This experience helped lead me to the insight that human beings are absurdly attached to silly labels and political “teams” even when they make no sense on their own.

And it also helped me realize that more often than not, political “opponents” are people who have similar if not identical interests, but a different understandings of the facts involved and differing expectations of how certain policies will affect things on the ground. That’s a far cry from the average view, which is that the other side is a bunch of idiots.

But that said, I support your attempt to convince neandertal conservatives that their worldview of defensive, hostile-to-other attitudes might be a liability.

Having read what seems like a zillion comments on various sites (the Salon/Slate/TrueSlant/Atlantic bloggers, 538, et cetera), I really seems that individuals’ particular mix fear and hope drive their self-identified philosophy more often than not. Most of the time, of course, self-identified ideology is simply incorrect and people will often act in ways that are antithetical to their stated beliefs (which permits pollers to find that half the country is wary of evolution, for example, as they sign up for their next flu shot). Liberals tend to vest their hope in ways I find attractive and their fears in pockets of paranoia (but, as Woody Allen famously noted, perhaps justifiably) that are different than those of libertarians and conservatives. Witness the conservative arguments in the current health care debate: many are based upon the fear that one thing (say, end-of-life counseling) will morph into another (say, death panels). The strategy (when you have the votes) may just be to do what’s right and let them get used to it. The fear abates (or perhaps becomes focused elsewhere). When you look at the history of conservative objections to progressive policies, it’s a seemingly endless cascade of things that are just fine now (Social Security, the end of miscegenation laws, . . .) but were feared for their future effects.

I think this speaks precisely to the miserable condition of the current brand of public discourse. It appears that both politicians and especially the punditocracy on the 24-hour news networks have come to specialize in highlighting the very worst arguments of their opponents, and using them as case-studies for why the opposition is too stupid to be trusted. In fact, typically, the most outrageous comments on either side of the political spectrum are put forward as exemplary of what the other arguments regarding an issue might be. Lies get more television coverage than thoughtful commentary, and through a perverse-Darwinism, the least fit often rise to the top of our public awareness as a result (e.g. “birth certificates” and “death panels”). I actually think that Obama, personally, is distinctive precisely because he tries to anticipate his opponent’s best arguments, project respect for them, and address them. Ironically, this may be the “weakness” of his political strategy–rendering his message “muddled” or insufficiently “forceful.” In today’s political arena, I wonder if what is clearly a virtue at the level of an individual comes to be a “failure” in the context of Party politics and promoting an agenda. I think the relationship of Sanchez’s point to the larger, structural features of public discourse (how are ideas disseminated? by whom? why and whose interest’s are served?, etc.), is the only thing missing from this essay.

Now, if there was some way to reduce the intellectual dishonesty that is so much a part of of public discourse perhaps we could make more progress in deciding public policy.

One reason to do this is that you encounter information you would not encounter otherwise (all points of view “screen” information; there are no “honest” viewpoints to this extent – much less “objective summaries”). Also, this specific activity serves one of the core functions of rational discourse: that everyone over time comes closer and closer to meaning the same things by the same words at the same time, so that unnecessary disputes never occur.

But I’ve thought the most pressing reason to do it is to try to counteract very strong biases, in the first person, that I know I’m prey to and I presume everyone else is just as subject to. People clump these in different ways, but there’s defense of my current sense of reliability and priorities – which is also making sure that I seem right about these things, and, by hook or by crook, that I seem to have been right all along. And I’ve thought of a big shadowy bias-angle as one toward assuming that the things that I am not and have not been interested in are genuinely not interesting and deserve that little interest.

This interacts with the practical consideration that the easiest model that I can make of a noncongruent construction with my own accepted mental building blocks, in order to account for it, is usually going to be a weak or unsound or nonsensical one. And idea-communities (which I think of as mutual-admiration societies, exchanging word-counters and validation) encourage this and make it worse.

You’ve described this here as a tactical good, or a method for improving dialog, but for me it’s a way in which I can try, by policy, to assure myself that I have indeed thought about, or really looked at, or taken an interest in, an idea when I think I have. Because, just as the feeling of sureness or of conclusiveness feels the same whether it’s sound or false, the impression that I’ve adequately thought something over tends to happen no matter what I’ve done. I have to make myself do something specific that’s, at least slightly more, really taking a careful interest.

Otherwise… well, the history of my different intellectual periods contains a fair number of embarrassing examples. And people in general supply plenty. Like, I’ve talked to a few progressive types, with whom I am often not out of sympathy, who have come to think and say, as a complete take, that market-based arguments, whenever brought up, are merely the propaganda of the monied big interests and do not even need to be looked at. An explicit policy of engaging with the best form of “their” argument, as a background sense of what to do, can lead one to end up having gone and found at least a general notion of why Milton Friedman would have said such and such. Lack-of-interest blind spots would be as easy to find among people of any stripe.