Principled middle ground is bedrock of healthy democracy

In 2007 I was a Navy commander and a graduate student at National Defense University. About half the yearlong program involved an industry seminar study. Along with 14 other military officers, I was assigned to the U.S. health care industry. On the seminar's first day, the professor (a retired Army colonel) gave a simple survey: What is the best health care system for the United States - an entirely private insurance system, a hybrid of a public (single-payer) system with private insurance also available to supplement coverage, or an entirely public system? All 15 officers chose the private insurance system. We all felt individual freedom and choice to be the paramount consideration.

Five months later we answered the survey question again and all 15 chose the hybrid system. What happened in those five months? The first thing that happened is we realized we didn't know much about health care as a system or industry. We didn't even possess enough knowledge to be dangerous.

During the ensuing intensive study of the system, we read deeply on the subject, interviewed dozens of experts from all sectors (the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Big Pharma executives, hospital CEOs, private insurance executives, etc.), and traveled widely in the United States and internationally. Most of the officers could be described as conservative on economic and public policy matters. Their instinct was to dislike government-funded options. They changed their minds on health care because they were willing (or expected, as professionals) to keep an open mind and listen.

My point here is not to make a case for a single-payer health care system, but to make the case for being open to changing one's mind on strongly held political and social views.

As Adm. Hyman Rickover once said, "Only a fool never changes his mind." One need not look far into their social media feeds, or just about anywhere else, to find otherwise well-educated folks intransigently convinced they are right about this or that issue. Considerate, thoughtful debate seems as rare as ever. A paradox indeed in an age when reliable information is as easy to access as ever.

Ideological certainty is hardly a new phenomenon. Albert Camus, in his 1951 book, "The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt," observed that ideological certainty and fundamentalist systems of thought that do not recognize limits breed fanaticism and, ultimately, violence. Camus rejected absolutes in favor of moderation.

This is hardly an abstract problem with which to be unconcerned. Recently, authors Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro, in their book, "Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us," argue that this problem is worsening in the United States with real consequences for the republic.

They write that "the essence of fundamentalism is to deny the existence of a principled middle ground." Fundamentalist thinking includes "certainty in the correctness of one's position, belief in the perspicuity of truth, and adherence to a foundational text considered inerrant." Such a text could be religious or secular and held to be "inerrant" by the left or right. Morson and Schapiro do not pick sides. They argue against the picking of sides, at least reflexively and without any serious critical thought.

Compromise and a principled middle ground are bedrocks of a healthy democracy.

There has and always will be inflexible, fundamentalist thinking in a free society. But when it metastasizes to a point that the middle is too small and weak to hold, when too many citizens view those of a different political persuasion not as equal citizens with different views, but as irredeemable enemies, civil society crosses a threshold to dangerous territory. How close are we to that?

Morson and Schapiro do not believe we are quite at the precipice, but close enough to see it.

Bill Bray is a retired Navy captain. He is the deputy editor-in-chief of the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine.