Sunrise With Schubert: February 18, 2018

Perhaps we ought not to let the murder of 17 young Americans divide us further. We’re divided enough already, don’t you think?

I keep reading where we ought to talk to one another. That sounds like a good idea to me. I’m not quite sure how it would work, though. I’m not sure how to talk to someone who doesn't believe the scientists who say the Earth wasn't created 6,000 years ago. And I’m sure there are those who don’t know how to talk to someone who doesn’t believe scientists when they say that genetically modified foods are safe.

What are we to do? There are those in either direction who would change their beliefs on neither Torquemada’s grandest torture mechanism, nor from the soundest logic of Socrates. How can sincere dialogue take place in the middle of such chaos?

Maybe it could if we lop a couple of standard deviations off each side of the political spectrum and try again. I could start by saying that I know a few of things with which I think my philosophical opposites would agree, or at least agree to discuss without resorting to ad hominem attacks. To wit:

America, with all its warts and blemishes, is still the envy of most other countries. They wouldn’t criticize us so if it weren’t.

It’s not the number of activists who make change happen. It’s the type of activists who can work for change while attracting enough tacit support to allow victory and not pissing off enough people to ensure failure.

Science and technology are both wonderful things, but, as the late Stephen Jay Gould opined, the two of them can outrace, at times, our moral and ethical growth.

When regulators believe that their job is to write regulations instead of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the polis, we become an over-regulated society and many lose faith in government.

Without a system of governmental oversight, our rivers may catch fire, daily life may become a nightmare of anarchy, and dangers that we may not even imagine now may destroy us.

We don’t really want our planet destroyed.

We may not agree with Mattie Ross of the immortal True Grit, that “enough is as good as a feast,” but we should agree that those who have everything should not want to obtain more on the backs of their fellow countrymen. At least I hope we think so.

Few people or groups of people are either perfect or without some redeeming points.

A lack of education does not obviate a lack of goodness.

Education is not evil.

Southerners are not all racists idiots, Easterners are not all hypocritical elites who preach brotherhood from their limousines, Northerners are not all gangsters and union thugs, and Westerners are not all drugstore cowboys or nuts who have all rolled to the edge of the known world.

We’re all in this together.

Feel free to add your own. I'm ready to talk.

Talking is good.