One of my friends showed me today one of the few left-right debates available in American political talk. It’s over on Facebook, organized by lefties — editors from The Nation and Dissent. They invited Messrs. Julius Krein and Gladden Pappin, the people who run American Affairs, a journal which many on Ricochet should like. American Affairs offers a thoughtful view of populism and how Americans could take their nationalism (as opposed to importing European ideas of nationalism). American Affairs is more partisan as nationalism against globalism — less partisan as right against left — so it’s more interesting if you think a big shift might be happening in American politics.

This is a long debate, so perhaps listen only to the 20 minutes or so of opening statements. If you’re curious to see how America’s editors can talk to each other across partisan lines, then listen to it all, as I did. I’ll tell you a few things that matter about rhetoric and politics as they show up here.

1. The rhetoric. I agree with my friends that the lefties are silly and condescending in their style of debate and show no class while talking issues of class. But that’s ok — the truth is political debate is always going to be fairly angry, so this polite contempt is better for discussing ideas than shouting at or warily avoiding each other. If I see right-wing people invite lefties to similar debates and behave significantly better, I might revise my opinion.

The guys at American Affairs were much classier, but the worse speakers in this debate. They’re certainly better in writing, but I’m glad they’re getting practice in actual debate. Political talk needs people like them.

2. What the rhetoric reveals about politics. The American Affairs guys are right to point out the difference between right and left: They themselves are willing and a little eager even to burn down the GOP. Whereas the other guys, who claim independence from the Democrat party and its corruption, are constantly touting their slogans about 99%, Occupy, Bernie, and taking over America demographically. This smug expectation of inevitable political victory makes it difficult to debate.

At the level of thinking about politics, this leads the lefties to act as though they can stand in judgment of someone else’s political analysis while seeking an alliance. That’s unbearable — they’re forever talking as though the American Affairs guys are there to ask permission to come into their home. Do we let them in or not? Looking for a political alliance is not a come-to-Jesus moment and they are not the authorities on the Gospel. That’s the difference between ideology and politics. The American Affairs guys grasp it, but not a lot of people do.

This is why I think this debate ultimately was a failure. I fear there won’t be much more of this sort of thing, but there needs to be. There’s just not enough good faith to go around — or sufficient political willingness to discuss. This is not hard to explain. The lefties talk as though they’re at home, with all their ideological terms, because that’s all anyone has in America when it comes to opposing massive realities. Like the fact that the two political parties the people so revile seem unshakeable. Despite the remarkable Trump-Sanders attack on the two-party system, which was trying for another Bush-Clinton game, politics goes on as though undisturbed. Against the church of the American center, sects feel the need to be radical in their language and at the same time retreat into reassuring agreement, however small that charmed circle is. I don’t blame them, really, but I think they missed an opportunity.

Americans, as Tocqueville said, always want to frame their thoughts in terms that could conceivably conjure a majority of agreement. That makes sense and makes for a certain kind of moderation — it is at least possible to discuss with people; and it’s usually not necessary to resort to violence. The lefties do this majority-conjuring in their own way, by talking about “looking like America” — not just a couple of white men like the American Affairs guys. They’re physical appearance is supposed to replace political talk — surely, demographics will just give them everything they want, then everyone will be as happy as California! That’s pretty desperate; it’s certainly not politics. One reason to have more political debate is to help both left and right to escape paralyzing beliefs about inhuman forces that move America along, leaving Americans helpless and unable to rise to the dignity of political discussion, association, and decision.

3. The problem with political discourse is that Americans do not love politics

Americans like looking down on politicians and political institutions. There is always a hope that a non-political fact will take care of things. For example, people on the right not infrequently hope that a surge of economic growth would finally settle political debates, then everyone — especially lefties — can calm down, that is, admit defeat. This is also why people of different political stripes believe the end is near, which will prove their position right. Some are pessimistic about this (i.e., the end of civilization), while others are optimistic (it’s going to be great once we can get rid of all the old problems).

So encouraging debate is always going to seem both like stirring a hornet’s nest and an exercise in futility. It doesn’t get anything done, but it gets everyone angry. But the alternative is that no one is able to talk to people of different political opinions. That works most of the time, but in election season, people seem to suddenly go feverish. There’s a price to pay for ignoring politics, too. I’m not proposing to change the American character, only to deal with it better than having people hate each other, mediated by institutions that get paid for satisfying hatred, like Fox News or MSNBC/CNN.

Maybe the American Affairs guys are wrong to go on about the basic truth that you first have to recover political modes of action, and only later deal with the differences between whatever parties would emerge to debate things politically. It’s not clear anyone cares about that. People want to have their own way and have very little interest in the respectability of parties — much less keeping it alive and well by political discussions of ideas and events. But I admire them for fighting against impatiently demanding solutions from politics while being fatalistic about doing anything.

4.Nationalism should be Americanism

I will conclude with some advice for American Affairs. Probably, these guys should think about that truth more and speak it less. If their defense of nationalism is what Mr. Krein says it is — we’ve got a country here, let’s deal with it practically, pragmatically, without poetry — it doesn’t look like it’s going to have much appeal.

Whatever cynical or dismissive things he might say about Romanticism, what do his lefty interlocutors have going for them but Romanticism, this time in the mode of Liberation? America replaced by a Rainbow coalition. It’s been fairly successful and there’s no sense of what else might work.

I’m not sure Mr. Krein or his co-conspirators have a vision of future-America that could attract people. He seems to prefer deliberative rhetoric — what are the pros and cons of a law, judged in relation to the national interest? He seems essentially dismissive of the kind of rhetoric that American kids are or should be learning in school and which used to be carved in marble — Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address, Reagan’s Address at Pointe du Hoc, etc. Of course, most of the time, national identity is not tied up with a great war. But some kind of rhetoric is required to give people a sense of their political community and common destiny.

He seems to prefer something like the warnings of Farewell Addresses. First, those only work if you’re first president. Second, they are uniquely ineffective as political speeches, which is partly why they tell uncomfortable truths. Third, they depend on speeches that educate and strengthen the national identity of the citizens they call to vigilantly guard against dangers to that identity. Leaving nationalism as something addressed to people who are now legally citizens must ultimately fail.

Nationalism in America can only mean Americanism, ultimately. But the truth is Americans do not quite know what that is. If it’s some idea or behavior, lots of legal Americans wouldn’t qualify and lots of foreigners would. That’s one of the traps of our ignorant ideological talk on both left and right these days — it’s getting harder to disagree with people without thinking or calling them un-American. But avoiding any talk about Americanism is not a solution, even if it avoids that particular trap. American Affairs should deal with that.