Persuasion

Jordan Pace represents District 117 in the South Carolina House of Representatives and serves as Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. Pace recounts how his political conversion—from an ardent pro–Bush-Cheney neoconservative teenager to a libertarian-leaning Ron Paul disciple— was sparked by an unexpected conversation with Paul himself. Reflecting on that moment, Pace discusses the power of genuine dialogue to reshape convictions, the enduring tension between government power and personal liberty, and why he believes our polarized culture desperately needs more real debate and less echo-chamber shouting. It’s a candid story of ideological transformation and quiet persuasion. 

Tell us your argument stories!

• Email guest and topic suggestions to us at whenwedisagree@gmail.com
• Follow us on Instagram

Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Ever notice how an empty restaurant stays empty while the one next door always seems to have a line? Or how one person looking up at the sky can make lots of others crane their necks upwards?

This tendency to look to others for cues about how to think and feel and behave. It's called social proof, and it profoundly influences how disagreements unfold and resolve. The researcher, Robert Cini, identified social proof as one of six key principles of influence. We assume that many people are doing something, they must know something we don't.

This mental shortcut usually serves us well following the crowd to the exit during a fire alarm, for instance. But it can also lead us astray, especially when everyone else is equally uncertain. This is a classic example of the bystander [00:01:00] effect When Kitty Genovese was murdered in 1964, dozens of witnesses failed to help each, assuming that since no one else was acting, intervention wasn't appropriate In ambiguous situations, we look to others for clarity, but if everyone's doing the same thing, we create a collective paralysis or stampede, one or the other.

Digital online environments amplify social proof exponentially. Like counts, retweets and comment sections create visible consensus that can shape our opinions. A critical mass of one star reviews can doom a restaurant regardless of its quality. Political movements can gain and lose momentum based on perceived popular support, creating self-fulfilling prophecies of inevitability or failure in the historical moments of dramatic change, often hinged on social proof as well.

Rosa Parks wasn't the first to resist segregation. But her arrest created visible proof that resistance was possible. The fall of the Berlin Wall accelerated [00:02:00] once crowd saw others crossing the border. Unchallenged the emperor's. New clothes persist until one child's observation gives everyone permission to acknowledge the obvious Understanding social proof helps us navigate disagreements more skillfully.

When everyone agrees except you ask yourself, are they seeing something you're missing? Or are they caught in a cascade when trying to change minds? Demonstrating that others have already changed can be more powerful than logical arguments. Sometimes being the first to voice doubt or support can shift an entire group's dynamic.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Jordan Pace. Jordan represents District 117 in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he is the Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.

Jordan, tell us an argument story. 

Jordan Pace: Hey, thanks for having me. I, I grew up in the upstate of [00:03:00] South Carolina in, in the early, you know, in the nineties and early two thousands and was probably the most. Especially for a a, a kid and then through a teenager, politically involved person like weirdly into politics and extremely pro bush Cheney intervention go, you know, the, the prob the, the, the, the panacea to all of our problems worldwide was just gonna blow up everybody who disagreed with us.

And the only people that, and I would argue, I mean, in school all the time pro that all the time, no matter what. Hmm. Probably to, no, certainly to an annoying extent. Everyone around me. I mean, I was reading Paul Wolfowitz at 15, 16 years old. Yeah. Very strange. Right? Well, just like all the other 

Michael Lee : ones.

Right. So many 16 year olds love wolfowitz. 

Jordan Pace: Yeah, right. You know, Brzezinski and Charlie [00:04:00] Wilson's war, you know, that kind of thing as a, you know, 16, 17-year-old. Well, when I was 18 as a freshman in college, I went to this event in Columbia. It's called the South Carolina Student Legislature, a mock legislature where we debated bills.

But the last evening of that, we had a, a gala. And the main, the speaker at the dinner was this Texas representative, older guy named Ron Paul, who I had never heard of. Like that whole, the world of politics that I had kind of swam in. Certainly not his side of things. The closest connection I had with him was like, I, I, I liked Mark Sanford.

This is, you know. Who was governor at the time and they voted together a lot in Congress. That's the closest, you know, thing I'd heard about Scott, right? It was before he was running for president. Well, after the dinner I was just kind of in the lobby and Dr. Paul wandered out here and said hello to him and we just got talking and he took 20, 25 minutes to just talk to this, you know, random 18-year-old.[00:05:00] 

Kid, kid about politics and I just kind of poked around. 'cause obviously he said, 

yeah, he 

Jordan Pace: was against all of the intervention. He was against all the stuff that was going on. And was just about the only Republican in Congress who was speaking out against it from a, from a constitutional perspective.

Michael Lee : Right. 

