Anti-Climacus

THOUGHTS ON THE BELOW: It amazes me, generally speaking, when talking about politics the extent to which the benefit of the doubt is not given. Perhaps the only reason that it surprises me is that I went, in one year, from reading The Nation religiously to reading NRO: I'm pretty clear on the fact that you can make a good argument that the costs of environmental clean-up should fall on the companies who created the problem in the first place, even if it's many decades after the fact. I'm also pretty clear that there's a strong argument to be made that, say, affirmative action is ultimately insulting and counterproductive. I believe in being agnostic towards sources in political debate: a good argument is a good argument, and anyone can make one.

One of the fastest ways to poison any political debate is to start questioning the underlying motivations of people you're arguing with. Everyone's motivations (or at least a broad enough swath of them for anyone's purposes) are pretty much the same: everyone wants to see the country be stronger and better in the future: people just disagree about how to get there. Abortion is no different than fiscal policy or the war in Iraq. Just as good writing can contain a complex thought but is never itself complex, good political argument can go viciously after the consequences of someone's idea, but never against their motivation for suggesting it*.

*A tricky case, of course, because there are at least some people whose motivations we actually do want to impugn, but we ought to extend them the benefit of the doubt, say, seventy times seven times before we cut them out of the debate entirely.