This is reassuring:
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women.
I’m not being sarcastic. For the last year or so, I’ve been occasionally meditating on the thought that the American Republic’s intellectual foundation is best described as doubt. That is, we operate best when we swallow that natural arrogance that comes from our beliefs about ourselves and our divinities, acknowledge that none of us really are great at governance, or much of anything else, and that our analyses, debates, conclusions, and consequent actions should reflect this simple, yet offensive to so many, truth.
Whether our arrogance comes cloaked in the terribly woven cloth of faith, or a self-confidence earned in one field that does not transfer to another, it is the tack we step on, barefooted, that, unseen, turns our striding thoughts into limping, half-formed monsters.
We really should learn from Judge Hand. The volume of our public discourse would drop precipitously.
