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| Liz Cheney Giving a Speech |
As I mentioned yesterday, few politicians are motivated by any morality higher than the ballot box. If it helps them win, they’ll say it. In her dramatic speech, Cheney raised the debate to a higher level. Doing so, she indirectly reached out to a national audience rather than to her Republican colleagues. Her thesis: “I have been privileged to see firsthand how powerful and how fragile freedom is.” Her proof: she gave examples of people’s struggle for freedom.
Read: Cheney’s Courageous Speech for Freedom
Cheney’s First Example
Within her speech’s first few seconds, Cheney talked about the devotion of Kenyan voters, who defied armed soldiers so they could come to the polls and vote:
“Mr. Speaker, I have been privileged to see firsthand how powerful and how fragile freedom is. Twenty-eight years ago, I stood outside a polling place, a schoolhouse in Western Kenya. Soldiers had chased away people who were lined up to vote. A few hours later, they came streaming back in, risking further attack, undaunted in their determination to exercise their right to vote.”
Cheney’s Second Example
Indirectly challenging former President Trump’s friendship with Vladimir Putin, Cheney’s next dramatic example talked about Russia’s struggle for freedom. That was not just a struggle against communism, but later against Putin’s kleptocracy:
“In 1992, I sat across the table from a young mayor in Russia, and I listened to him talk of his dream of liberating his nation from communism. Years later, for his dedication to the cause of freedom, Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by Vladimir Putin’s thugs.”
Cheney’s Third Example
Warning that we could forget history’s lessons, Cheney then turned to Poland:
“In Warsaw in 1990, I listened to a young Polish woman tell me that her greatest fear was that people would forget. They would forget what it was like to live under Soviet domination. That they would forget the price of freedom.”
Just as Polish people needed to remember the horrors of Soviet rule, so, Cheney, implied, Americans must take care not to be careless with our freedom.
In the United States, of course, we face a danger opposite to Poland’s. The United States has never lived under communist domination. Instead, we might take our centuries of constitutional government for granted. Conservatives love to honor our nation’s founders. Unfortunately, conservatives seem less eager to live their political lives according to doctrines like equality, freedom, and constitutional government. Cheney hoped, it seems, that the courage of Kenyan, Russian, and Polish voters would inspire Americans to treasure our constitutional republic.
Who Was Cheney’s Audience?
In their influential book about rhetoric, Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique [Treatise on Argumentation: The New Rhetoric], Belgian philosophers Chaïm Perlman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca made the remarkable claim that the audience is a construct in the mind of the speaker. The important audience, especially in the media age, is not necessarily the small group of people in the room. Cheney, obviously knowing that the Republican Party had turned against her, reached out instead to the larger public. Those larger audiences could watch her speech on the news or read about it on the Web. Will the Republican voting base hear her ideas? Will her appeals reach the larger American public?
Perhaps only time will answer those questions. Notable, however, is that all but one Republican member of Congress in the chamber walked out before she spoke. They chose to ignore what she would say. By walking out, maybe they wanted to show that they disapproved of her integrity. Maybe they were ashamed to know that she was a better person than they were. We may never know.
Are Republican voters listening? Only time will tell, but Cheney tried to elevate the discourse beyond Trump’s election lies. Instead, she raised the larger question of American values. That is going to be a tough sell in the conspiracy theory-infested regions of red-state America.
Why Does Cheney’s Speech Matter?
Cheney’s examples warned us that America’s time-tested system of government is more fragile than we might think. On January 6, 2021, violent insurrectionists tried to stop the election’s certification, while more than 100 Republican members of Congress refused to certify an obviously accurate count of the Electoral College’s votes. The insurrectionists’ simple but crude goal was that the vote didn’t count until Congress said it counted. President Trump repeatedly egged them on. The disorganized, poorly-led mob came perilously close to sabotaging the tally. Liz Cheney was removed from her leadership position precisely because she opposed that sabotage.
Is Cheney right? Can the American experiment fail? Of course. Germany in 1933 was wracked by economic and political disaster, but it was also a world-recognized center of industrial power, religion, philosophy, art, and music. Germany was the homeland of Beethoven, Kant, and Goethe. Adolf Hitler’s political base consisted of conservative Christians in southern Germany. He never gained a majority of the vote, and became Chancellor of Germany by manipulating the political system. Does any of that sound familiar? If totalitarian government could seize control of Germany, then, yes, it can happen in the United States.