Jordan Pace: I had not, that, that paradigm did not exist in my brain. So. Talked to him, poked around like, what about this, what about that? You know, we don't fight 'em over there, they're gonna come over here. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Jordan Pace: That whole thing. And he was just very kind, very mild manner, very meek guy, and swatted down all of my objection objections and, and counterpoints, you know, that he'd been doing for, you know, 25 years in Congress and in dc.

Very adeptly and it, it rocked my world. Oh, genuinely, foundationally rocked my world. So I started reading I found out he had books. So I read those books. I started [00:06:00] reading you know, to Dr. Tom Woods and think Ralph Rako. It was kind of into that too, you know kind of the, alt not alt history, but 

Revisionist, they wouldn't argue revisionist, but kind of revisionist history.

Right. Of the 20th century of Pat Buchanan. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I kind of loosely heard Pat Buchanan started reading a little bit of that, like. You know, this like 

Michael Lee : scales fall from your eyes moment, it sounds like 

Jordan Pace: very much like Paul on the road to Damascus mm-hmm. Situation where blinded, you know, for a, for a few minutes scales come off and now I can see a whole new world and, 

Michael Lee : and if I can jump in there, do you accept these terms too?

As I hear you, I hear you saying, you know, younger Jordan. When you were Saul on the roads to Damascus mm-hmm. You were very much a neo-conservative on the, the roads to Damascus and then kind of flipped and became a little bit more libertarian inclined in your Paul journey after your encounter with Ron Paul.

Jordan Pace: Right? Pardon? The Yes. Fittingly named. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I, I went from reading [00:07:00] Bill Crystal to, to Scott Horton you know mm-hmm. Anti-war dot com and all that. How 

Michael Lee : quick was this transition? 

Jordan Pace: I don't, probably a month or two. 

Michael Lee : And, and also were you irritatingly continuing to argue from, with folks from a kind of flipped libertarian point of view in the same way that you were representing Paul Wolfowitz?

Jordan Pace: Oh yeah. I mean, very, very much. Once it, once it clicked and it all kind of came together of like, wait a minute, the CA's been arguing about blowback and, and warning about blowback. All the stuff Dr. Paul's been talking about for decades. 

Uhhuh, of 

Jordan Pace: course, this is why this is happening. 

Uhhuh 

Jordan Pace: and it all just lined up of.

Very much like that. Of course. And then I want to go back to all my, you know, fellow neo-conservatives. Go, what are you doing? And very much like Paul going back to, you know, tell the, the non-believing Jews of like, no, this, this is the truth. Like here's the gospel. 

Michael Lee : That's right. Did anything survive? What, what survived from your, your prior [00:08:00] disposition?

I'm, I'm fascinated by tales of political conversion, especially political conversion on the right. Part of the, the book I wrote about American conservatism focuses on conversion tales. And so I love hearing this one. What, what, if anything, survived from your flirtation with the Bush Cheney new conservative agenda?

Not much mean, do you, do you think there's any role for democracy promotion 

Jordan Pace: in around the world? 

Michael Lee : Yeah. 

Jordan Pace: Well, I'll put it to you like this. The French in the 17 hundreds thought it was a really good idea, and I appreciate that they thunk so much money in promoting democracy in America. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Jordan Pace: But it literally destroyed their country within a generation.

It bankrupted them and led to the French Revolution. Which is arguably one of the worst things that's happened in the last 250 years in western western world. So I'm not saying that there aren't some benefits to certain groups when that [00:09:00] happens. You know, there's certainly for 20 years in Afghanistan.

The women and children were largely much better off than they are today under the Taliban because of the three or $4 trillion and thousands of lives that were spent uhhuh over there. Like there are some, some good things that have happened. Yeah, it's just not a sustainable. Way to operate. 

Michael Lee : When you look at that conversion experience, you know, looking, looking now, you know, a few years from that conversion experience, the minute before you met Ron Paul, if somebody had said to you, how susceptible are you to a wholesale political conversion, what would you have told that person?

Jordan Pace: I, I would've probably laughed at them in the same way. If, if, if they would've said like, Hey, there's. You know, there's other ways to, of looking at eschatology or like the end of the world within Christianity besides left behind, like besides, you know [00:10:00] anti-Christ coming and rapture and all this other stuff.

Like, I just, I didn't know it existed, so I probably would've just laughed at them. Like, no, in order to be, if you're a conservative, I would've told them a minute before. If you're a conservative, that means you gotta support George Bush and Cheney and, you know, Colin Powell and the whole, the whole thing.

It's all one package. You can't separate it. Medicare, part D, like all of it, all of it's together. I would've probably laughed out. 

Michael Lee : And, and then now out of curiosity, just to follow up with the same question now, I mean you, let's say there's somebody out there who's incredibly impressive speaker who could bring you to another affiliation.

