A life in words

  • Three reforms

    Embracing the inner “idea man”

  • Depolarization as a spiritual path

    I have studied and decried political polarization in the United States for many years. Congress, which should be the key site for synthesizing disparate viewpoints from across the country, is instead largely following trends established by rival media echo-chambers. The polarization is materially impairing our ability to govern ourselves effectively. These competing media worlds have…

  • Separation of race and state: a response to Coleman Hughes and Jamelle Bouie

    The most delicious thing in the world is a good discussion of a critical issue. That’s what we got in Open to Debate’s conversation between Coleman Hughes and Jamelle Bouie on the topic of color-blindness with regard to race. It was a great debate. I think Jamelle was most effective in pointing out that civil…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty