Mottes, Baileys and Moscow Mules

"Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart." Proverbs 26:24

Stubborn, pernicious evils are sometimes disguised by clever rhetorical tricks which conceal or seek to distract from the truth.

This was the case recently with the responses I received to an article I wrote a couple of weeks back critiquing Douglas Wilson who seems determined to improperly tie a commitment to biblical inerrancy to his peculiar views of US chattel slavery.

The response tactic by Wilson and his defenders was marked by a particular kind of fallacy which I've seen from many of the southern heritage cheerleaders. You evade the true argument made against you, distort it and pretend like you're being attacked by a point the challenger never made in the first place. Then your followers can pile on with sarcastic refrains of "Yeah, Douglas Wilson is totally in love with US Chattel slavery".

Now, Wilson has made statements in the past that leave questions about whether he is indeed “in love” with US Chattel Slavery, shall we say - open? See the below quote. So as to ensure he is being represented fairly, I’ve added his qualifying sentence which comes a few lines after the following paragraph as he requested on social media. Emphasis mine.

“We have all heard of the heartlessness — the brutalitites, immoralities, and cruelties — that were supposedly inherent in the system of slavery. We have heard how slave families were broken up, of the forcible rape of slave women, of the brutal beatings that were a commonplace, about the horrible living conditions, and of the unrelenting work schedule and back-breaking routine — all of which go together to form our impression of the crushing oppression which was slavery in the South. The truthfulness of this description has seldom been challenged. Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.
…One cannot defend the abuse some slaves had to endure. None can excuse the immorality some masters and overseers indulged in with some slave women. The separation that sometimes occurred was deplorable. These were sad realities in the Southern system."

(Southern Slavery As It Was, page 24, Canon Press, 1996))

Sometimes Wilson will tell you he believes the institution was bad and should have been phased out. Other times he says stuff like this which praises the institution. In the quote, he’s complimentary to the institution overall while acknowledging it unfortunately had some “abuses” that were “sad realities”. This article will not go into all the reasons why this tired false narrative about US chattel slavery is atrociously off the mark. Joel McDurmon has covered that well here.

This is all really a distraction from the very clear points made in the article. The article I actually wrote never once proclaimed that Wilson loved US chattel slavery. The carefully made point was about Wilson’s determination to prove the prima facie acceptability of slave owning by Christians under US chattel slavery married to a commitment to biblical inerrancy. But to the partisans these distinctions are irrelevant. Twist the challenge that is actually made and turn it into something that is more easily defended. Remember this is No Quarter November, and in NQN we bust-in the saloon doors and start smashing bottles on heads. Nuance is for sissies!

But there is a particular name for this rhetorical fallacy. It's known as the Motte & Bailey fallacy. Recognizing this tactic for what it is will help you to cease falling prey to it. Motte & Bailey? Is that like an apple juice and ale cocktail? Wonder no more.

During Medieval times, a motte & bailey castle was a system of defense whereby the encircled marketplace where everyone likes to live and work was protected by a difficult to defend little fence. This section is called the "bailey". When invaders would come, they would all scurry up the hill to the fortified structure up the hill which was far easier to defend. This defensive structure sat upon a raised mound called the "motte".

In rhetorical terms, arguments in the bailey are highly dubious, badly supported claims which are loudly pronounced. If there are no invaders, a man can go around the bailey cavalierly throwing around difficult to defend arguments without challenge. Arguments from the motte, however, are easily defensible claims which are already generally agreed upon.

When it comes to the motte & bailey fallacy, it's when someone is making a very hard to defend claim (bailey), and then when challenged they resort to vague generalities or platitudes which are much more commonly agreeable (motte). From their high perch atop the motte they can act like this easier to defend statement is what they were arguing for the whole time. It's an evasive maneuver that shields them from having to defend the dubious statements which were being made in the bailey. Sort of like a reverse strawman.

For example:

Bailey claim: Adolf Hitler was a force for good with many great achievements. He revived the pride of the beleaguered German people, eliminated the factionalism that plagued the Weimar republic and beat back the Bolsheviks. America should have joined forces with Germany!

Challenge: (Comprehensive and stinging rebuttal utterly refuting the argument and proving that Adolf Hitler was indeed evil with overwhelming facts and counter arguments)

Motte response: I will always stand against Bolshevism which is morally repugnant and your pro-Bolshevist response will not deter me!

No one argued in support of the Bolshevists.

Or another:

Bailey claim: "Slavery was a side issue! The south seceded to defend states rights!"

Challenge: (Comprehensive and stinging rebuttal utterly refuting the claim that slavery was a "side issue" with regard to southern secession with overwhelming facts and counter arguments)

Motte response: "The notion that the North invaded the south because it wanted to free the slaves out of the kindness of their hearts is ridiculous."

No one argued that the North invaded the south for virtuous reasons. That wasn’t being argued.

The first argument was ridiculous and easily rebutted. It represents the real point that the person is trying to persuade people of. When challenged, rather than concede the original point, the point is evaded rather than dealt with and instead more commonly agreeable generalities are inserted in its place.

With regard to the Douglas Wilson inerrancy/slavery article and my response, the challenges I raised were simple. As I re-iterated to Doug when he responded with comments about the article, the summary of the actual challenges made to him are:

1. Doug tries to convince people that their inerrancy is in danger if they don't accept his view of the prima facie acceptability of Christian slave owning under us chattel slavery. That doesn’t follow for reasons explained in the article.

2. Doug's invocation of Canaanite slave law and Philemon as reasons to accept his view of US chattel slavery does not prove his point for reasons explained in the article.

What was Doug's response to the challenges presented to him?

And up the motte he goes. His defense of slave owning under US chattel slavery, and the links he makes to inerrancy is itself what was being challenged. No one was claiming that Doug needed to own and affirm every abuse. But that’s the challenge he defended. The challenge I didn’t make.

The tactic itself is as old as the hills. You see it in political theater, vaccine fights, theological debates, court trials, the argument you had with your teenager a few months back. It seems to come naturally to some! But for Christians?

And of course, when Doug does it, his followers pile on.

I've seen the same sort of tactics from the Kinists, the Christian Identity tribes and their defenders. Rather than respond to the substantive arguments made against their beliefs, they set themselves up as the victim and make statements intended to distract from the real point. “I have black friends”. They claim the challenger called them a racist who hates black people when no such accusation was made. Men like Peter Hammond have made this into an artform. They go even further and claim that anyone who rejects their warped theology is doing so in order to advance cultural marxism or leftism, or that they are just seeking to gain approval from "the culture" etc.

We all need to be wary of dishonest argumentation, myself included. Sometimes we can do it and not even notice we are doing it. In charity, I hope this is the case for Douglas Wilson and that he realizes it now. For many it's a reflexive instinct they have become so used to wielding that they can't even tell when it's happening or that it's evasive. It's tempting, after all, no one likes cognitive dissonance and settling comfortably into your confirmation bias is just so much more pleasant!

There is a stubborn mule coming out of Moscow, Idaho. It’s a lie which sees the antebellum south with rose colored glasses. More specifically, it is the pernicious fallacy that in order to be an inerrantist you must buy the fake news about the alleged biblical acceptability of Christian slave owning under US chattel slavery. The stubbornness is obvious because the motte & bailey response is such a desperate attempt to avoid the real challenge.

At the end of the day, this kind of muddled rhetorical gamesmanship is something that will hold us back from assessing the truth with clarity. As Christians, we all should be truth seekers and should be willing to throw off these kinds of entanglements.

“Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.” 1st Peter 3:10