How susceptible to you do you think you are right now to a wholesale political conversion? 

Jordan Pace: Probably less so than I was then. And, and, and it wasn't anything. And the thing is, it wasn't because Ron Paul was like a great speaker. It wasn't like he was hyper charismatic. Mm-hmm. 

It was kind 

Jordan Pace: of the opposite.

Like 

Jordan Pace: he was, he's not a great speaker. I, I heard him this summer, actually got to [00:11:00] talk to him again for the first time since then, this past summer, just for a couple minutes. And told him, I like, Hey, we had this conversation back in, what was it, 2007, 2008 and now I'm in the State House and chairman of the Freedom Caucus.

And like a lot of that is because you took 20 minutes to talk with some kid and Yeah, that was kind of cool, but it, it was because of his meekness and, and humility. Not necessarily because he was like a, a charismatic speaker or, you know, he got me on board because of any. About him besides, he just had the truth behind him, so 

Michael Lee : I'm really struck by that.

So yeah, you say he had the truth behind him from your point of view, you say he, but at the same time he seemed quite humble. And at the same time, he seemed somewhat meek and he wasn't that greatest speaker and he wasn't particularly charismatic. If you had [00:12:00] drawn that up as a, yeah, a potential persuader or life changer with those characteristics, I'm not sure that many of us would think, oh yeah, that's the person who would really change my, my course in life.

Right. And yet he did say more about the, the initial spark from that conversation that then led you down this rabbit hole of book after book after book. 

Jordan Pace: So, but I think part of it, because he wasn't a great speaker, like he didn't have natural, like I'm a great politician vibes to him. I, when I looked into him more like, Hey, this guy's been in Washington for 20 something years.

He's not super wealthy. Like he votes against everything. 

Michael Lee : Yes, he did. 

Jordan Pace: I, yeah, I mean his doctor, no, was his nickname. Lobbyists don't even bother showing it to his office, is what I can, the more I dug into him on a personal level, the more just obvious it was that this guy's integrity, which is 

mm-hmm.

Jordan Pace: Basically non-existent in Washington DC and you know, frankly, still is [00:13:00] that Dr like, all right, well what does this guy have? What is he onto? That's what started the trail of like, all right, what is he reading? All right. He and I both share, like shared a Christian faith. So I think that was part of it too, of like we had a similar foundation of what is truth and like what is the purpose of the universe and those kind of things.

So that's what got me looking on his website and other people that liked him so well. You know, Dr. Paul wrote these books and from those indexes of those books, I started reading the. Background book to that and alluded it by Macy's and 

yeah, 

Jordan Pace: Roth Bard and Hoppa and all this other stuff. Mostly because he just was a non unpretentious, seemingly good human.

Which there's not a whole lot of those that last in DC for more than a term or two. 

Michael Lee : I'm, so I'm interested in, in the kind of. Substance of the libertarian case that Paul at, at least initially introduced you to. Mm-hmm. But I'm also interested in the kind of style and we [00:14:00] were talking about his style.

Humble meek engaging, but not necessarily charismatic. Not a great stylish speaker. The other thing that I, that strikes me is that he had in that conversation with you, and he had at that time in American politics in the late Bush era. A kind of lonely prophet, status kind, Jeremiah and 

Jordan Pace: the wilder. Yeah.

Calling out. 

Michael Lee : Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You took the reference right outta my mouth. But this, this doctor, no lonely prophet. Is there something, this, this kind of iconoclastic person saying that everybody in the temple is getting it all wrong, is there something appealing about that position? 

Jordan Pace: Yeah. That's probably something internally in my, in myself, just being a, a contrarian by nature.

That there, there probably is some sort of personal, like click there, connection. But yeah, that's always been one of the reasons that Jeremiah's studied so much in the Bible is, is because of that, of, of this, [00:15:00] this guy is so convicted mm-hmm. About what is right and what is wrong, that he's willing to stand up against everybody.

At great personal cost, seemingly with no success for decades. But it turns out after the fact, he was right about everything. Yeah, there, I mean there's certainly something appealing there, especially, and, and it's interesting that, you know, Dr. Politic turns 90 this year that a lot of the stuff he was talking about in that, in that time came true, like.

Agree with him or not. A lot of that stuff, just objectively he predicted, you know, around the world. 

Michael Lee : There was a kind of Paul moment in, in that era when the Republican party was really shifting. And at the time, to be frank, I was really, really slaving away on this book about American conservatism. I was in the middle of it and it was taking me years and years to write it, and I actually got [00:16:00] worried around 2006, 2007.

That I was sketching kind of conservatism as very heterodox coalition of multiple different interest groups. And at the time, libertarianism was just not to be seen in the national landscape amongst conservatives and so mm-hmm. It was actually to the point that it was kind of hurting my case that this, this is kind of a big deal, at least amongst the American intellectual, right.

