The Buck Stops Here introduced me to a Stephen Carter column that exemplifies the above aphorism.
Why do so many appear to believe (at least from their actions) that you can sway minds by calling your opponents morons - or worse?
When the Supreme Court sat down half a century ago to hear arguments in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which ultimately did away with formal segregation in the nation's public schools, a legal team led by Marshall represented the plaintiffs. The defendants—the states that wanted to keep the races separate—hired as their lead counsel a man named John W. Davis, perhaps the foremost appellate advocate of his day. Davis, it turned out, was also a Southern gentleman who thought that segregation, all in all, was a good thing.
When I met Marshall many years after Brown, I asked him what he thought of John W. Davis. I expected him, in the fashion of the times, to respond with the sort of vicious and ad hominem assault that I no doubt would have selected. After all, the man was—no point in sugarcoating it—a segregationist. But Marshall surprised me. He said, "John W. Davis? A good man. A great man, who just happened to believe in that segregation."
What makes Thurgood Marshall's approach to moral challenge all the more remarkable is that he often litigated civil-rights and criminal cases at risk to his own life. He received death threats, was confronted with mobs, and sometimes had to change cars in the middle of the night to avoid those who intended, literally, to string him up. Yet none of these threats turned him bitter, or served to sour him on his fellow human being. I once asked him what kept him going through all the decades of fighting racial oppression. He always believed, he answered, that most people want to do the right thing. And "most people" included the segregationists.
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