Last week, I had the pleasant opportunity to speak with a wonderfully-cordial friend about the complexity of politics — the situational nature of justified policy, so often eclipsed by galling dichotomies made to bolster partisan distinctions. 

We had just finished a Political Science Club meeting, discussing whether the current, national minimum wage should be raised. Therein, a number of students obstinately clung to opposing such policy, refusing to acknowledge the objections made by their peers. Of course, their opposition to minimum wage wasn't itself problematic (indeed, though I don't endorse the position myself, there is something to be said for the productivity of such a laissez-faire policy.) Rather, it was their obdurate rejection of open-minded discourse, of comprehending the positions of their dissenters, which posed — or encapsulated — a significant problem.  

This thesis, that civil debate is better than a cacophony of vehement spat, is not new. Since the prime of Athens, public discourse bent on reconciliation has been a staple of efficient democracy; a facet which fosters relatively moderate ideology and substantiated contention. Nonetheless, in spite of pervasive arguments attempting to cultivate the contrary, the mulish dismissal of ulterior perspectives remains widespread (just look to Tuesday's presidential debate.) Perhaps this is simply the result of human nature, of people's general unwillingness to scrutinize their beliefs, change their minds, or qualify their positions; or, maybe it's a consequence of their resolute desire to uphold the dogma of those factions to which they ascribe.

Whatever the case, it is a problem — a problem because the deprecation of attentive, civil debate facilitates extreme partisanship and diminishes the appeal of moderate ideology. 

As my friend and I spoke about the meeting we just attended, we came to a realization: oftentimes, the most sound position is that which synthesizes elements from competing viewpoints (i.e. that which acknowledges the support for both "sides" of an issue and attempts to reconcile them,) a position which requires one to accept the premises of multiple perspectives.  

For the most part, this amounts to the advocation of rather moderate and very situational policies: perhaps a substantial regulation on who may own firearms without a repeal of citizen armaments, an attempt to deter racially-correlated disparities without delineating American society as a systemic abhorrence, a mitigation of climate change without several trillion dollars worth of economic cost, or a series of differing minimum wages ascribed to proportionally differing communities and industries — all policies and positions frequently rebuked by ardent proponents of inflexible ideology.  

None of this means that taking a principled, unequivocal stance against a policy is never justified — certainly, inflexible ideology can be a positive force. Rather, it serves to premise a simple contention: that stoking division by intractably repudiating another's position is, usually, a parlous enshrinement of ignorance.