“James, I was frankly shocked that when I suggested a debate with Vox Day that you called debate “gay.” Granted, I laughed, but I am curious why you think so poorly of one of our highest forms of discourse. Have you not seen presidential or academic debates? How can you say debate is gay.”

-Ethan

The presidency is gay, Ethan.

War chiefs and kings are cool.

Academia is double-down circle-jerk gay, bro.

I suppose my case is made, and I have seen presidential debates. But that would be a lame article.

My nature is not argumentative and I have no desire to impose my will via vote, manipulation, arguing or force upon other humans.

When I write, I present findings and opinions based on these findings that are certainly flawed in some way. I am doing what I can to share what I can find of the truth. If I was lucky enough to speak with Vox Day, who I regard as far smarter than I am, I would want to ask him questions and learn

Okay, I have seen two non-presidential debates,which I will discuss.

In 1978 I was in Art Richardson's Advance Placement European History Class when he handed us a little blue book on the causes of WWI. Our history studies had only advanced to the Enlightenment and none of us, other than I—and I had only read two—had ever read a book on WWI.

I was bothered by this and he explained to me that we were learning the mechanics of debate and it was not important how much we knew about the subject, but rather what we could do to convince the judges that the blame for causing the war should fall on the nation we had targeted for blame. It was about how you could use your skill in arguing and verbal bullying to obscure what you did not know, inflate and weaponize what you did know, obscure what the opponent did know and target what they did not know.

As some one who actually wondered why this war started, this seemed very counter-productive. I thought back to the arguing and bickering between the children in my family, and between husbands and wives, and then noted that when the men in my family got together that they never argued, that they found ways to access each other's knowledge to enhance their own, that the men spent most of their time agreeing while us children typically argued. I sat out these debates as an observer, refusing to participate as I read.

Three decades later a man I played war games with earned his doctorate in history with a thesis on German diplomacy between 1895 and 1914. I read his thesis. This guy spent years reading microfilm and primary sources. We discussed it and agreed with one another that the causes of WWI were multifaceted with plenty of blame to assign to all of the warring powers—most of whom were hereditary heads of state who did not fight in the war, were related to each other by blood, class and matrimony, and literally marched millions of anonymous strangers of the underclass to their death in a family feud between vampire nations largely fueled by competition to despoil undeveloped nations of their natural resources.

They were all bad guys.

But in a world where there has to be a good guy and a bad guy this truth most be obscured by an argumentative dualism in which all blame for a fight falls on one party.

The other debate I heard was between Greg Johnson and Vox Day and was monitored by a hot babe. Day hammered Johnson, who was trying to find some common ground for agreement while Day bullied him when it was not even needed, which was unfortunate, that the man speaking under his real name, was reduced by a man who chooses a grandiose alias.

Debate encourages conversation to be used as combat rather than as truth revealing, rather than as an investigative tool. It is liking following the science rather than using the science.

For instance, if Vox and I were to debate and I was tasked with proving that Europeans were enslaved here in America and he was tasked with disproving it, my overwhelming command of the primary source material would not insure victory. Indeed, he would crush me.

“James, is it true that Peter Williamson died of alcoholism?”

“James, have you considered that Sussanah Johnson suffered form PTSD and she did not write her account until 40-years after the fact?”

“James, you do realize that Hinton Rowan Helper was a southerner, and therefore biased.”

“James, numerous martial arts masters have criticized your self-defense research. How can we trust your assessments of available data on American history, which you did not pursue by your own admission until 2009, when peer review in your original field is negative?”

“James, you are kind of a weird person, aren't you, a self-described misanthrope?”

“James, is it true that you failed to graduate 9th grade?”

Ethan, debate, as formal argument is a very valuable tool for developing ideology-based social compliance in a democracy. As such it is a very important art and one of the highest arts in Western Civilization. How might government reliably convince the majority to oppress the minority if we do not have a high tradition of assigning guilt and discrediting the opposing ideology through convincing argument?

Debate is a very important aspect of civilization and the molding of lesser minds by greater minds is key to its function. Mind molding is not something I am interested in. I'm just curious about what is real, in the Lands of Is and Was and have no regard for the Realms of Should and Could and Would.