Cover Story

An editorialist must seek the truth

Date published: 1/31/2006

By STEPHEN DAUSE

YOUTH CORRESPONDENT

To be an editorialist and think you have something worth saying, you have to assume at least three things.

The first is that the world isn't perfect. To we humans, who have a natural tendency to complain, this is an easy assumption.

The second is that the world can be changed for the better on a mass level, that at least some of its imperfections are wide-reaching and can be fixed by public policy.

This also seems to be obvious. Of course, part of the debate is exactly how much one can change for the better by using things like government or publicly financed organizations, and on what level things can best be changed.

The third is that you, the editorialist, know something about how things can be changed for the better. This is the hardest assumption to make.

On television shows and in courtrooms, experts come in barrels.

What's funny is how much these experts disagree with one another. If they all know a lot about the same topic, should these scholarly men or women not come to the same conclusion? If not, why not?

The answer is the paradox of debate classes everywhere. Each issue has evidence to support multiple sides, and almost everything can be cut multiple ways.

Sifting through the nuance, the spin and the flat-out false statements is where the editorialist should come in.

Political commentators often have experience in their field--working in D.C. or a state capital is virtually a requirement--but they are not always professors of the specific issue they are discussing, either.

There are thousands of books on hundreds of topics. Yet that doesn't mean one must have read them all (or even a small fraction) to have a thought worth a second glance.

The main thing is to use your head. Be skeptical, but be a skeptic with a mission: to find this little thing that someone once thought of called "truth."

If your purpose is not to find it, and instead is to rant or rave about one random topic or the next, then what you have to say may not really be worth saying after all.

STEPHEN DAUSE is a senior at Colonial Forge High School.

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Date published: 1/31/2006