Inappropriate Conversations

Most debate you hear today is about winning/losing and not about resolving questions and finding answers that will move society forward.  All of us lose when arguments are presented in this manner.  Instead, we need to listen better, speak more clearly and often at greater length, and live up to higher standards.  Guidelines include: granting opponents as much ground as possible, holding ourselves and others to the integrity of stated positions, and striving to find "the rest of the argument." Different Drummer: Dwight MacDonald Dan Carlin's Common Sense 194: State Of The Union (particularly 33:00 - 55:35)

Films made for television between 1967-1976: Run a Crooked Mile, The Longest Hundred Miles, Shadow Over Elveron, Probe (Search), The Stranger, City Beneath the Sea, Vanished, Hunter, Duel, Brian's Song, A Cold Night's Death (Chill Factor), Trilogy of Terror, A Short Walk to Daylight, Go Ask Alice, The Man Without a Country, Death Race, Trapped, The Morning After. Different Drummer: Dan Carlin Common Sense & Hardcore History

The impeachment of Bill Clinton near the end of his presidency was one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the United States government.  The president virtually declared that he couldn't define the word "is."  More than 200 representatives in Congress demonstrated a weak grasp of the word "other."  Millions of dollars were wasted on an assumption that a majority of American voters didn't know what they were doing when Clinton was elected, not once but twice!  Embarrassing, indeed. Different Drummer: Alexis de Tocqueville

It's interesting to see how pro-choice friends react when I define abortion as the killing of an unborn child.  It is also interesting to observe the reaction of pro-life friends when I suggest that such a killing isn't necessarily or always "unjust."  Obviously, we have to clear up a few things before we can even define the word abortion, much less deal with the issue. Different Drummer: Judith Jarvis Thomson

If we are serious about free market capitalism, then we shouldn't be name-calling or establishing barriers to the free exchange of opinions and beliefs. This notion is consistent with America's founding fathers. It is consistent with the writings of the apostles who spread the word of Jesus without any help from a ruling majority in government. Are we "restoring America" to those perspectives? If you are watching rallies on TV and reading the news, you don't really know what "restoring honor" precisely involves. I wonder why. Different Drummer: Thomas Jefferson

Representative democracy has almost become a joke in the United States of America. The two-party system gives voters a false, and limited, sense of choice where the parties themselves join forces to keep other options out. Worse, it often seems like no one votes their conscience anymore. We complain about the "lesser of two evils" while so easily settling for just that. We will never get anything better until we stop trying to "pick the winner" and start demanding something better than a "race." Different Drummer: Ralph Nader

When it comes to drugs and drug policies, we'd better say much more than just "no."  In many ways, the "just say no" campaign invested its power in the simplicity of ignorance. After all, if you merely abstain then you never have to understand what you are abstaining from. Or do you?  Education is crucial because knowledge is the only way to avoid being duped ... or doped. Different Drummer: Steven D. Levitt