The convictions that count are the ones that sometimes sting

Boston Globe

14 hours ago

I bring up Goldberg's essay not only to recommend it but also because I was struck by the question with which he introduced it: 'What principle do you hold,' he challenged his readers, 'that is against your self-interest or political desires?'
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
Enter Email
Sign Up
It's a cogent and revealing test. It obliges anyone who answers the question to think about whether they embrace their convictions as a matter of principle or merely because they're convenient. Anyone can defend the freedoms or prohibitions that serve their own purposes. The truer test of ideological and moral seriousness is whether you adhere to your principles even when doing so cuts against your interests, tastes, or partisan loyalties.
Advertisement
This isn't an ivory-tower abstraction. American history is rich with examples of people who upheld principle at real personal cost. John Adams, though a patriot who hated British rule, risked his career to defend the redcoats accused in the Boston Massacre, convinced that even despised defendants deserved counsel and a fair trial. Justice John Marshall Harlan, raised in a Kentucky family of enslavers, broke with his social milieu to insist in his lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that 'our Constitution is color-blind.' And in 1960, Richard Nixon, urged by allies to contest an election marred by serious irregularities, refused to plunge the nation into turmoil, saying the country's stability mattered more than his own ambition.
I have tried to meet that test in my own writing — with what success, I leave others to judge. For instance, I defend the right even of Holocaust-deniers to spread
Advertisement
I have sometimes put a version of Goldberg's question to candidates in a primary election:
Can you name a position you take that is clearly opposed by most of your party's base?
Rarely have I gotten a substantive answer. Most politicians duck the question, unwilling to announce that they uphold an unpopular position on principle — even though doing so would be pretty strong evidence that their convictions were genuine.
What makes this problem worse is the increasingly common belief that only those who agree with us are legitimate participants in American life. Too many on the right write off their opponents as anti-American, while too many on the left see theirs as irredeemably bigoted or authoritarian. If you begin from the premise that dissenters are not merely wrong but illegitimate, then there is no reason to extend to them the rights or freedoms you claim for yourself.
But that mind-set drains principle of all meaning. Defending free speech only for your allies is like championing religious liberty only for your own faith: That's not upholding a principle — it's wielding a partisan cudgel, something that has become endemic in contemporary American life. So much of what bedevils our civic discourse these days, Goldberg writes, begins with 'the premise that America is defined by our politics and, therefore, the people with the wrong politics are not Americans.'
Which is why Goldberg's challenge ought to be posed more often. A principle that only applies when it's easy isn't much of a principle at all. So, readers, I'll put the same question to you:
What principle do you hold that runs against your own interest or desire?
Please give it some thought and share your reflections. In a future column, I'll share some of the more intriguing and noteworthy responses.
Advertisement
Jeff Jacoby can be reached at