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How Credentials Became a Substitute for Argument

When Douglas Murray sat across from Dave Smith on The Joe Rogan Experience, the conversation got heated fast. Smith was making arguments about the Israel-Gaza conflict. Murray didn’t respond to those arguments. He asked whether Smith had ever been to Israel or Gaza. Smith said no. For Murray, that was the end of the discussion.

Smith called it a “non-argument.” Rogan went further. In a later episode, he pointed out that Murray holds a bachelor’s degree in English. By his own logic, Murray isn’t an expert either. “He used tactics rather than facts,” Rogan said.

Murray later softened his position in a conversation with Glenn Beck, saying he does believe experts have let us down. Fair enough. And I’ll grant that firsthand experience in a conflict zone adds something that reading articles doesn’t. But that wasn’t what happened in the moment. In the moment, Murray didn’t say “here’s what you’re missing because you haven’t been there.” He used the absence of a credential — having physically visited — as a reason to stop engaging entirely.

That’s the move I keep seeing everywhere. And it’s rotting public discourse from the inside.

The purpose of this blog is not take sides on political debates but about addressing poor thinking.

The Oldest Trick in the Book

This tactic has a name. In formal logic, dismissing someone based on who they are rather than what they’re saying is ad hominem. The specific version — insisting only credentialed people can speak on a topic — traces back to what John Locke called argumentum ad verecundiam.

Locke’s point was about social standing, not expertise. He was describing how people shut up around authority figures. Not because the authority was right, but because challenging them felt rude. The Latin word verecundiam means shame. The whole idea is that you can win an argument not by being correct, but by making the other person feel small for even trying.

That’s what credentialism does. It doesn’t say “your argument is wrong.” It says “you don’t get to make that argument.” Those are completely different things.

When Academics Play Gatekeeper

You see this in academia all the time. When Norman Finkelstein debated the online political commentator Destiny on Lex Fridman’s podcast, Destiny showed up with specific claims and specific sources. Agree with him or not, the man did his homework.

Finkelstein’s response? He called Destiny a “fantastic moron.” He mocked his sources. He questioned his ability to read. A credentialed academic with decades of published work chose insults over engagement. He had every chance to take apart Destiny’s arguments point by point. He went after the person instead.

The irony is hard to miss. Finkelstein himself was torpedoed by credentialist gatekeeping. Alan Dershowitz ran a years-long campaign to block his tenure at DePaul, attacking his standing rather than just his arguments. Finkelstein knows exactly what it feels like to be shoved out of a conversation based on status. Yet when he faced someone lower on the totem pole, he grabbed the same weapon.

This kind of dismissal isn’t unique to Finkelstein. “You’re not a historian.” “You’ve never been there.” “You haven’t published on this.” I’m not saying every academic does this — plenty engage seriously with outside voices. But when the credentialist instinct kicks in, these are the phrases that come out. And none of them are counter-arguments. They are ways to avoid making one.

The Credential Isn’t What It Used to Be

This whole game only works if credentials actually mean something reliable. That’s getting harder to argue with a straight face.

Take think tanks. A study covered by Responsible Statecraft looked at funding conflicts at major policy research institutions. What they found was ugly. Analysts practice widespread self-censorship because they know their funding dries up if they challenge the donor’s position. One former analyst said it plainly: what they were producing was not research. It was propaganda. The study’s authors went so far as to say that journalists should stop treating donor-funded think tanks as research bodies and start treating them as PR shops.

These analysts have PhDs. They publish in journals. They testify before government committees. But if their conclusions are driven by money rather than evidence, the credential is a costume. It looks like authority. It isn’t.

And it’s not just think tanks. The credentialed consensus on Iraqi WMD was a disaster. Most credentialed economists missed the 2008 crash. During COVID, credentialed public health officials reversed their own guidance multiple times while non-credentialed voices who raised concerns early were told to sit down and trust the experts.

Credentials aren’t worthless. And the corruption of some institutions doesn’t invalidate the whole concept of credentialing. But credentials aren’t a trump card either. A credential means someone finished a course of study. It does not mean their argument is right. And it certainly does not mean anyone without that credential is wrong.

