The Grave Mistake Of Confusing Opinion With Judgment

I swear this is not a partisan rant. But, the week's events merit a response. This is what struck me from an incredibly sad display of the worst of America.

Opinions are personal; that's what makes them different from facts. As such, they can be based on almost anything. I might not like you because I saw you push an old lady down, or because I don't like your haircut. I get to have my opinion, and I also have the right to have my opinion be irrational. That's my right, too. Sometimes we own up to those irrational opinions, because they're harmless, like when we decide we don't like a star athlete---until he joins our team. Then we can smile and laugh and dismiss it with, "I changed my opinion, mostly because he scored 30 points last night and hit the winning shot at the buzzer, and oh my God, did you see it?!" Our opinions can be based on whim, and all kinds of things that can't, and shouldn't be assailed.

And then there's the cousin of the opinion, Judgment. Judgment is also personal, but it has to be rational. It has to be fact-based. Judgment is an arm of righteousness and from Biblical sources on down, is exercised with the gravest of responsibility. Judgment is what an opinion would be if it were rational and evidence-based. It doesn't mean there is only one judgment from a particular set of facts. Often the facts are inconclusive, and two people's judgments may differ. But why they differ has to be a function of the parameters of the thing being judged. It's why we seek to eliminate jury biases before a case, and demand our jurors swear to keep an open mind, consider the evidence, and give every party a fair hearing.

This week, our country saw its most powerful swap Judgment for opinion, and woe to us. We saw a Senate hearing that was, at bottom, inhumane. Every person had made up his mind before the hearing, and then heard only (and exactly) what he wanted to hear. No person entered with the humility to accept his opinion might be wrong. Our country's most powerful did the opposite of what our country has enshrined in its Constitution as an inalienable value--it pre-judged individuals based on whether that individual was "one of us." That was wrong. Desperately and horribly and sickeningly wrong. Judgment requires more care, more humility, and more intellectual honesty. Republicans can be sexual predators; party affiliation does not exclude the crime. Democrats can bear false witness; party affiliation does not exclude that crime either. It was incumbent on both sides to acknowledge that before the hearing, and none did, to our country's great discredit and humiliation.

I am reminded of a statement that is about two thousand years old, memorialized in the oral tradition of the Jews, the Talmud, in the tractate Pirkei Avot, or "Ethics of the Fathers." It is written, "Cross examine a witness thoroughly, but be careful with your words, lest something you say lead the witness to testify falsely." So profound is the duty to seek justice (Deuteronomy 16:20: "Justice, only Justice shall you pursue"), that even on cross-examination of an adverse witness, we are to remember our goal is singular--truth. Not shame, not trapping someone in a lie, but truth. Our leaders failed in that aim, and failed us this week. Sadly, the discourse about them adopted their attitude. As Americans, as people, we need to be better.