Are you familiar with the motte-and-bailey doctrine? Let’s take a minute to talk about it since it’s useful for understanding the machinations of the Eanes School Board.
It’s a shifty rhetorical maneuver in which someone asserts an extreme, indefensible position (the bailey), but then when questioned about the extreme claim, retreats to a more moderate, defensible position (the motte).
From https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/motte-bailey-meme
Here’s an example from recent public discourse:
Extreme position (the bailey): Abolish the police!
Pushback: You want to abolish the police? You mean you want to do away with all police?
Revised position (the motte): Well, I didn’t mean literally abolish the police. I just meant we should restructure the police budget, with more funding allocated for social workers.
Here’s another example:
Extreme position (the bailey): Believe all women!
Pushback: Are you sure it’s a good idea to accept the words of all women, no questions asked? Sometimes women lie. Shouldn’t we look at every case individually? Did you know Joe Biden has been accused of sexual assault?
Revised position (the motte): I just meant we should believe all women when their stories are credible.
The term comes from the structure of medieval castles and fortifications. In medieval times, the central stone tower was built on a mound. Because it was raised and fortified, the motte was easy to defend. It was surrounded by the bailey, the land on which people lived. The bailey was difficult to defend, so if the area was attacked, its inhabitants withdrew to the safety of the motte.
I like the description written by Nicholas Shackel, the originator of this metaphor:
A Motte and Bailey castle is a medieval system of [defense] in which a stone tower on a mound (the Motte) is surrounded by an area of land (the Bailey) which in turn is encompassed by some sort of a barrier such as a ditch. Being dark and dank, the Motte is not a habitation of choice. The only reason for its existence is the desirability of the Bailey, which the combination of the Motte and ditch makes relatively easy to retain despite attack by marauders. When only lightly pressed, the ditch makes small numbers of attackers easy to defeat as they struggle across it: when heavily pressed the ditch is not defensible and so neither is the Bailey. Rather one retreats to the insalubrious but defensible, perhaps impregnable, Motte. Eventually the marauders give up, when one is well placed to reoccupy desirable land.
If you’re interested in learning more about the motte-and-bailey doctrine, here’s a great link. And if you’re interested in doing a deep dive, follow the links in the article to Nicholas Shackel’s original paper, popularized by Scott Alexander’s Slate Star Codex.
If you prefer video, here’s a youtube explainer:
Up next: An example of how the members of the Eanes School Board engage in motte-and-bailey maneuvering.