What a pack of weaklings we've become.
If anyone other than myself (a tall order, I know) is reading this, I want to you participate in an experiment. I want you to think back over the past 6 months. I want you to think of conversation you've had with another person (excluding the internet, which is a breeding ground for anonymous mudslinging) where you respectfully disagreed with that person regarding politics, philosophy or religion (the big 3 nasties).
Can you think of one? I bet not even one. Me neither. The last time I tried was at work and I backed down when the volume started to rise.
I think that kind of discourse is literally going extinct. Somewhere along the way we've psyched ourselves out. We've managed to invert reality in our own minds. What I mean is, people today believe that courage means quietly smoldering and nursing resentments while listening to the enemy, keeping your mouth shut, and waiting to vent with likeminded friends. How did this happen? We've sorted ourselves into these political cliques, and the thought of mixing with ideological foreigners seems completely backwards to us. It means that you're "squishy" or your "trying to have it both ways".
An idea is only as good as the reason which supports it. Reason is only as good as the data which feeds it. Without fresh, reliable data from as many sources as possible, we cripple ourselves. Yet we think that by hanging out with the same predictable crowd, and reenforcing eachothers ideas by regurgitating the same tired, hackneyed facts and figures, we somehow make ourselves stronger or make our ideas... More true?
What adds insult to injury is the supposed courage involved in this. What could be more cowardly than only sticking up for what you believe when you're with people you're sure will agree with you?
Philosophy, Religion and Politics all have something in common. They all hinge on the concept of truth. Philosophy and Religion are obvious enough, but Politics is special. Politics involves a more practical (and much more satisfying) form of truth: utility. What works makes for good policy. What doesn't work is bad policy.
When you take a step into anything that involves truth, you burden yourself with a heavy obligation. An obligation to think and act in all things with honesty and personal humility. Finding things that work means trying a lot of solutions, and having your (sometimes well justified) ideas get disproved. It means accepting these difficult realities with good faith and good humor. It means taking the high road when everyone else is slinging mud. Why? Because that's how you get what you want. That's how you get to good ideas.
But Americans today largely aren't concerned with good ideas. In the modern mind, knowing what's right is more important than finding what's right. Courage today means sitting securely in your impenetrable fortress, looking across the miles of open frontier and sneering.
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