Opinion: Republicans resort to sophistry to undermine democracy
The GOP’s rhetorical defense of former President Donald Trump rekindles an ancient form of speech-making called sophistry. Sophistry threatens our form of government as it threatened government in Classical Greece.
During the fourth and fifth centuries BCE, a group of itinerant teachers called the Sophists believed that orators who relied on florid language and forceful delivery, their reputations and charisma, and arguments befitting particular circumstances, occasions or audiences won the day.
Sophists taught speakers how to counter one argument with its opposite. But no speaker could ground any argument in transcendent principles or unassailable proofs. Despite their popularity, Sophists remained controversial because they favored persuasion over objective truth and espoused cultural and moral relativism.
Plato worried the Sophists could, through specious oratory, make vice look like virtue, the right appear wrong, and just acts seem unjust. Critics admonished that even rogues could be made over as saints and the goal of sophistry was to seize and hold onto power at any cost. Critics accused the Sophists of undermining classical Greek political and moral foundations.
Today, sophistry refers to using fallacious and deceptive arguments. Understood this way, sophistry has much in common with Orwellian language and demagoguery. Following the founding fathers and in his frequent criticisms of President Obama’s oratory, commentator George Will cautioned about how sophistic-like rhetoric damages democracy.
In light of the federal and state indictments against Trump, prominent Republicans running against him in the 2024 election practice sophistry in their defense of Trump’s behavior. Former Vice-President Mike Pence said after the announcement of the election fraud indictment that criminal proceedings against Trump should be postponed until after the presidential election when voters will determine guilt or innocence.
Gov. Ron DeSantis responded to the indictments by railing about “deep state” conspiracies to “weaponize” the government and to “persecute” and bring down Trump. Vivek Ramaswamy hinted at problems with Trump’s character when he accused the former president of exercising “bad judgment” on Jan. 6.
Many Republicans and Trump’s own attorneys in the election fraud case assert that Trump’s (false) belief in the 2020 presidential election being stolen justified his efforts to overturn it and the DOJ is “criminalizing” his First Amendment right to lie to the American people. However, it is hard to discern any overriding moral principles in such defenses, especially when so many legal scholars have rejected them.
The best indication of sophistry is that so much Republican rhetoric concerning Trump contradicts what Asa Hutcheson, also a GOP presidential candidate, and former federal prosecutor, calls their traditional commitment to arguments based on constitutional principles like the rule of law and the integrity of the American legal system.
Rather than being based on democratic principles or any superseding conception of the public good, the Republican rhetorical defense seems rooted in opportunistic and cynical appeasement of Trump and his extremist supporters. In this sophistry, Republicans lack of moral courage in failing to oppose Trump appears virtuous. The DOJ’s action to hold him legally accountable seems wrong, and Trump’s perfidy is meant to look innocuous if not somehow patriotic.
Republican sophistry is erroneous and misleading, intended to deflect attention from the alleged crimes committed and to undermine democratic institutions like the criminal justice system that Republicans have long venerated. As Jennifer Medina wrote in The New York Times, many Republican candidates have adopted rhetoric “sowing broad suspicion” about the courts and the F.B.I. “in ways that might have been considered extraordinary…just a few years ago.”
Does any reasonable person doubt Republicans would deploy opposite arguments to attack Trump, suddenly becoming the strongest champions of law and order, were he a Democrat?
Perhaps Republicans are grounding their rhetoric on the principle that Trump is above the law and the Constitution. If so, they should tell the American people explicitly.
More: Opinion: Trump so hates being a loser he's persuaded followers down dark path of violence
More: Opinion: Preparing for nation’s 250th, let’s celebrate basic bonds of shared citizenship
Not all Republicans are sophists. Recently, Pence criticized Trump by arguing he is not above the law. Still, as Ronald Brownstein suggested in The Atlantic, the increasingly frenzied and convoluted Republican apologies for Trump illustrate “the GOP is now willing to accept Trump’s repeated assaults on the basic structures of American democracy.”
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, Republicans face a momentous choice: They can argue on behalf of law and order or defend the former president no matter how much harm they and Trump continue to inflict on our democracy.
Kenneth Zagacki is a professor of communication at North Carolina State University. Richard Cherwitz is a communication professor emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Sophistry style of speech-making can damage democracy
