Reaching across the aisle
Bipartisanship has had a rough few weeks here in Washingon, but it’s alive and well in some corners of the blogosphere. One of them is The Moderate Voice (TMV), led by Editor-in-Chief Joe Gandleman. Joe started up his site several years ago because there is too much insulated partisanship in the blogosphere and not enough places where liberals and conservatives can get together and debate both seriously and respectfully about the big issues.
Graciously, Joe offered to add some Republican flavor to his site by having me cross-post some of my writing from Conventional Folly. Just now, I put up a short post introducing myself to the readers at TMV, so they know where I’m coming from. In it, I confess that not too long ago, I was a liberal Democrat:
I’m a Republican, although when I graduated from college around ten years ago, I was a liberal Democrat. Back then, I was pretty confident that Republicans just didn’t get it. These days, I try to remind myself how easy it is to surround yourself with people and ideas that confirm what you already think you know. On top of that, I still remember how confident I was back then in my own objectivity and open-mindedness.
Pretty much everyone believes their own positions are based on facts and logic. Pretty much everyone also recognizes that they can never be fully objective and open-minded. But in my experience, this admission does almost nothing to actually make people more objective and open-minded. It’s just a box that you check off in your mind before saying what you were going to say anyhow.
I won’t pretend I have an answer to this dilemma. Certainly, it’s a good idea to talk to people who disagree with you about everything. Even more important, I think, is not to get too worked up about the excesses of extreme partisans on the other side of the aisle. For good reason, right-of-center bloggers spend a lot of time trashing the ridiculous things said by Kos or Moveon.org or Nancy Pelosi or whoever. You have to do that, because you can’t let them get away with it. (And they have to do the same thing to keep us honest.)
The problem is, it’s very tempting to congratulate yourself on your own good sense when you get worked up by those who don’t have it.