When did it happen that a person could prevail in a debate simply because that person got away with the most effective lies, omissions, and immoral moral equivalencies? If you watched the US political debates this year, there must have been a new book of debate rules published since I was young and on a high school debate team. The cardinal rules of debate were ignored and violated on these national broadcasts. They were violations that we don’t allow our children and youthful debaters in school to indulge in because such actions would corrupt their capacity to argue rationally with civility.  Apparently you have to be competing for high office to have access to the debate weapons of mindful immorality and incivility and call it a debate.  Our original debate judges of our youths would have leveled their eyes and said: “for shame, leave the stage”.

Lynn Schmidt, columnist St. Louis Dispatch and David Nevins, co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder of The  Bridge Alliance  published on November 4 an article entitled; Moral equivalency as a political tool.  In the article they say: “Moral equivalence is a fallacy commonly used in politics. It occurs when two different or unrelated issues or positions are falsely said to carry the same moral weight. This fallacy attempts to excuse the morality of the issue by blaming unequal behavior by the other. The term “moral” is doing the heavy lifting here.” 

The current President Elect was not only running for office but also from the sentencing of crimes for which he was already convicted. In the debates he had the temerity to call the sitting President the ‘worst President ever’ offering absolutely no historic proof of this comprehensive condemnation. This egregious violation of debate rules aside, the larger question of morality also lies with the electorate. As a nation we have to ask ourselves how much fallacy in the realms of debate, political, or criminal are we are willing to endure and tolerate before we say enough is enough? Are we not ourselves guilty of immoral moral equivalence? We need to take the morality we used to raise and teach our children, adapt it to the times with love and rationality and apply it to our public officials.  We owe the future generations an apology. A little integrity in this matter of moral equivalence would be a great start in terms of penance. That would be good.