In law or politics it doesn’t matter whose side of the debate is in the right. After all, your only goal is to win. (‘Win’ means “sway the audience.” Convince them to join you in heaping ridicule on your opponent.) Winning is often easy: simply describe your opponents’ case in derogatory terms, then describe your own side in glowing terms. That way you won’t need to confuse onlookers by examining any actual evidence, or take a chance in revealing that your side is wrong and your opponent is right. If emotional language doesn’t work, well, there are thousands of other dishonest maneuvers you can fall back on. Of course it goes without saying that if the people involved in such debates should claim to be “rational” or “scientific,” they’ve become very definition of pseudoscientists. On the other hand, if you notice some wimpy losers who drop their guard and start criticizing their own side, or act like tentative fence-sitters who refuse to take a side and fight the obvious enemy, or who behave as if winning wasn’t even important …then perhaps you’ve found a group who actually values rationality, rather than just paying it lip service during their attempts to ‘win.’ - Bill Beaty