What Actually Earns You a Seat at the Table

I want to be precise here. I’m not saying every uninformed hot take deserves equal airtime. I’m saying something narrower than that. Yes, lowering the bar for participation also lets in conspiracy theorists, ideologues, and people who’ve confused watching YouTube with doing research. That’s real. But the solution to noise isn’t gatekeeping by credential — it’s gatekeeping by the quality of the argument itself.

If someone has genuinely researched a topic — read primary sources, studied expert analysis, built an evidence-based argument, and can defend it under questioning — then the right response is to engage with what they’ve said. Not to ask where they went to school.

The bar should be the quality of the reasoning. Can they show evidence? Can they build a logical case? Can they handle pushback? Do they know the limits of what they know?

If someone clears that bar, dismissing them for lacking credentials is lazy. It tells you more about the person doing the dismissing than the one being dismissed.

Glenn Beck made this point well in a follow-up with Murray. He said serious people can do serious study on their own, especially now, and that what counts is having the humility to say “I’m not an expert, I’ve done a lot of homework, and I’m open to hearing where I’m wrong.” That combination — real research plus intellectual honesty — is worth more than a PhD held by someone who has never had their thinking challenged.

Where Credentials Genuinely Matter

I want to be clear about what I’m not saying. There are fields where credentials matter a great deal. Surgery. Pharmacology. Structural engineering. Nuclear physics. In these areas, the consequences of getting it wrong are physical and immediate. You want your surgeon to be board-certified. You want the person who designed your building to hold a licence.

But policy? History? Foreign affairs? Ethics? These are areas of judgment, not technical skill. They need research. They need clear thinking. They need the ability to weigh evidence. They do not need a specific stamp from a specific institution. Anyone willing to do the work can evaluate a policy argument on its merits. Nobody can evaluate a surgical procedure that way.

The credentialist trick is to blur this line. To treat debate about foreign policy as if it needs the same gatekeeping as brain surgery. It doesn’t. And the people who insist otherwise usually benefit from having fewer voices in the room.

What’s Actually at Stake

When you tell people they can’t join debates about policy, history, and public affairs without the right credentials, you don’t improve discourse. You shrink it. You build a protected class of voices that face no real public challenge. You get an echo chamber where insiders only answer to other insiders. People with the same funding. The same incentives. The same blind spots.

Credentialism doesn’t protect the quality of debate. It protects the people who don’t want to be debated. It lets leaders and academics run without accountability, because anyone who might hold them to account gets dismissed before they open their mouth.

The answer isn’t to stop respecting knowledge. It’s to demand that knowledge prove itself through argument, not affiliation. Make your case. Show your evidence. Defend your reasoning. If your argument can’t survive a challenge from someone without a PhD, the problem isn’t their missing credential. The problem is your argument.

I am often fascinated by the conflicted narratives from conservative and liberals they seem to believe there side is right while the other side is completely irrational

After 25 years navigating corporate politics, regulatory frameworks, and organizational change, I’ve developed a perhaps cynical but pragmatic view of our political discourse. What strikes me most isn’t the differences between left and right—it’s how similar their tactics have become, and how both miss the messy reality of actually implementing change.

The Conservative Framework: Biology as Destiny

Conservatives operate from a worldview rooted in biological determinism. In their model, socialization matters little—we’re largely slaves to our genetic programming. Life is inherently unfair, they argue, and we all start from different positions: some rich, some poor, some attractive, some not.

Their prescription? Intervene at the input—education, moral formation, family structure—but leave the systems alone. They want laissez-faire capitalism precisely because they believe the system itself is fundamentally fair. Hard work, in their framework, can overcome starting conditions.

What’s interesting from a systems perspective: they’re willing to regulate behavior (moral matters) but not markets. They’ll fight for school curricula but oppose corporate oversight. The logic is consistent if you accept the premise that individual character determines outcomes more than systemic forces.

The Liberal Framework: Systems Over Individuals

Liberals start from the opposite assumption: most problems are systematic, not individual. Where conservatives see personal failure, liberals see structural barriers. This leads them to focus on market regulation, corporate accountability, and institutional reform.