And then Paul starts to make some headway in that McCain election in 2007, 2008. And then of course the Tea Party, and Ron and Rand Paul and many others, and many people are reading Vid v MiSiS and Murray Rothbard and many other kind of libertarian cases being made. Then of course, Republican party changes yet again after that election.

Right? No doubt. But then, you know, people like Paul Ryan are in the VP slot in 2012, so it did seem like. The Paul shepherded in a libertarian moment in Republican politics, and we can debate about the extent to which that's still [00:17:00] not the case. What, what happened there for you? How do you narrate that history?

Jordan Pace: I mean, I was in the, in the thick of it. 'Cause in, after I graduated from college it really got into local politics, standing in the low country. And, and when I showed up like, you know, Ron Paul stickers on. The, the local establishment was like, yeah, you're in the wrong place. You need to join the libertarians.

Get outta here. You're weirdo. Mm-hmm. I didn't, I stuck around anyway 'cause I told 'em like, well look, we agree on our life stuff. We agree on large, you know, a lot of free market, you know, deregulation. We disagree is the foreign policy and the cronyism and the handouts and all this other stuff. So I just stuck around and basically took the beating rhetorically for a long time, just as the new guy and the young kid.

But the kinda the swing through that was Dr. Paul in that whole movement, the tea party movement, all that. Maybe not the tea party, that that's kinda an older crowd, but. [00:18:00] Everything else was really aimed at young people. It was almost like the, the sixties in reverse. You know, where the sixties had the, the you know, kids revolting against their stuffy conservative parents by going to the left.

This was almost like the opposite to the right of, we saw our parents' generation and maybe a little bit the boomers era. As big government involved in everything, you know, worldwide empire, things like that. And it's bankrupting us and all these other secondary effects. We don't want that. What was that, Michael J.

Fox. The Family Ties. 

Michael Lee : Family Ties, that's right. Yeah. Michael p Keaton. 

Jordan Pace: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just kinda like, almost like that we're now in the Trump era. A lot of those same disaffected young people who were brought into that coalition are, are still around and are in elected office. And trying to bring that mentality of like [00:19:00] the, the government is a well, to make a Tolkien reference power.

If you, if you use power even for what you consider good, it's still gonna corrupt you. 

Mm-hmm. 

Jordan Pace: So put the ring down. That's right. The, the ring is, is emblematic. If you can see all the, the Tolkien books behind me, but like yeah, Lord ACT's 

Michael Lee : warning about absolute power is, is replete in the fantasy genre, that's for sure.

Jordan Pace: Yeah, exactly. It's the only solution is put the power down. And decentralize it. Unlike Bush Paul Ryan, that crew that wanted to use, use big government for conservative goals it didn't work. And, and I think that's what we're trying to navigate through now and that's why we got the Trump reaction of the frustration grew from younger people as the younger people got older and just spread generationally to the point of we need something different.[00:20:00] 

Michael Lee : Jordan, as we close, I'm, I'm intrigued by the original story. The conversion narrative is really prompted because if I'm understanding you right, you went to a youth conference where you debated bills. Yeah. And then you had an unexpected encounter, a dialogue with you will with somebody who represented a completely different set of positions.

Mm-hmm. So. Your interest in debate and your willingness to have a dialogue with whom, with, with somebody with whom you disagreed, really jumpstarted all this. Yeah. How do you reflect on the, the importance of debate and these kinds of unexpected dialogues in a world where we're, we're very polarized as a people?

Jordan Pace: Yeah. The thing that I dislike most in the world right now as far as like in, in regarding politics is that opposite sides won't talk to each other, but just. We'll shoot, shoot, you know, lobby arrows and cut out, and social media plays a part in that too. As I romantically read our history of, you know, our, our founders [00:21:00] arguing and, and you know, I would watch as a teenager, the British House of.

Commons because they would yell at it, you know, or cheer and, and, and, you know, stomp their feet, whatever they discuss. I mean, it's not some cold right. Preset narrative. I think we need more of that. And, and if we had more of that in person, I think we'd all be better off as a, as a, as a society. Even if we disagree that that encounter has probably led more to, like, I lived in, in Turkey for a while 99% Muslim country, very different beliefs and had great discussions with people.

I have clients now that have very different ideas from what I do, so. That set the stage not just for political change of paradigm, but being more open to, to listen to other people, even if you disagree. And even if you're not gonna change each other's minds, that does help at least understand the, the other person better.[00:22:00] 

Michael Lee : Jordan Pace. Thank you so much for being on when we disagree. Yeah, 

Jordan Pace: thanks Robin. 

Michael Lee : When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.