Published May, 28, 2009

 

Even the best idea works perfectly

in only one place

 

Amid discussion of the makeup of the new Supreme Court, mention was made of how retiring Justice David Souter had been chosen for his “conservative” credentials, but he ended up being “moderate.” The same observation was made concerning another sitting justice who had been chosen for “liberal” credentials.

 

Considering my own life experiences, I think I can predict that such “mellowing” will occur with any court nominee who is deemed “ideologically pure” or, at least, consistent.

 

What I suspect happens to such Supreme Court nominees is that once they take the job and begin hearing numerous opposing (and plausible) arguments, they realize that the world is more complex than they’d thought, and their “moderate” decisions reflect that insight.

 

As anyone who has read this page for more than six years knows, I was once an absolutely fanatical libertarian ideologue. I was actually to the “right” of today’s “right-wing radicals,” although I was much too polite to be as nasty and judgmental as many are today.

 

One of the important lessons I’ve learned is that the only place where any idea works to perfection is in one’s own mind, and although I still firmly believe that less government is usually better, sometimes other ideas need to be tried.

 

As a youngster just starting out on his quest for understanding, I realized that the more I learned, the more I realized just how much I didn’t know.

 

The corollary to this is that the less a man knows, the easier it is for him to think he knows everything. This certainly applied to me in my “ideological purist” days.

 

It is also what I see with many of the “right-wing” rants published on this page.

 

Thinking that you have anything all figured out is the surest sign that you need to do some more thinking.