In Roland Barthes’ classic, Mythologies, he describes tautology as one of the eight vital rhetorical strategies by the right. Conservative ideology is indebted to a particular, but broadly accepted, concept of common sense. The right uses these norms about how the world works to defend that which cannot stand up to reason and debate. For example: Why must nations go to war? The conservative replies: because that is what nations do. Debate is foreclosed by locating the answer within the question and covers over the rhetorical slight of hand by appealing to one’s authority or history to prevent further discussion. In Barthes’ words, “In tautology, there is a double murder: one kills rationality because it resists one; one kills language because it betrays one …  [tautology] can only of course take refuge behind authority.” Any alternative view of the world is cast off as naive or utopian. Judith Butler argues that this rhetorical strategy has been widespread in the attempts by conservatives of both the right and the left to prevent discussion of 9/11. Butler writes:

The raw public mockery of the peace movement, and the characterization of anti-war demonstrations as anachronistic or nostalgic, work to produce a consensus of public opinion that profoundly marginalizes anti-war sentiment and analysis, putting into question in a very strong way the very value of dissent as part of contemporary U.S. democratic culture.

In The Fray Contributor