Peter Edman
The eminently sensible columnist and economist Thomas Sowell raises a helpful point in a recent column.
Too many people today act as if no one can honestly disagree with them. If you have a difference of opinion with them, you are considered to be not merely in error but in sin. You are a racist, a homophobe or whatever the villain of the day happens to be.
Disagreements are inevitable whenever there are human beings but we seem to be in an era when the art of disagreeing is vanishing. That is a huge loss because out of disagreements have often come deeper understandings than either side had before confronting each other's arguments.
Oddly, I see this syndrome crop up with people who tend to downplay the reality of ultimate differences between religions (to take an example not at random).
The question of disagreeing without being disagreeable, as someone in the nineteenth century put it, is overdue for reconsideration.
Gleanings, Public Square, Tue 22 Mar 2005
Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.
Hannah More