Read: Hitler and Christian Nationalism
Back to Cheney’s examples: unlike most conservative speakers, she told no stories about history’s American heroes. Instead, she talked about people in other nations who valued the freedom that we take for granted. Indeed, I am reminded of a statement that Ronald Reagan made many years ago: “If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
Cheney’s examples did not prove her point in a logical manner. Instead, she encouraged her audience to think in broad terms, to remember the United States’ founding values, to recognize that winning elections is not the be-all and end-all of political life. I do not expect Cheney’s speech to have much effect on American politics over the next few years. Maybe, given enough years, her message will finally sink into our national conscience. She asked for us to return to American Revolutionary ideals. She spoke to people’s hearts. As usual, only people with open hearts will hear her.
Technical notes: Perlman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s book, which presents an innovative, and now widely-accepted, theory of audiences, is available in an excellent English translation under the title, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise in Argumentation. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand persuasion. My friend Ray Dearin wrote a fine summary and analysis of Perlman’s philosophy of rhetoric, which is available for paid download. Most good libraries can probably get a copy for free.
Who Was Cheney’s Audience?
In their influential book about rhetoric, Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique [Treatise on Argumentation: The New Rhetoric], Belgian philosophers Chaïm Perlman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca made the remarkable claim that the audience is a construct in the mind of the speaker. The important audience, especially in the media age, is not necessarily the small group of people in the room. Cheney, obviously knowing that the Republican Party had turned against her, reached out instead to the larger public. Those larger audiences could watch her speech on the news or read about it on the Web. Will the Republican voting base hear her ideas? Will her appeals reach the larger American public?
Perhaps only time will answer those questions. Notable, however, is that all but one Republican member of Congress in the chamber walked out before she spoke. They chose to ignore what she would say. By walking out, maybe they wanted to show that they disapproved of her integrity. Maybe they were ashamed to know that she was a better person than they were. We may never know.
Are Republican voters listening? Only time will tell, but Cheney tried to elevate the discourse beyond Trump’s election lies. Instead, she raised the larger question of American values. That is going to be a tough sell in the conspiracy theory-infested regions of red-state America.
Why Does Cheney’s Speech Matter?
Cheney’s examples warned us that America’s time-tested system of government is more fragile than we might think. On January 6, 2021, violent insurrectionists tried to stop the election’s certification, while more than 100 Republican members of Congress refused to certify an obviously accurate count of the Electoral College’s votes. The insurrectionists’ simple but crude goal was that the vote didn’t count until Congress said it counted. President Trump repeatedly egged them on. The disorganized, poorly-led mob came perilously close to sabotaging the tally. Liz Cheney was removed from her leadership position precisely because she opposed that sabotage.
Is Cheney right? Can the American experiment fail? Of course. Germany in 1933 was wracked by economic and political disaster, but it was also a world-recognized center of industrial power, religion, philosophy, art, and music. Germany was the homeland of Beethoven, Kant, and Goethe. Adolf Hitler’s political base consisted of conservative Christians in southern Germany. He never gained a majority of the vote, and became Chancellor of Germany by manipulating the political system. Does any of that sound familiar? If totalitarian government could seize control of Germany, then, yes, it can happen in the United States.
Read: Hitler and Christian Nationalism
Back to Cheney’s examples: unlike most conservative speakers, she told no stories about history’s American heroes. Instead, she talked about people in other nations who valued the freedom that we take for granted. Indeed, I am reminded of a statement that Ronald Reagan made many years ago: “If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
Cheney’s examples did not prove her point in a logical manner. Instead, she encouraged her audience to think in broad terms, to remember the United States’ founding values, to recognize that winning elections is not the be-all and end-all of political life. I do not expect Cheney’s speech to have much effect on American politics over the next few years. Maybe, given enough years, her message will finally sink into our national conscience. She asked for us to return to American Revolutionary ideals. She spoke to people’s hearts. As usual, only people with open hearts will hear her.
Technical notes: Perlman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s book, which presents an innovative, and now widely-accepted, theory of audiences, is available in an excellent English translation under the title, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise in Argumentation. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand persuasion. My friend Ray Dearin wrote a fine summary and analysis of Perlman’s philosophy of rhetoric, which is available for paid download. Most good libraries can probably get a copy for free.
Most printed texts of this speech are based on Cheney's draft. I referred to that draft, of course, but also to the verbatim transcript on Rev.com. Speakers often improvise during delivery.
Image: Liz Cheney's Congressional Website
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