laneys.info Beware of Yankees, drunks, and loose women.

I ran across a speech that former President Bill Clinton gave last week at Georgetown University.  Mr. Clinton does not hide his politics by any means.  In fact, his speech was a pretty direct effort to support the Democratic party in the November elections.  However, the excerpt I watched contained the first quote, which I think is an excellent assessment of how people operate, whether on the Left or the Right or somewhere in between.  The question I ask of you is, "which method do you, personally, use?"

"We believe in a politics...dominated by evidence and argument. There is a big difference between a philosophy and an ideology on the right or the left. If you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another. But like all philosophers, you want to engage in discussion and argument. You are open to evidence, to new learning. And you are certainly open to debate the practical applications of your philosophy."

"The problem with ideology is if you got an ideology, you already got your mind made up, you know all the answers, and that makes evidence irrelevant and argument a waste of time, so you tend to govern by assertion and attack. The problem with that is that discourages thinking and gives you bad results."

— Bill Clinton, October 18, 2006

I also appreciated this one:

"I long for the day when Republicans and Democrats will sit around and have these raucous, exciting arguments and actually love learning from one another, and when we create the common good out of a dynamic center."

If you're interested in the entire speech, you can watch it on the Georgetown University web site, read the transcript, or see a longer excerpt on YouTube.