What a wonderful essay and thanks for the tag. There's quite a famous podcast here in the UK in which the presenters proclaim to 'disagree agreeably' and I think the world needs a lot more of that. There's nothing inherently wrong with disagreement or discord, what matters are the underlying fundamentals. Mutual respect, a commitment to the process, and (to some extent) having fun and enjoying seeing inside the mind and character of another human being.
I think you're bang on with the political right and the political left. I've always been against banning books of any sort. I think it's fundamentally misguided, results in the opposite to what the person doing the banning intends and simply increases awareness.
One day I'll write an article about 'faith' - because that is really what underpins both of these things. I think you and I are both lefties, it certainly seems that way. We have an underlying faith that most people, at their core, are pretty good and will do the right thing if we give them the right information. Often that faith can be misguided, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest this isn't the case - but we persist regardless. I think that faith is matched by the faith of those people on the right who would purport that 'goodness' to come from outside of themselves in some capacity. They're quietly religious. I get on well with those people, I don't agree with the externalisation of hope into a higher power, but what do I know? I'm just a Penguin. Maybe I'll be wrong.
What the left and the right have at their extremes is religion. I don't mean that specifically about God etc. I mean their beliefs are codified, they have 'priests' who decide what information is relevant to understand. They don't have faith in the goodness of humanity, they have faith that their message is correct. This is the sort of faith that leads to the crusades and away from the gentle socialism Jesus/humanists put into the world. They develop rituals, intolerance, private language and seek to exclude those who don't belong. At the far end they become militant and hate filled. The left and right have developed political religions clouded in everything psychologically harmful that entails - and whilst I have no problem with faith, in all its forms, religion as a sociological condition really pisses on my cornflakes.
Keep up the good work - we'll no doubt ride into battle together again, or against each other, and both will be enjoyable, because there's nothing better than two intelligent people finding disagreement or common ground through a mutual process of analysis and self-reflection. No other species on the planet can do it, save for you hairless apes and us Penguins. ;o)
