Perpetual polemic

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by Pamela White
(letters@boulderweekly.com)

America's pastime isn't baseball; it's bickering. Name a topic, and Americans choose sides faster than grade school kids at recess. Abortion. Gay rights. Health care. Global warming. Public education. Terrorism. The drug war. Daycare. Poverty. Guns. Racism.

We all think we know where we stand on these issues, and most of us don't hesitate to express our opinions—loudly. We've got the pros and the antis, the Christianists and the secularists, the stay-at-home moms and the working moms, the peaceniks and gun nuts, the SUV-drivers and the environmentalists all shouting at one another at the top of their lungs. Now that the din has become deafening, it might be a good idea to ask whether we're accomplishing anything.

I'm a professional bickerer. It's my job to find a topic and take some other point of view to the mat each week. Except that I've gotten really sick of it. After 13 years of column writing, I find there's nothing left to bicker about that isn't already trampled ground. I still have my opinions, but they bore even me.

Over the past year, I've found it increasingly difficult to address any issue, not because there aren't important topics that merit examination, but because the format of an opinion column limits a writer to a sort of blog-like screeching—or worse, a milquetoast moderation—that no longer appeals to me. After all, most problems are more complex than hyperbolic ranting enables us to appreciate.

I touched on this topic right before the 2004 election in a column titled "Divided we stand." The column dealt with my own family's political split and the fact that we actually get along because we try, at the very least, to acknowledge when enemy combatant kinfolk have a point. Split three and three—men vs. women—we cancelled out one another's votes in that election. (Ironically, our pax familia came to a temporary end when, in the wake of that election, I sent out an e-mail describing George W with a phrase that rhymes with "pod-gammed, other-pucking sock-tucker." But I digress.)

During the past 15 months or so while I've been on a de facto columnist sabbatical, I've found myself looking for something different than the thrill of verbal combat: common ground.

It's not hard to find, but it is perhaps uncomfortable to find. Do I really want to sit down and have a conversation with a Bush-loving, anti-abortion fundamentalist when so much of that person's perspective is antithetical to my notions of fairness, justice and freedom?

The answer is, of course, no—not unless the Bush-loving, anti-abortion fundamentalist is respectful and open to listening to what I have to say.

In that spirit, I'm introducing a new feature to our editorial page—CommonPoint. Instead of the point-counterpoint format that has reduced talk shows to mindless polemic, fueling our disagreements, this will be a dialogue, similar to a moderated online chat. Readers will submit their perspectives via e-mail, and I'll compile a selection as space allows of the most insightful perspectives from all sides of the issue. We'll move from topic to topic, and we'll start with the most divisive issue of all—abortion.

Abortion rouses such furious emotions because it places at odds rights most hold sacred: human life and human liberty and happiness. When abortion is legal, pregnancies that would otherwise result in newborn babies end with dead fetuses. Some women live with heart-wrenching regret as a result. When abortion is illegal, women find themselves deprived of control of their own bodies, literally forced to yield their most private possession to the use of another, an experience akin to rape. Some women are willing do anything to end an unwanted pregnancy, even risk their own lives.

If you're honest, you'll admit that there's no easy black-and-white here, no one-size-fits-all solution, no quick fix. And that's what I'll be looking for when it comes to choosing material for CommonPoint—honesty, depth of perspective, originality.

Like any moderated chat, CommonPoint has rules. Here they are:

1. No hyperbole, finger-jabbing or frothing at the mouth.

2. No quoting scripture. This is a rational discussion, not a chance to proselytize.

3. Be original. We've heard it all before.

4. Try acknowledging the validity of other perspectives and your own agenda.

5. Be concise. Limit your contribution to your strongest, clearest points and your word count to no more than 300 words.

Ultimately, I hope to foster a real conversation that enables people if not to refine their points of view, then at least to listen. Our problems as a nation won't be overcome until we learn to do just that. CommonPoint is an experiment, but it's one for which Boulder ought to be ideally suited. I'll kick it off in two weeks with a column on abortion that will attempt to address weaknesses on both sides of the abortion debate.

Submit your contributions and any inquiries to CommonPoint at letters@boulderweekly.com.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com