It's pieces like this that make me wonder if the future is hopeless. I'm not saying that the people who disagree with me are hopelessly ignorant; what I'm wondering is if the differences between us are irreconcilable.
Liberals passionately believe that the individual mandate is constitutional. Granted, many of them have no convincing reasoning, but many do. Likewise conservatives passionately believe the opposite with a similar breakdown of quality of reasoning. Though I believe I'm right, I think it's impossible that I could convince most of my educated opponents.
Likewise, I think it would be very difficult to convince me.
What's even worse, is when someone (on either side) minimizes the other side's point of view by saying "it's clear" or that they base their reasoning "on a principle as flimsy and manufactured as activity vs. inactivity." When someone says that, they're not being open-minded, and debate is futile.
If we can't have an open and fair debate on issues, what hopes is there for democracy?
Note: The original link looks to be dead and unrecoverable, but the current link is to the Internet Archived version.