Daughter’s First Birthday
The nature of political debate in our country has completely polarized us, making it nearly impossible to carry on a healthy debate. Our two-party political system (which George Washington warned us about) has turned us all into a bunch of sarcastic, recalcitrant children who are more concerned with being right than finding the truth.
We have all been in arguments, political or otherwise, when we realized at some point that the other person was at least partially right. Unfortunately, however, our pride often gets the best of us and won’t let us admit that we might need to rethink things. In fact, we defy all semblance of logic and start fighting even harder to prove our point, and everything devolves into an unfortunate shouting match. If we could just get over ourselves and spend more time listening and less time talking, we might actually make some progress.
For example, why must liberals assume that anyone who opposes Obama’s brand of health care reform is greedy or intellectually inferior? And why must conservatives assume that liberals are all a bunch of amoral, socialist hippies who hate liberty? Is it possible, fellow Americans, that each side might actually have something constructive to say? Is it possible to put an end to the destructive bickering and pointless name-calling in an effort to discover what is best for the country?
Where there are people, disagreement is inevitable. And disagreement can be a healthy thing if we can all just learn to practice a little patience and humility. And who knows? We might even make some friends in the process.
Is it possible to escape the fatal consequences of a good principle? For myself I consider them inevitable.
~Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir on Pauperism
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
~Henry Ford
It occurs to me that although we are a very polarized society, we are not really all that different. With few exceptions, it is not our values that separate us. We all value “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Rather, what separates us is the debate regarding the mechanisms by which we achieve these values and the nature of the role our government should play in these pursuits.