Welcome to my rant!
I’ve been down this road before, but here we go again.
A couple of years ago someone did a study which found that Americans do not tend to read or listen to people they disagree with.
This is on my mind today because I recently read the most wonderful counterpoint to this ideological myopia. The New Yorker published a selection of Norman Mailer’s letters, the best of which were letters to his friend and political rival William F. Buckley, Jr.
Mailer, in my favorite of these letters, responding to a published appeal from Buckley for donations to help his then struggling magazine, The National Review, said that while he disagreed with pretty nearly everything the magazine said, he wanted to contribute secretly, because good writing should be supported.
I have confessed before that William F. Buckley, Jr. was one of my youthful heroes, as was Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
In my view, the rule of whether someone is worth reading and listening to remains, “Do they make me think?” Not, incidentally, “Do I agree with them?” Not, “Do they confirm my worldview or share my perspective?”
Do they make me think?
Thomas Sowell, Rebecca Chopp, Christopher Lasch, Marilynne Robinson, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and John Gray (the British political scholar, not the Mars and Venus guy!), Theodore Zeldin, Toni Morrison, Lewis Coser and Michael Ignatieff: the thing they all have in common is the vigor of their thought.
Maureen Dowd, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman stimulate me to see things anew, even when I disagree with them. In fact, it’s when I disagree that I am most stimulated.
I don’t read The Economist each week to have my prejudices confirmed. I read it because of its in-depth analysis and droll prose. So, let me offer a challenge. Every day for the next month, read someone you don’t think you’ll agree with. Let one rule guide you in the selection: Do they make me think?
Maybe instead of another serving of chicken soup for the soul, we could all use a dose of “Team of Rivals” for the mind!
Michael Jinkins is Academic Dean and Professor of Pastoral Theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. [email protected]
