Battles with Integrity

Mindich discusses the ante-bellum debate over slavery in terms of Daniel Hallin's three spheres of public discourse: the Sphere of Consensus, the Sphere of Legitimate Controversy, and the Sphere of Deviance. (These are represented in the diagram in the book as three distinctly shaded concentric circles but they seem to have been blurred together in the photocopy in the reader.) Over time, he notes, issues can move from one sphere to another: "The support of women's suffrage, for example, moved over time from Deviance to Legitimate Controversy to its present position: deeply embedded in the Sphere of Consensus." (p.48) Pick a contemporary issue whose position in the three spheres is contested or uncertain: that is, an issue that some people insist belongs to one sphere and others insist belongs to another sphere. How does this issue contrast or compare with the status of slavery in the ante-bellum period?

Of the several issues of political controversy in contemporary American society, one issue whose position in public discourse has changed in recent years is the question of torture. Before 2001, torture was very much an academic issue in the US, and the idea of torture as an illegitimate investigative tool in law enforcement or the military would have fall generally in the Sphere of Consensus, with people generally agreeing that torture is a bad thing. With the hijackings of September 2001, many Americans' perceptions of the world, their safety in the world, and the measures necessary to maintain that safety changed drastically, thrusting the legitimacy of torture into the Sphere of Controversy, as debate began over 'ticking bomb scenarios', and the Administration worked to undermine previously held views of torture as something done by evildoers to heroes and victims, and inject into American discourse discussions of definitions of torture, something that would have been politically unthinkable previously. Similarly, the idea that torture is never acceptable has moved from the edge between the Spheres of Consensus and Controversy before 9/11, and now it has moved to the periphery of discourse to the Sphere of Deviance. While the national attitude regarding slavery evolved over time during the 19th century, national views of torture changed much more quickly in the wake of September 11, 2001.

[Posted on Brick's50-ver2, out in the world.]