Thursday, August 04, 2011

Entertaining the unthinkable...  

Conservative David Frum continues his journey toward a workable political philosophy. His experience is similar in many ways to mine and others I have listed. Today he offers a short, but profound admission that you will not hear from many who cannot embrace their own possible fallibility.
If I can’t follow where most of my friends have gone, it is because I keep hearing Susan Sontag’s question in my ears. Or rather, a revised and updated version of that question:

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?
To those of you who write in opposition to my opinions, I hear you. I feel the scorn and anger in your words. And I remind myself often you could be right. It is my hope that painful and relentless exercise will best get me to solutions and hope.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen! Often don't agree with you, but you make me think. In the end we are supposed to be on the same side, for humanity.
Doug

Anonymous said...

John,

I think the trick is to find quality sources across the ideological spectrum to inform one's self. It is too easy to pick off the yahoos on the other side such as Rush or Obermann, Hannity or Maddow, but it is important to find voices that make you think. I also think we all deal with a certain amount of epistemic closure, something that is easy to do in the wealth of info today. I hope that you are including writers such as Jim Manzi, Arnold Kling, and Walter Russell Mead in your reading, as I have noticed more a more shrill tone in some of your posts. However, I do appreciate your efforts, as you stretch my thinking as well.

Thanks again,

Andy Miller

Anonymous said...

No one said we have to agree--often the best part is the conversation. Appreciate all your thoughts and hope for some more up close and stinging ones again soon. We will not grow or change by hanging around people who are just like us.
Steve H