Deliberating War

This book argues that treating politics as war derails essential democratic processes, including deliberation and policy argumentation, in complicated ways. “Politics is war” is not always just a figure of speech, but often a sincere expression of how people see disagreement—they mean it literally—and they use it to evade the responsibilities of rhetoric. This book takes the metaphor seriously. Using a series of case studies ranging from the 432 BCE “Debate at Sparta” to Bill O’Reilly’s recent i