Wisdom From A Convicted Murderess

Barbara Graham went to her death in San Quentin Prison's gas chamber back in 1955 for the crime of murder. Reportedly her last words were: "Good people are always so sure they're right."

I have to agree with her observation.

I do a lot of reading. It's my favorite hobby. In my efforts to be informed I try to get a good feel of the various ways of looking at things. I somewhat pity those inflated wits who never do more than reinforce their biases by refusing to stray outside the comfy confines of their pet theories.

Years ago I became distressed by the way the conservative surge here in the good ol' USA tortured logic in order to make their points. As an outlet I began looking into this by starting a blog which I called Right-wing Dumbth (borrowing the "dumbth" from the late entertainer Steve Allen, who coined that word to describe what he felt was the heights of stupidity.)

After a while I quite. I quit because I began to notice way too much left-wing dumbth. In fact, when examining any issue, one's primary task should be to winnow all the chaff of emotion from the wheat of facts.

Otherwise, we risk becoming self-righteous crusaders, dead certain we are right.

Okay, I still blog. I still give my opinions, and do it passionately at times (and probably employing a degree of dumbth that my emotions saddle me with). But I know it's there. Would that others recognized the same of themselves.

Right now this country seems to be coming apart at the seams because we are so polarized. And, in my humble opinion, this is in no small part due to goofola thinking, shoddy argumentation, and excessive emotionalism. It certainly is hard to compromise when almost everything is deemed to be so important a matter that there is no room for reconsideration.

Yet we are all so damned sure we are right!