Join us in the great Intelligence2 debate

Matthew d'Ancona, editor of The Spectator, hails the magazine's new partnership with the dynamic debating forum, and invites readers and website users to take part Civilised debate is the essence of The Spectator: it is what animated 'the little Committee of Politicks' that Joseph Addison encountered in the St James's Coffee-house and described in the magazine in March 1711. Three centuries on, it is the desire for a cheerful rhetorical punch-up, in print or in person, that still excites us most at 22 Old Queen Street.

Rod Liddle, Jeremy Clarke, Deborah Ross, Taki, Fraser Nelson: these are only some of the verbal pugilists who form the 'little Committee' in our own happy, cacophonous republic of letters.

So it is with the greatest pleasure that we are launching in this issue The Spectator's new alliance with that much younger but already glorious organisation Intelligence2, the brainchild of two media entrepreneurs, John Gordon and Jeremy O'Grady.

If you don't know about it already — and the chances are that you do — Intelligence2 is one of the intellectual phenomena of the age. Founded in 2002, it stages debates that address the most stimulating, provocative and topical issues of our times, events that fill the capacious Royal Geographical Society in London with ease.

There is plenty of philosophical fudge around these days: 'round table discussions', consensus politics and vapid chat shows. But Intelligence2 relishes its adversarial character and celebrates the gladiatorial force of the human intellect: the participants want to win the argument, and the votes of the audience. In the course of a debate, the advantage see-saws from one side to the other, and back again, as facts are marshalled, Ciceronian rhetoric deployed and wit turned to the combatants' advantage.

And the quality of its speakers has been consistently awesome: in the past few months alone, such luminaries as BernardHenri Levy, Stephen Bayley, Howard Jacobson, Charles Murray and Lord Woolf. The themes, meanwhile, are hardedged and contemporary: already this year, Intelligence2 has asked whether we should thank God for Brussels; if Nato's mission in Afghanistan is doomed; and whether democracy is really for everyone.

So what more natural partner for The Spectator? From next Wednesday, 19 September, we shall be podcasting live from IQ2 debates at www.spectator.co.uk. Next week's motion addresses the thorny issue of our nation's legacy in Africa and invites the house to vote on the proposition: 'Britain has failed Zimbabwe'. On this occasion, the line-up of experts will include R.W. Johnson, Peter Godwin, David Coltart MP, and John Makumbe. Next, on Tuesday 9 October, Douglas Murray, David Aaronovitch, Ibn Warraq, Tariq Ramadan, William Dalrymple and Charles Glass will go into battle over the motion: 'We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values'.

Well, should we? What do you think? If you listen live online to these and other debates, you can vote on the motions. If you can't join in live, don't despair: the debates will be kept on our website for you to download and savour whenever you like. There'll be match reports from the intellectual bear-pit by our best writers in the magazine and online, and the Coffee House team (www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse) will, as usual, be sticking their oar in (or should that be their coffee spoon?).

I hope very much that Spectator readers — a formidable intellectual cohort in my experience — will come in person to future debates, starting with the special colloquium on Iraq on Tuesday 11 December. At this event, chaired by Sky's Adam Boulton, five possible positions on future strategy in the conflict will be presented by a range of speakers including, in his Intelligence2 debut, the invariably compelling Tony Benn. Save the date now, and we will keep you posted on how to apply to this and to many future debates. Once again, if you can't come along in person, you can follow the action and cast your vote on the Spectator website.

And, in the spirit of intellectual combat, let me take this opportunity to get something off my chest. To all those doom-meisters, gloom-mongers and misery merchants out there, who claim so confidently that the nation is `dumbing down', thick as two short planks, a confederacy of dunces, I say this: eat my scholar's gown.

Yes, the state school system may be a national scandal, Jordan is indeed a worryingly successful novelist, and Matthew Arnold probably wouldn't approve of reality TV. But the success of Intelligence2, like the ever-increasing circulation of The Spectator, shows that you can't keep a great intellectual nation down.

As the Cassandras wail and the Eeyores grumble, the country is reading, thinking and enjoying cerebration as never before. There are now 250 literary festivals in Britain, a trend which is giving politicians serious pause for thought (maybe the voters aren't so stupid after all — something we knew all along, but the political class is only now waking up to). Book clubs large and small thrive, in kitchens, restaurants and cyberspace.

The internet is indeed a limitless swamp of inanities; but it is also the most stunning intellectual resource in human history, and one which this country, in particular, is relishing to the full. Broadband is very British. Every morning, when I log on to our Coffee House blog — not yet six months old but already a must-read in Westminster and beyond — I feel fresh excitement about the intellectual potential of the internet for journalism, the exchange of ideas and debate on current affairs. Social networking will encourage face-to-face argument, not stifle it. A hundred years from now, our descendants will be amazed that humanity made do for a couple of generations with a medium that left its users as supine as most television does.

In this sense, the alliance of The Spectator and Intelligence2 is a model for the future: a great magazine, in print and online, in partnership with a dynamic debating forum. It is a mediaeval disputatio or an 18th-century coffee house argument hurtling through time into our own Web 2.0 world of online interaction. It is a debating society for the best and the brightest, and for everyone.

You're just a click of a mouse away from joining in and adding your vote to the final verdict. So watch this space. Log on and join in. Trust me, it's going to be a lot of fun. Why? It's the intelligence, stupid.

For more information: www.intelligencesquared.com and, from 19 September, www.spectatorco.uk.