Open Minded?

On more than one occasion I have heard a person of liberal persuasion consider themselves open minded due simply to the fact that they are liberal.  Their argument is flawed however, in that they believe the substance of their opinions, in and of themselves, demonstrate open mindedness, when in reality it is how one arrives at those opinions that is the determinant of whether one is open minded.

The ironic part of all this is that liberal opinions generally arise from emotional rather than intellectual considerations and therefore have little to do at all with “mindedness” of any sort.  This fact also helps to explain why liberal concepts are easier to sell in sound bites and general mass media.

Emotional appeals demand only a passive response; intellectual appeals demand an active response.  Emotional appeals make you feel good, happy, sad, angry or any other of a host of “emotions”, requiring no effort or action on the part of the individual.  The response is natural and immediate.  On the other hand, intellectual appeals require effort on the part of the person the appeal is directed toward.  They require one to think, consider, evaluate and extrapolate data, ideas and concepts to come to a reasonable conclusion.  This demands an active response, which is more than many people are willing to do.

Henry Ford once said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few people engage in it.”  Hence, the majority of people are unwilling to invest the time or effort needed to consider intellectual appeals and are instead content to react emotionally.  The emotions that conservative principles are most successful at generating are ones of anger – at welfare recipients, beneficiaries of affirmative action policies, over-reaching unions, bloated government etc.   If one does not like being angry – and most people don’t – they are likely to be repulsed by such appeals.  Yet if one makes the effort to consider the appeal intellectually – that welfare recipients will be better off and happier if they look to themselves rather than government for improvement in their lives; that we can never be a truly color-blind nation until we stop classifying and dividing ourselves by race, gender and ethnicity; that unions who strive to preserve jobs made unnecessary by technological improvements are holding wages down for everyone; that a government that cannot end the subsidy of mohair farmers (a remnant of our need for mohair during World War I) should not be allowed to decide which new technologies should be supported today – then they may come to very different conclusions about conservative appeals.

Democracy requires an active and knowledgeable electorate.  Unfortunately, we are negligent in our responsibility to learn and think.

It is wonderful to be open-hearted.  It is vital that we be open-minded as well.  We just must be willing to make the effort.