A Refresher

For the past week, I’ve been having an interesting discussion over at Damn Foreigner on the subject of military recruitment.

Manish wrote an article suggesting that since there are so many supporters of the war, it shouldn’t be hard to find new recruits for the Army unless those who support it aren’t willing to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

His analysis seemed a bit oversimplistic and I said as much in reply to his post. It’s turned into a relatively long — but civil — comment thread.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a place or person with whom to discuss opposing political viewpoints in an intelligent yet respectful manner. This is especially true on the internet, where contemptuous speech and peevish behavior are the norm. All the more reason to find these moments of sanity so refreshing.

I doubt I changed his mind. Nor did he change mine very much. But the civil exchange of ideas is where growth, knowledge, and understanding begin. I’ll go out on a limb here and state that we could probably use a bit more of that — not just in political discussion, but in general.

Don’t you agree?

  1 comment for “A Refresher

  1. November 22, 2004 at 9:22 am

    yes!

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