Consider this quote:
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube…
When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrelsÑand you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.
This quote speaks to an issue that particularly rankles me. There is a pernicious tendency in political discourse to presume that “the middle” is better than either “extreme,” but I shan’t address that here today. The quote does so far more succinctly, powerfully and “juicily” than I ever could (not that I’m not going to try – my verbosity demands that I do), but I offer it today for a different reason.
Given that I have identified the statement as a quote, clearly it was written by someone other than me. I have chosen not to name the author, because that information is irrelevant if we are to consider the message itself. This statement is not a declaration of facts or fact-based analysis, nor is it a statement in reference to a particular situation, dispute or moment in history, so we don’t need sources to assess its validity or judge it in our minds and hearts. It stands alone, it is self-contained. One can agree or disagree, but the choice to do so should be made apart from knowing the statement’s provenance.
All too often, we read a quote or an essay or a book (or more typically learn of the existence of a book and read its title) and automatically start formulating an opinion based solely on the name attached to that quote or essay or book. While it is certainly beneficial when deciding how to allocate the scarce resource known as leisure time to know that Author X tends to write stuff one likes to read, or that Author Y’s ideas have resonated positively in the past, or that one has concluded in the past that Author Z’s thoughts and ideas are as useful as belly button lint, it does behoove anyone who wants to learn, grow and mature to at least occasionally consider material such as this in and of itself, “cold” so to speak, without the predisposition that one might form by knowing the source.
It is a common (and logically false) debating tactic to dismiss an article, an opinion, etc solely based on the source. Over on the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, I’ve witnessed this countless times, and engage in the sport of hunting for empty ad hominem attacks in the comments pages whenever I see an editorial from Karl Rove, Alan Blinder or some other well known and contentious polemicist. I have yet to be disappointed.
Now, if the opinions showed a consideration of the points raised, a rebuttal of the conclusions, a decimation of assertions or assumptions, I don’t and won’t have a problem with an opinion like “Well, Paul Krugman yet again proves that he lacks a clue about basic economics,” especially if the opiner is a regular who has dissected past Krugman editorials. But, intellectual honesty demands that the words on the page be given a fair shake, and not just in deference to the old adage that a broken clock is still right twice a day. Many folks won’t budge off an opinion no matter how thoroughly that opinion is annihilated, which is both a shame and a major contributor to government failures. But, if we dismiss statements from a source merely because we have taken issue with that source in the past, we aren’t much different from the blindly stubborn. Even if we’ve found Author X’s opinions to be consistently unhinged in the past, he might get something right this time around. A broken clock is still right twice a day.
Beyond that, presumptions of content or content quality based on origin serve to perpetuate the binary compartmentalization of political and other debates, and discourage recognizing the reality that there can be many viewpoints (of varying validity) on a topic. After all, it’s unlikely that someone is opining simply to be wrong or instill an angry response in you personally. And, even if you know that their entire world-view is utterly antithetical to yours, that it’s rooted in ideas that you can (and have, repeatedly) deconstruct to nothingness, perhaps, just perhaps, there is a kernel of viewpoint therein that might expand your own knowledge or broaden your own understanding of a topic – even if that expansion and broadening strengthens your own conclusions instead of weakening them. Someone else being wrong in an inventive way can confirm that we’re right.
And, it is important that we remain open-minded. None of us knows everything, and even if we did, neither knowledge nor the interaction of humans are static. The world evolves, we must be willing to allow our knowledge, beliefs and opinions to evolve as well. So, if you come across a piece written by someone you consider a tool or a fool, give it a chance, at least on occasion. You might lose a few minutes you never get back, but you might pick up some tidbit that makes it worthwhile. At a minimum, you’ll be better informed how the “opposition” thinks and what its arguments might be.
As for the original quote. Obviously, you can copy and paste that quote into a search engine and find out who said it, but if you must, please take a minute, an hour, a day before doing so.
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