Listening to Opposing Views

When I spoke of demanding Truth a few days ago, a visitor to the site correctly asked, “Whose truth?” In my own mind, I meant verifiable truth like the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible, and investigative documentation such as the one by David Barstow in Sunday’s New York Times, Behind TV Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand. Belief and truth can be one and the same, or very different. There are people who believe that the world is flat and that the Holocaust did not happen. Does that belief make it true? For me, truth comes with critical thinking as defined in the dictionary: “disciplined intellectual criticism that combines research, knowledge of historical context, and balanced judgment.”

Susan Jacoby discusses this lack of balanced judgment in Talking to Ourselves – Americans are Increasingly Close-Minded and Unwilling to Listen to Opposing Views, (April 20, 2008, Los Angeles Times). “As dumbness has been defined downward in American public life during the last two decades, one of the most important and frequently overlooked culprits is the public’s increasing reluctance to give a fair hearing — or any hearing at all — to opposing points of view… Ironically, the unprecedented array of choices, on hundreds of cable channels and the Web, have contributed to the decline of common knowledge and the denigration of fairness by both the right and the left. No one but a news junkie has the time or the inclination to spend the entire day consulting diverse news sources on the Web, and the temptation to seek out commentary that fits neatly into one’s worldview — whether that means the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report — is hard to resist.”

“It is past time for Americans to stop attributing the polarization of our public life to the media, the demon entity “Washington” or “the elites.” As long as we continue to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing public affairs without the filter of polemical shouting heads, we have no one to blame for the governing class and its policies but ourselves. … I yearn to live in a society that values fair-mindedness. But it will take nothing less than a revolutionary public recommitment to the pursuit of fairness, knowledge and memory to halt, much less reverse, the trend toward an ignorant single-mindedness that threatens the future of democracy itself.”

I realize I am as guilty of seeking out ‘commentary that fits my worldview,’ as anyone else. So starting today I have added Fox News to my daily online reading list, and will look for more sources that represent 'other views.' And I will give you an opportunity to read opposing views on current topics. Today I have chosen the discussions going on about ABC’s handling of the Democratic Debate in Pennsylvania on Thursday night. Here are two diverse viewpoints about the same event.

Playing Gotcha with Obama… Bill O’Reilly, Fox News

An Open Letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos
By Will Bunch, the Philadelphia Daily News

... P. L. Morningstar