July 18, 2023

The right way to move a jerk

From our overstocked archives

Sam Smith, 2012 - There is no doubt that on the matter of birth control - not to mention the status of women and gays - the Catholic hierarchy behaves like a bunch of mean jerks. One of the beauties of America, however, is the right to be a jerk as long as you don't interfere with someone else's right to be a jerk.  In more polite circles it's called reciprocal liberty or tolerance.

But the term tolerance has all but disappeared from the the rhetoric of both left and right. This is too bad for a number of reasons including that it diminishes people's rights, it increases their anger, and it doesn't work. One reason it doesn't work is because people don't typically move from a stupid to a reasonable position as a single act of conversion; it often takes them a while during which the most effective approach is to keep them moving in the right direction.

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