I’ve been watching the political commentators, and I’ve just realized we have a new oxymoron in town.

It used to be the definitive oxymoron was “military intelligence.” (A phrase that still brings a smile to all of us ex-mil types, as we know the oxymoron intimately.) But I think a new one has just appeared: “political dialogue.” I’ve yet to see anyone who uses the term actually engage in it. Instead what they do is synchronous monologues.

A dialogue implies that each party listens to and responds to what the other is saying. What political commentators do instead is speak their pre-arranged talking points regardless of what gets said by the other side. This applies to both right and left, and all points between, it seems.

Noel Paul Stookey used to have a routine that went something like this:

“First there was a magazine called Life. It was filled with pictures about everything. It had a very wide scope, all of Life. Then came a new magazine, People. It was still far-ranging, but wasn’t about life, just people. Then came Us. It was still about people, but it was about us, not them. Next will have a magazine, Me, that will be just 27 pages of reflective foil!” (NB, there did soon follow a magazine called Self, but it wasn’t filled with reflective foil, other than metaphorically.)

Yes, he did it for laughs, but there was a point. We as a people were gradually narrowing our focus. We were becoming more and more self-centered, less inclined to listen to anyone.

And that’s happening out on the net. Oh sure, you can find someone writing from every possible point of view out here. But you don’t, and you know it. Instead you look only for those whose point of view echoes your own. It validates and strengthens your own opinion, rather than challenges you to think beyond the box you’ve encased yourself in. And, since you can find other writers on the net who agree with you, you must be right, and anyone who disagrees with you is stupid, moronic, or at least mentally deficient, and you don’t need to think about (or even read) what they write to know that, because all the others who share your point of view say so (also, generally, without thinking).

Just one more factor in the general decline of our civilization.

You want to reverse the tide? Make it a regular practice to read or listen to at least one person who disagrees with your political views. Left-wingers, listen regularly to Limbaugh, Coulter, or Hannity while right-wingers should listen regularly to Franken or Hightower. Don’t try to rebut thier arguments by calling them (or their viewpoint) names, instead try to marshall some actual facts to support your disagreement (and don’t take your facts for granted; both sides play fast and loose with facts). I guarantee you’ll learn something, if you’ll honestly listen and think. If you don’t, then you’ve become so case-hardened in your views that, I’m afraid, there’s no hope for your further intellectual development.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “A mind, stretched by a new idea, will never return to its former shape.” That’s both a wonderful and a fearful concept.

God gave you the ability to think; how will you explain your refusal to use such a wonderful gift?