The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Persuasion

3. The Reasoning Effect: Sacred Rhetoric and Deliberation

41 The Reasoning Effect Sacred Rhetoric and Deliberation Chapter Three The form as well as the content of an appeal can affect how we perceive its message. An example of the influence of rhetorical form is the negative reaction of many American citizens to flag burning during the protests of the 1960s and 1970s. The same message without the same emotional response could have been achieved through other symbolism. For example, if protestors had engaged in flag washing, symbolically cleansing the flag (and hence the nation) of its improper acts, they could have made a similar point without giving the same offense.1 Flag burning was offensive because it is a profanity to many citizens, which prevented them from seeing any effective political message beyond the desecration of a sacred symbol. In his dissent in Texas v. Johnson (1989), the decision that narrowly upheld flag burning as constitutionally protected speech, even Justice John Paul Stevens, who was considered one of the most liberal justices on the Court at the time of his retirement in 2010, wrote that “the question is unique . . . Even if flag burning could be considered just another species of symbolic speech under the logical application of the rules that the Court has developed in its interpretation of the First Amendment in other contexts, this case has an intangible dimension that makes those rules inapplicable.”2 The flag-burning example illustrates that the sacred element changes the impact of the message. Certain forms of rhetoric can either limit or increase the acceptability of an argument or act. An example of facilitating rhetoric is the use of the term “harvest” in organ donation. “It’s time to cut out the deceased’s heart” puts a brake on the whole procedure, while “It’s time to harvest the deceased’s heart” invokes an entirely different reaction that allows it to proceed.3 Each of these examples makes the same 42 g The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric point—that language and symbolism count. The same argument made in a different way may no longer be the same argument, which is to say that it has an entirely different effect. The Psychology of the Sacred Appeal Not merely the content of political opinion but also the form of its expression is meaningful for the health of American democracy. The positions citizens take affect our collective decisions, but the justifications they offer affect the nature of public discourse. Reasoning that is absolute or inflexible allows little room for compromise or mutual agreement. This is particularly significant for the prospects of a more deliberative democracy. Hence the reasons for citizens’ opinions can be as important as the opinions themselves in terms of their influence on the nature of political conflict and the functioning of civil society. Sacred rhetoric may be particularly important in this regard because it is intimately connected to a specific form of reasoning, or a way of thinking through the relation between values and public policy opinions. This form of appeal makes an argument in a manner that sets a political issue apart, reasoning about it in a different way. Sacred rhetoric employs absolutist reasoning , whereas nonsacred or negotiable appeals employ more consequentialist reasoning. Absolutist reasoning is characterized by identifying established principles or boundaries and then privileging these concerns over the consequences of a decision. It may also rely on specific authorities for the principle, and perhaps engage in expressions of anger or moral outrage at perceived violations . Consequentialist reasoning, in contrast, concentrates on the expected effects or outcomes of the decision, focusing on cause-and-effect relationships or cost-benefit calculations. Authorities are more likely to be seen as pluralistic and expressions of moral outrage are limited. In this sense sacredness is a cognitive process as well as an outcome. Because sacred rhetoric is characterized more by the form of an argument than by its ideological direction, it may follow that its greatest influence is on citizens’ process of reasoning rather than on the outcome of opinion. Specifically , I argue that sacred rhetoric influences the form of reasoning employed by its hearers, shifting citizens away from consequentialist reasoning and toward absolutist reasoning. This is one facet of what we mean by persuasion, a multifaceted concept comprising several distinct aspects, some of which are more significant than others for the psychology of the sacred appeal. The Reasoning Effect f 43 Contagion In The End of the Affair we hear...