Osler's Razor

Yesterday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a wonderful piece by my St. Thomas colleague, Lisa Schiltz. In it, she describes what sports have meant for her son with Down Syndrome:

Like every parent of a high school athlete, I know my son's sports activities are teaching him valuable lessons about teamwork and fitness. But because his disabilities make it hard for him to talk, I can only speculate about what he is thinking when he puts on that slight swagger that seems to come with his new letter jacket. Probably something like what most 17-year-old athletes think as they join the crowd of students wearing that same badge of belonging and accomplishment in the halls of Minnetonka High:

"Boy, am I looking cool today!"

In her Op-Ed, Lisa does something that is both hard and rare: She combines her own experience seamlessly with an argument on a policy debate. It is hard to do that without seeming self-centered or preachy (I have been guilty of both in some of my own writing), while still retaining a lived-out truth.

As with Jeanne Bishop's piece at CNN this past Sunday, though, I found some of the comments really disappointing. There is a mean-spiritedness to our discourse that confounds me. I suspect that the anonymity allowed by the internet has something to do with it; we tend to be more civil when our names and reputations are attached to what we say.

That said, I appreciate all the more the civility of people here on the Razor. It's remarkable that we can discuss hard topics without that edge of mean-spiritedness, and in large part it is that warm engagement that keeps me doing this.