Beware of one-sided presentations

So a bubbly, fresh-faced, college-age woman came to my door recently with a sales pitch, a clipboard, and a petition. She introduced herself as “something of a revolutionary.”

At least once a year, a rep from her organization pays me a call, and I let them all in, and they tell me how nice my living room is and how important clean water is. And since I am principally in favor of clean water, I find no way out of it and write the volunteer a check, and she goes away and my conscience is clear. But not really.

The slight malaise in the gut derives from the belated common-sense realization that I cannot possibly have vetted all the relevant facts in a 15-minute canned lecture from an ambassador of an impassioned political cause. The Bible gives good advice when it says:

“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17).

All I had ever heard for years in my living room was “the one who states his case first.” There was never an “other” who “comes and examines him.”

Many who promote political causes count on this fact of life to win supporters. They count on the low-information citizen. Who can object to clean water? (PennEnvironment.) Who can object to caring for women’s health? (Planned Parenthood’s stated mission.) Who can object to caring for senior citizens? (AARP.) Who can be against helping African-Americans get a fair deal? (NAACP.) Who can be against justice? (ACLU.)

Then I got married. So this time when the bubbly, fresh-faced, college-age rep came to the door I said, “Let me call my husband down to discuss it with us.” So he came downstairs, and it was suddenly a whole other conversation than usual. Turns out that there is a lot more to know about that political organization besides its love for clean water. Turns out it is a big proponent of all initiatives climate change–related. I Googled the organization later, and in two clicks was linked to an article on its website mocking the Christianity of a certain senator who said that exposing climate change fraud was “the Lord’s work.”

My husband explained to the young lady that he is all for clean water (and for the health of bees, which is their new cause) but that there are often unforeseen and unintended consequences to the enactment of policies that seem like a good idea at first, and that there is a need for balance. He offered the example of the insecticide DDT, whose ban from the U.S. market in 1972 supposedly brought back the bald eagle but also unfortunately allowed mosquitos a comeback in Africa, with the resulting resurgence of malaria. Sometimes the eagle’s win is the human’s loss.

When the young lady went on her way, my husband looked none too pleased that I had quietly slipped out of the room at some point to make dinner, leaving him to be the bad guy. I asked him if he had donated to the cause. He told me that he did not. And as he walked upstairs, he said over his shoulder, as if I should have known it, “I never go with a one-sided presentation.”