Confusion of Positive and Normative

I am often struck by how people often conflate normative and positive statements. What I mean is confusion between "X should be true" and "X is true". I see this most often in politics, and it frustrates and baffles me.

A few examples will illustrate the fallacy. Consider the Second Amendment to the Constitution: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Now consider the positive question, "Does the Second Amendment prohibit gun control laws?" and the normative question, "Should we pass gun control laws?"

I consider these questions to be separate. One can consistently hold the views, "Guns should be regulated," and "Gun regulation is unconstitutional." This view would only be inconsistent if one also held the view, "Anything that is unconstitutional should not be done." [After modifying the constitution, of course].

Another example is the positive legal question, "Was Roe v. Wade wrongly decided?" and the normative questions, "Should women have the right to have abortions?" These are different questions, yet empirically it seems that people hold beliefs that correspond nearly one-for-one.

A third example, just to show I'm not making a point about the constitution: consider the questions, "Should we have invaded Iraq?" and "Did the US invasion of Iraq play a role in bringing about the Arab Spring?" It is entirely logically consistent to believe that we should not have invaded Iraq and that the invasion played a role in the Arab Spring. It is likewise consistent to believe that the US invasion played no role, but that we were nevertheless justified in invading Iraq for other reasons. Yet in practice such combinations are very rare.

I should note that while it's logically consistent to hold "opposite" views on such questions, there are sometimes good reasons that they go together. For instance, if you think that the Constitution is generally right, then the constitutionality of something might be a good normative guide. If you think that the Iraq War was justified largely because it increased the likelihood of an Arab Spring scenario, then the Arab Spring could provide evidence to justify the invasion. Yet it seems to me that the logical connections between such beliefs are much weaker than their empirical regularity.

I think that this confusion between the normative and the positive is a key part of the problem with our national debate. The purpose of logic is to clarify the relationships between propositions. The goal of debate is to isolate the source of disagreement through the application of logic. Then when we have cleared away our confusion, we can examine any remaining difference of belief in light of the evidence.

When we confuse the positive and the normative, logical debate loses this clarifying role. Any point that bears on an issue of national interest will invariably support one party's preferred policies over the other's. Debate becomes a zero-sum game and no agreement can be reached on purely logical points.

This is a terrible state of affairs.