Refference<\/a>, a blog by a fellow named Jeremy Reff, arguing for a more aesthetic approach to political conversation. I'm agin it, myself, but I haven't any really coherent idea why. I suppose that ultimately, he's assuming that (a) most policy questions have a middle ground, and (b) the way to achieve the necessary agreement among people who disagree, the thing to emphasize is the limited stuff they do agree on, rather than the pluralistic give-and-take of compromise.\n\nI'll try to state that a little better, if I can. Jeff wants me to concentrate on the common ground I share with others; his example is both pro-life and body-rights activists share a revulsion at abortion itself, and would prefer that there be fewer. Therefore, they can and should both work (presumably together) to reduce the number of abortions, whilst agreeing to disagree on the moral aspect. I agree that the both factions should be working to reduce the frequency and necessity of abortions, but neither should they give up try to persuade each other and neutral passers-by of their essential moral position. More importantly, by focusing on achieving their common goals (a good thing, don't get me wrong), they may lose sight of compromise, which is, after all, How We Govern. Too much focus on Getting What My Side Wants (even getting that portion of it that the other side also wants) leads us away from the essential American idea that Nobody Gets Everything They Want. Which would, in the long run, lead to less cooperation, rather than more.\n\n
Still, it looks like an interesting blog, doesn't it? Even if he does like Madame Bovary<\/I>.\n\n
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gentle Readers, There’s an interesting couple of posts at Refference, a blog by a fellow named Jeremy Reff, arguing for a more aesthetic approach to political conversation. I’m agin it, myself, but I haven’t any really coherent idea why. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16837,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/16837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}