In Trust We Trust
Crimson | Lucas T. Gazianis ’24
In the wake of the Dobbs decision and a Crimson editorial decrying its logic, legal interpretation and morality, Gazianis warns, “There is virtue in humility and in seeking to understand other people’s motives.”
Regarding the Crimson’s editorial, “it made only casual use of technical terms like ‘fundamental right’ at the heart of long-running doctrinal debates to draw sweeping legal conclusions that its reasoning could not support. This needlessly obscured the powerful moral argument at the heart of the piece…Instead of truly interrogating why originalists think the way they do, we have reduced a complex legal ideology, worthy of our scrutiny and critique, to ‘gaseous misogyny.’”
Why does this matter? “Quality discourse requires believing that the other has something of value to say…My fear…is that mistrust has led us to lose sight of powerful, politically neutral principles essential to living together constructively.”
Gazianis then makes a suggestion: “I believe that recommitting to the following two maxims would go a long way towards healing our culture: One, embodying intellectual humility does not require one to believe that they are wrong, and two, charitably interpreting the motives of those with whom one disagrees does not require compromising one’s deeply held beliefs… Both of these principles require us to affirmatively choose trust. That won’t be easy. But I believe adopting them is the only way for us to exit this vicious cycle of ideological polarization… Our fracturing political system depends on it.”
