Journal

Are the left always right?

Posted on April 21st, 2005, in the evening

I was going to post this as a comment in response to this Guardian article on the 'US culture wars', but... ach... it would just be whispering in a storm there. I'm going to post it here, though:

The pop-left don't seem to realise that their self-righteous horror and smirking condescension are exact equivalents of the pop-right's closed-minded fundamentalism and bullish arrogance. Both sides regard the other position as an almost subhuman level of thought. The intellectual courage to engage with the strongest rendition of an opponent's position rather than a ridiculous caricature is worryingly rare.

Maybe I just reveal myself to be a notch more self-deluded than anyone in saying things like this, but it really does frustrate me that the more complex a question is the less people seem to be interested in the nuances.