Their approach prioritizes equality over freedom, often with an emphasis on altruism and redistribution to address historical inequities. They’re comfortable with significant intervention in economic systems but deeply skeptical of moral regulation.

Here’s where it gets messy in practice: the focus on identity and marginalization sometimes leads to loose recategorization of issues, often at the expense of objective measurement. I’ve seen this in corporate DEI initiatives—noble goals undermined by metrics that don’t actually track outcomes, just activities.

The Shared Playbook: What Both Sides Get Wrong

After years of watching these dynamics play out in boardrooms and regulatory discussions, what strikes me most is the convergence in tactics:

The Extremist Strawman: Both sides cherry-pick the craziest examples from the other camp. Conservatives point to the most radical campus activist; liberals highlight the most retrograde social conservative. Neither represents the median voter or the practical policy choices we actually face.

The Critical Thinking Paradox: Everyone claims to value rational discourse. Both sides then proceed to make primarily emotional arguments designed to trigger fear, anger, or moral outrage. I’ve watched executives do this in strategy meetings—claim data-driven decision-making while cherry-picking studies that confirm predetermined conclusions.

The Tradeoff Vacuum: This is perhaps the most damaging omission. Real policy involves tradeoffs. Minimum wage increases may help some workers while reducing employment for others. Deregulation may spur innovation while creating systemic risks. Tax cuts may stimulate growth while constraining public investment.

Neither side wants to acknowledge these tensions honestly because it weakens their narrative. In my work implementing AI governance frameworks, I’ve learned that pretending tradeoffs don’t exist doesn’t make them disappear—it just makes them surface as unintended consequences later.

Expert Shopping: Both sides quote experts—but only those confirming their priors. I’ve seen this in data governance: regulators cite studies supporting more oversight, industry cites studies supporting less, and everyone ignores research suggesting the answer is “it depends on context.”

Malicious Intent Assumption: Each side assumes the worst motivations from the other. Conservatives aren’t just wrong about welfare policy—they hate poor people. Liberals aren’t just wrong about business regulation—they want to destroy free enterprise. This makes compromise politically toxic and practically impossible.

The Coordinated Attack: Both sides have developed sophisticated networks for rapid response and collective action. Social media has weaponized this. I’ve watched corporate reputations destroyed overnight by coordinated campaigns—from both directions depending on the issue.

The Media Amplification Problem

Here’s what decades of watching markets has taught me: perception drives reality more than we’d like to admit. The media—both traditional and social—has magnified divisive issues exponentially. Problems that affect tiny percentages of the population dominate coverage, creating a distorted sense of prevalence and crisis.

Fear drives engagement. Nuance doesn’t. So we get coverage designed to activate tribal identities rather than inform decision-making.

What’s Missing: The Messy Middle

In my consulting work, I deal with the practical reality both ideologies ignore: most problems are partially systematic and partially individual. Most solutions require some market intervention and some personal responsibility. Most outcomes depend on context, implementation quality, and dozens of variables neither framework adequately captures.

The charitable view—the one that assumes good faith even when disagreeing—has become almost impossible in public discourse. But it’s essential for actually solving problems.

When I’m implementing AI governance, I can’t just choose “more regulation” or “less regulation.” I need to understand the specific risks, the organizational capability, the market dynamics, and make contextual judgments. The same applies to social policy.

A Practitioner’s Conclusion

Both conservatives and liberals offer partial truths. Biology matters, but so do systems. Individual agency exists, but so do structural barriers. Markets create value, but also externalities requiring correction.

What we’ve lost isn’t the right answer—it’s the capacity to hold multiple truths simultaneously and make pragmatic tradeoffs. We’ve replaced problem-solving with performance, and expertise with ideology.

The result? We’re incredibly good at identifying what’s wrong with the other side and terrible at actually fixing anything. We’ve optimized for winning arguments rather than improving outcomes.

After 25 years in the trenches, I’m convinced the real divide isn’t left versus right—it’s between those who acknowledge complexity and those who sell simplicity. And unfortunately, simplicity has much better marketing.

What’s your experience? Do you see similar dynamics in your field? I’m particularly interested in whether sectors outside finance and tech show the same pattern of tactical convergence even amid ideological divergence.