You’ve got this figured out. You read your latest Google News notifications, scrolled through Twitter, checked in on Facebook (maybe, if you haven’t already deleted it), you listened to your favorite podcast, and you’ve determined that your opinion is right. Most people seem to agree with you, and the few who don’t are either wrong, need to do more research, or just crazy.
I’m going to try to convince you that whatever opinion you hold, you’re probably wrong. Whatever thought is percolating in your mind, you should hold it for a few more minutes.
Most issues are not black and white. They are detailed and nuanced. Your opinion is likely driven by your ideological approach to political or policy questions, and you, like all your fellow humans, choose positions based on feelings rather than facts. If this statement makes you feel uncomfortable because you like to think that you are a thoughtful person who arrives at opinions through careful consideration, you’ve come to the right place.
At times arriving at an opinion is fine. You can make a moral determination about major issues and accept that you have a baseline from which you can’t deviate. For conservatives, such an issue could be abortion. For liberals, it could be how we treat asylum seekers at the border. However, our moral judgement should not close our eyes and ears to facts contrary to our position. Conservatives should consider that sex education and widely available access to birth control is the most effective rate to reduce the abortion rate. And liberals should consider that the influx of migrant families across the border is unprecedented, and our systems are buckling under the pressure.
Meanwhile, at times it is best to not render an opinion at all – or come to the conclusion that all sides are wrong. Nathan Phillips shouldn’t have marched right into a pack of high schoolers hanging out on the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial; Covenant Catholic students (and chaperones!) should have realized that their MAGA hats and body language were going to provoke a strong reaction. The kindling is dry and abundant, it doesn’t take much these days to light it all on fire.
The posts on this blog will address a wide variety of currently topical political and policy issues, putting them into proper context both for our current political time as well as historically. Hopefully this will serve as a resource to begin hard but important conversations about various topics, with the intent to temper opinions. I hope to spur insightful and thoughtful debate, so please leave your comments, thoughts, and ideas – we have a lot to learn from each other.
Hold Your Thought
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