If you’re reading this, odds are you’re not a very informed
person.
Forgive me, but it has to be said by somebody.
And I say it, if it makes any difference, as a man who
grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh, at least until his father discovered any
number of other talk radio hosts who quickly followed in El Rushbo’s historic
wake, and who by my sophomore year in high school did not end a day without
absorbing every new column published by Townhall.com’s elite assemblage of conservative
pundits.
Over a decade later I still read and listen to them, too -
they’re just not all I read and listen to.
Today I also listen to podcasts from Dan Carlin, a
moderate. And also broadcasts from Air America,
which isn’t. Books I’ve recently read: Barbara
Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed and
Hillary Clinton’s autobiography.
All of this is good.
For all the intuitive understanding today’s conservatives
possess of the marketplace and specifically the wonderfully-termed marketplace
of ideas, they tend not to bother shopping around in it. Six or seven years ago I certainly never
did. What information I needed to know
from the books, articles, and videos of my political opponents I learned from
quoted excerpts within my own, much friendlier reading material, which handily
came with ready rebuttals to all of their points.
That I had encased myself within a bubble of groupthink, one
no less Orwellian than that which envelopes our universities, did not occur to
me until late in college, when in my zeal to become the most effective culture
warrior I could be I decided to start reading the works of my enemies; I wanted
to be a Christian apologist and writer, so I started by putting away Norman L.
Geisler, Lee Strobel, and other “defenders of the faith” and instead reading alternative
commentaries on the Tanakh by moder-day Jewish scribes like Gunther W. Plaut
and Dennis Prager, after which I graduated to the atheist treatments of Dr.
Robert M. Price and the full-bore counter-apologists we all know so well:
Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, et al.
I liken the effect of this expanded reading list to having
eaten only American hamburgers for most of my life and then discovering ethnic
food exists. The variety and richness of
thought I encountered, even though I disagreed with a lot of it, was
intoxicating – and yes, I started coming across arguments against Biblical
inerrancy and various Christian values that C.S. Lewis, Norman L. Geisler, and the
rest never mentioned to me. For the
first time in my life I was truly being challenged, and only the opinions I
truly deserved to have survived this refiner’s fire.
Naturally, I soon enough applied the same approach to my
politics, and now – well, now I’m in a place I’d never thought I’d be. Which is scary, but also very exciting.
There’s little practical difference between living in a
one-party state where you are constantly brainwashed and living in a two-party
state where you are constantly conditioning yourself. Don’t waste the blessing you’ve been given of
living in one of the few countries on Earth where you really can explore every
point of view. It’s too rare a gift and
it’s dishonest.
Take a break today from Townhall.com. Hell, take a week off. It’s not like you don’t know what all of these
people think about everything anyway. Instead,
jump over to a Libertarian website (they half-agree with you! Good place to start!), or even a Democrat one
if you’re brave enough. Then when you
return to the discussions here, at least you’ll have a unique voice, as opposed
to being just another Republican repeating the exact same points from the exact
same sources that everyone else is repeating.
Become informed.