It is not an act of loyalty to quash conversations about our own party's role in getting to where we are today.

[Ilikepurple]

201. I think we all have perspectives and ideas that have value, even if only to further a productive dialectic

I don’t quite have the naive trust in the marketplace of ideas that I had when I was younger, but I still hold strong to the idea that we must often rely on the product of the engagement of diverse viewpoints. I think the Democratic Party is stronger when its factions engage each other through the exchange of viewpoints, ideas, and argumentation. I feel less so when this exchange mainly consists of rhetoric that is strategically or lazily used to replace reason or evidence. Professionally, I can’t imagine conducting a meeting or anything strategical without giving some credence to the various strategies or opinions about the topics to be discussed. Sometimes this devolves into arguing distracting minutiae or members advocating their strategy at the expense of a fair discussion of others’. I prefer a collaborative rather than adversarial approach to most problem solving. I wish I had the intuition to recognize all my mistaken ideas, but for this I’ve had to depend on both the passage of time and the input of others. Most of my comments here at DU are made in hopes that I can help keep space open for the various views on the particular actions and strategies of our representatives. My thought is that there must be reasons behind these various views and it is the reasons not the views that are constructive to forming my personal views.