario somewhere, the chief signal of raging folly being that the vehicles in question lack such components as wheels and drive shafts! But who, pray, is the Fool: these Charlatan Manufacturers, or the Buyers who have purchased their goods? The Makers seem rather canny ( despicable, yes, but not foolish) , for so finely gauging the gullibility of the Buyers. It is the Buyers whom we shall have to charge with a rather Stupendous Ignorance, both for lacking the wits to notice that these vehicles have no wheels , and for lacking the sense to conclude that what has no wheels will not drive , and that what will not drive cannot be a car . And that is our situation exactly, with regard to Debate . In my next letter, I will show you this deficiency in examples - but I can show it to you right now, in yourself, for the features I shall now insist define a Debate you will promptly dismiss as not features of Debate at all. And so the blindness with which I charge the public can be found quite near to home. We do not know the defining features of Debate : the very features that are as essential to its being as wheels are to a car. And, indeed, we are worse off, and even more foolish, than the Junk-Bucket buyers, for we get into the Debate and sit wheel-less in our Driveways, pumping toxins out our tail- pipes and making a loud sound, never noticing that we are going nowhere . We do not notice that our purpose in debate is not being served - whereas the car-buyers knew at once that their Crap-Cans did not move and that their purposes of transport were foiled! What fools are we, to ‘have Debates' that are not Debates?! We hear a thing labelled Debate and glibly parrot this talk - saying that we Are glad to Engage in Debate and Will Debate any- one, or claiming that we are Participating in Debate ( “This has been debated as long as man has existed ") , or Have Had One ( this is “a debate that has already taken place ") - and so prove ourselves to know nothing whatsoever about this subject: for here we sit in our ‘Debate' vehicles, stock-still and wheel-less in our driveways, making a blustering noise. If we engage in a Debate and go nowhere , yet remain convinced that Debate is being had, we prove ourselves to be school-children on this topic, for any True Debate is a vehicle that will conduct us , like a car, to a Destination . the DESTINATION of debate T hat destination may not be precisely where we wish to go, but it will be somewhere, and it will be forward. Consign what I am about to say to the rank of mere opinion , if you must ( noting carefully, however, that the one who calls it an opinion that ‘Every car has wheels' casts doubt only upon his own knowledge of cars) , but I tell you that The purpose of a Debate is: to conduct all of those who are conducting the debate to a Conclusion ... that we, conducting the debate, will accept . ‘A Conclusion? In the Debate about abortion?! What nonsense!' “That debate has always been open and will never close ." But which is it: is Debate that which never closes, or that which does close? “This is a debate we had back in the 60s , 70s , and 80s . It ’s been settled for decades ." ( Two quotations from the same person. ) But really, can both things be Debate? The very reason that we speak of a Debate being had , and heave great sighs of relief over blessed closure in a Debate ( when we have reached such closure) , is that we have not completely forgotten the true character and purpose of a Debate. Allow me to demonstrate that character and purpose in a brief and amusing play . N o. 7 19 JULY 2012 } } The D I S S E N T I N G F U T I L I T A R I A N { { L E T T E R S T O . . . c a n a d i a n s ? F R O M A C I T I Z E N O N T H E S U B J E C T O F T H E P R O P O S E D I N V E S T I G AT I O N I N T O O U R H U M A N I T Y E n g a g e i n d e b a t e : w e r a c e t o t h e c au s e ! T h e r e ’ s s c a n t h o p e f o r t h e m , b u t f o r u s t h e r e ’ s a p p l a u s e ! B CITIZENS' QUIET (SPEECHLESS) REACTION TO THE CHARGE OF IGNORANCE