The most important common ground

Most of my "On liberals and conservatives" wasn't really worth reading; but I thought there was one nugget that at least provided a perspective most people won't have run into often. Figuring that was the only part worth reading, I've pulled it out into its own post so that people won't have to wade through the platitudinous meandering that preceded it:

...Now it occurs to me that there is another, even more important, piece of common ground, real estate shared by liberals and conservatives alike: we're all, pretty much, jerks. ...continue reading...One of the most saddeningly amusing things about the whole Miers civil war has been those bewildered conservatives who have whined, "We're acting just like liberals; I thought we were better than that." Um, hon, if that's what you thought, then you are, with all due respect, a complete ditz. Period. I'll tell you something right now: you hang around me long enough, and you talk about enough subjects with me, and sooner or later I will reveal myself to be one heckuva jerk. That is my solemn promise to you, and it's the one promise almost everybody in the world can make and be sure they'll keep. (Well, I don't think my friend Judy Stowell would be able to keep it, but most of you won't ever be lucky enough to meet her.)

If all the people who agree with you seem like nice folks...well, what do you expect? You agree with them; of course they're going to act nice around you. Try disagreeing with them about something they really want, some subject they really care about -- like, say, the Miers nomination -- and just see how fast they get nasty and foul-tempered.

So we're all jerks. And I think, myself, that that's (perversely) the best common ground of all to start with. If you, Mr. Liberal Democrat, and you, Mr. Religious Right Republican, and I, my anti-abortion anti-War-on-Drugs libertarian self, can all accept that each of us is periodically going to go off the rails and be a jerk, then we can all cut each other some slack when it happens, and we can get past the constant moral one-upmanship that makes most conversation between liberals and conservatives so difficult. You don't need to prove that I'm a jerk; I admit it. I don't need to prove that you're a jerk; you admit it. So we don't need to have an argument, do we? After all, the whole point of an argument is to prove that the other person is a jerk, and since we all admit that up front, there's nothing left to prove...which lets us get back to the topic at hand and start making some actual progress on the issue.

Really and truly, I may seem insane, but I think this is a fundamental key to getting along. A very dear friend of mine once told me that the single thing that amazed her most about me was how accepting I could be of other people, including people that she personally couldn't stand. She wasn't a Christian, and she had been raised to think that conservative Christians were intolerant of other people, and she knew that I was a deeply conservative Christian of strong and traditional moral views -- and yet I seemed genuinely to like all kinds of people that she thought were jerks and that, she knew, I knew were engaged in behavior of which I deeply disapproved. I tried gently to explain that one consequence of the doctrine of original sin is precisely that it frees you up to love everybody no matter how they behave -- no matter what happens, you're never disillusioned because you always know anybody is capable of anything given the wrong circumstances; and love is never conditional on your deserving it because nobody deserves it anyway. Liberals and conservatives are really all just people, which means we're all jerks; so, um...well, so if you're a jerk, so what? Like that's supposed to keep me from liking you? If I were going to refuse to have jerks for friends, I'd be one heckuva lonely guy. And if everybody else refused to have jerks for friends, too, who would put up with me?

If you want to go back and forth about whether liberals or conservatives are more morally admirable people, well, feel free, but if that's all it's about then I've got better things to do, like, say, watching a thrilling match of curling. If you want to try to help me figure out where I'm wrong...now that's something I'm interested in.

Which brings me to the last way in which it is at least possible for liberals and conservatives to agree. In an argument, each side is trying to prove the other side is a jerk. In a debate, either each side is trying to prove they're smarter than the other guys, or else each side is trying to get their own way. But in a discussion, each side is trying to learn something. Liberals and conservatives seem to disagree on which side is morally superior; well, a plague on both your houses. Liberals and conservatives seem to disagree on which side is more intelligent, and since there are smart people on both sides, if that's what it's going to be about then nobody's ever going to get anywhere. Liberals and conservatives want to implement different agendas and policies; you're not going to agree about that.

But give me a liberal who wants to learn and a conservative who wants to learn, and that's something we can agree on: if I'm wrong about something (which I'm bound to be), I'd like to find out, and I'll be grateful to anybody who shows me. If we agree on that, then the more other things we disagree on to begin with, the more learning is about to take place.

In the end, it comes down to humility and intellectual integrity. Both virtues are available to liberals and conservatives, and there are liberals and conservatives who exemplify them both. And the house of discussion is big enough for all those of humility and intellectual integrity, however divergent our specific opinions might be, even though every now and then each of us is going to have a bad day and be a jerk.