Why you should criticize your allies

I see it all the time. Someone makes a ridiculous claim about an issue online. People on the same side of the issue are quick to provide praise.


This behavior is not always confined within specific issues. Take a look at politics. An overwhelming majority of Americans, including independents, maintain a blind loyalty to one of the two major parties. They are quick to praise anything that makes their side look good, even when such an argument is absurd.

On the flip side of this, a lot of people are far too quick to criticize anything coming from a group that they oppose. Even if an opposing thought has merit, it's simply brushed aside as inexcusable merely because of where it originated.

Nobody is 100% good, and nobody is 100% bad. We should not judge any individual thought based off of one unrelated area in which we disagree.

It's no secret that I oppose our blatantly anti-educational schooling system. That doesn't mean that I refuse to accept any similarities between me and the teaching profession. In fact, I actually feel that I have a lot in common with teachers, such as a belief in the benefits of an educated society. The big difference is that I see teaching for what it really is, while teachers see what they want to believe.

I am open to praising my enemies if they do right. Seeing the good in otherwise bad people should be viewed as a positive traits. Similarly, there can be problems if you are unwilling to call out your allies when they are clearly wrong. Attaching your name to faulty logic is not an ideal approach to making your case.

Once again, I will bring up politics. I found Barack Obama to be a horrible president thanks to misguided policy and intentional divisiveness. I never bought in to the birther movement. The argument seemed weak from the beginning, but it really wouldn't have mattered if they were right. Obama was clearly a citizen even if he wouldn't have been born in Hawaii thanks to his mother. By most definitions of a natural-born citizen, this would be enough to be eligible​ for the presidency, although this has not been properly resolved.

By dismissing valid points and emphasizing misleading and inaccurate arguments, we prove that we are closed minded while raising doubts about our own credibility. If we really want to persuade others to embrace our beliefs, it's far better to do so with honor. To do that, we need to find some good in our enemies and criticize our allies.