After waking up last Wednesday and learning the results of our latest exercise of popular sovereignty, I got really mad. First I became angry with the GOP, for winning yet another election. Then I became angry with the American public, or at least the single-issue voters who, according to my efforts to rationalize all of this, seem to comprise a large segment of it. After stewing in these thoughts for a while, I got to thinking about anger itself and I began to wonder just what good it was doing. So, I offer the following musings for your appraisal.

In times like these, when us leftists find ourselves lacking much substantive representation in the nation's government, we expend enormous amounts of energy fighting for our side through ideological debate. Naturally, we continue fighting policy battles and lobbying to make our voices heard, but my intention here is to focus on a particular tendency on the debate side of things: the tendency to demonize conservatives and direct our anger toward them as people. I believe that this may have serious negative consequences for our political efforts. Before making that critique, I want to say a few words about the virtues of anger and indignation.

In the sense that it can serve as the impetus for productive action, anger has great transformative power. Purely rational arguments often fail to capture potential political audiences, so appeals to emotion are extremely useful. What concerns me, however, is when this useful anger and passion are directed not toward the opposing ideology but toward its human agents.

Because real people formulate and enact political ideas, it is often easy to locate the supposed evil of a given idea in its human agent. But if we dismiss, as we should, the options of moving to another country or dissolving the country itself, we must acknowledge the necessity of having to coexist with or convert our ideological opponents. This means we must find a way to act civilly toward such people and, in my mind, directing our anger toward them rather than their ideas will only inhibit this process. Presuming that our ideology is not one of hate or exclusion, the ultimate goal is not to defeat people: it is to defeat ideas.

What does this amount to? Basically, that ad hominem political attacks are inevitably counter-productive. I will concede that trying to dialogue with the present administration is often about as productive as trying to milk a dog, but denouncing people as evil will always be an impediment to productive discourse. I take it for granted that we would rather come to some sort of agreement with our ideological adversaries than simply force our will upon them, and to achieve this we must be able to talk to them. I think that debate of words and ideas demands a modicum of respect, and I believe that to denounce someone as evil is to indicate a belief that they cannot be reasoned or collaborated with. Once you adopt this stance, your opponent no longer has any reason to treat you with respect, and the chances for productive discussion or persuasion will likely fade accordingly.

I will close with a few suggestions. Other than the patently obvious prohibition on condemning one's ideological opponents, I first suggest being diligent about information. When not operating in the realm of pure philosophical abstraction, we base our arguments on our knowledge of the world around us. This, of course, we get largely from the media and we all know what that means. Biased media makes for skewed debate, so rail against poor informational hygiene. My second suggestion is one we are constantly bombarded with, but I think it's a good one, so I'll include it: go out of your way to converse with people who don't agree with you. And when you do, remember: even Alan Greenspan has feelings.