Recently I've been going through some of my older posts and I came upon what I consider to be the first of the modern me, if you will, entitled Sarah Palin Makes Me Sick. Recently Palin made a huge deal over criticism that she was engaging in excessively violent rhetoric that could be having some effect on radical conservatives who resort to violence. In addressing these accusations, Paling accused the left wing of trying to suppress her views, and said that impassioned political debate made this country great. I agree with her in principle on the last part, but I believe you can separate impassioned from vitriolic and dangerous. Furthermore, I have an even deeper problem with the first part, specifically that criticizing her methods are the same thing as trying to suppress her views. As I have said and continue to say, I am a firm believer in the dialectical process, a process that requires conflicting opinions in order to move forward. However, as I have also said, the path taken to achieve a goal matters just as much as the goal itself. If Sarah Palin holds an opinion that runs contrary to mine I do not fault her for it, but I can still take issue with the means she uses to voice her opinions. This is not to be confused with a desire to suppress her opinion, merely a desire to bring civility to a still impassioned political dialogue.
In fact, I find more undertones of suppression in her response than in the calls for her to scale back her rhetoric. I believe that most of those calls came from people who held the same reasoning as I, and in response Palin tried to complete quash such accusations. Now perhaps these accusations against Palin are not entirely founded, perhaps there is room to redefine acceptable political rhetoric. The beauty of the dialectical process is that the synthesis is never identical to either the thesis or antithesis, it is the result of both. Through a dialectical process we can weed out the parts of either position that are faulty, but it requires a participation in this process.
What Sarah Palin was doing was avoiding participation in this process. Recently John Boehner, when asked about compromising with the minority Democrats in the house, responded by saying he doesn't know the meaning of the word. I don't doubt him, but someone should really mention to him that it might be a worthwhile word to learn, even if it is three grueling syllables long. Anyways, this attitude that Boehner was exhibiting is the same that Palin was. Participating in a dialectical process concerning political rhetoric will mean that her position will not be completely maintained in the synthesis, there is an undertone of compromise for both sides in the dialectical process. To her this is unacceptable, there can be no compromise, her opinion must prevail completely over every other.
I could go on with examples of this mentality within the Republican Party. One more is that of Republican governor Scott Walker. He continues to say that his insistence on removing the right of unions to bargain for collective rights is that he needs to trim the budget, yet unions and Democrats have been very vocal in their willingness to agree to his proposed cuts. Cuts are not enough for Walker if they come with compromise, his agenda must prevail wholesale. Simply put, this dynamic is not conducive to a functional democratic process. The dialectical process is a law of progress, it is how change has always and will always work. Even in their refusal to participate in it, Republicans like Palin do so nonetheless. It is literally impossible to not participate in it, however, by trying their best to not participate in it these people do ensure a more tumultuous dynamic to change.
I have recently been reading On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, and I find it a brilliant work. In it, Mill discusses the voicing and suppression of opinion, and he argues that even if an opinion were known to be completely erroneous it is still wrong to suppress it. In doing so, he says, we lose an opportunity at arguing against the opinion in question and rediscovering exactly why that opinion is wrong. We can probably move forward on the assumption that Palin and others feel that their opinions are unquestionably right, what they lack is the understanding that their conclusions do not preclude them from engaging in the dialectical process nonetheless. By refusing to compromise at all they are losing what might be gained from incorporating other opinions into theirs, or at the very least what might be gained from debunking those opinions which run counter to theirs. They are becoming, in a word, dogmatic, something I will discuss in detail very shortly.
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