… you can’t articulate why you believe what you believe.

Everyone who has an informed opinion has reasons for having it. You should be able to list those reasons. If you can’t think of a reason why you believe what you believe, you probably don’t have a rational reason. The person who convinced you to agree with them might. You might feel that you’re right. But without a rational basis for an opinion, all a person can do is spun the roulette wheel and latch on to whatever idea happens to come up a the time. Ask yourself any question whatsoever. You should have at least one reason for it. If you don’t, you’re wrong.

… there are no facts which contradict your position.

There are two sides to every issue. If you don’t understand the talking points used by the other side, you don’t understand the issue. Even something as straight forward and one-sided as “killing is wrong” has another side to it. When you start talking about self-defense, law enforcement, and just war, even the darkest and most obvious of issues has a reasonable and rational counterpoint. If you don’t know what you’re arguing against, you don’t really know what you’re arguing for.

… you can’t explain why your opponent is wrong.

Since everyone with a well-reasoned opinion has reasons for believing what they do and since only one person can win a debate, then obviously if you’re right then the reasons of the the other person have to be wrong. If you both have reasons why you think you’re right, then you should be able to explain what’s wrong with your opponent’s reasoning. You have to be able to point out what’s wrong with his data, what the flaws are in his methodology, why his arguments are misguided, and why he’s placed a higher importance than he should on some things and overlooked others. If you can’t do that, you have to acknowledge that your opponent may actually be right.

… you’re not arguing against an idea, you’re arguing against a person.

Things start to take a nosedive in civil discussion when people stop arguing against an idea because it’s a bad idea and start arguing a person because they’re stupid and obviously don’t understand you. Regardless of the mental state of the person you’re arguing against, you should always be right because of the merits of your argument, not because you’re “better” than they are. Everyone makes mistakes. Even stupid people have good ideas. Even if you can’t convince them to change their mind (and 99.9% of the time, they won’t), you should be able to agree to disagree with those you’re arguing against and, when it’s all said and done with, still respect one another. When you make it personal, you lose your way. When you reject everything a person says because it’s them talking, you open yourself up to arguments against good ideas for no reason other than who the idea came from.

… you get angry every time you talk about it.

Anger is an emotional response. Emotions aren’t rational, well considered things. When you get angry every time you think of something, that anger is almost always your motivation for objecting too it. There is a reason why anger, pity, and patriotism are common facets of propaganda: they have no substance and require the reader to know nothing of what they’re talking about. They don’t require you to think and come to a well reasoned opinion. All you have to do is feel right, and when you feel right, you are right. Or, at least, you think you are.

… your solution involves the phrase, “If we could just [blank] all our problems would go away.”

If it were really that simple, it would have been done by now. The solution is never that easy. In real life there are no magic wands. There is no pixie dust. We can’t just wish away our problems. Believe me, I wish we could, but it just doesn’t work like that. When you live in a fairytale world where, “if only we could all be less greedy” or “if only we could all just get along” or “if only we could put all the criminals in jail” your solution isn’t so much a solution as it is wishful thinking. If we could just stop having sex, teen pregnancy wouldn’t be a problem – but do you actually know anyone who’d do that? If we could just come up with a vaccine for all disease, we’d all live forever – great, someone will get right on that, I’m sure. If we could just create an independent Palestine, there’d be no more suicide bombings in Israel – how’s that working out for us? If your solution involves anything like, “if we could just [blank]” and especially if your solution includes the phrase, “if we could just get rid of all the [blanks],” you’re wrong.

… anyone who disagrees with you is “one of them.”

I love hearing people throw around words like “liberal” and “neo-con” in a debate. When you have to label someone as one of them and begin dismissing their points because of who they are instead of what they are arguing for, you’re falling into the same old trap. Lumping someone in with one group or other and assuming they’re all the same does a number of things that all completely destroy your perspective on an issue. First of all, no group, no matter how tightly knit, is ever completely homogeneous. Just because members of the group you’ve lumped them in with believe something or have a given motivation or come from a certain background doesn’t mean they all do. Secondly, hating a group of people is wrong, no matter how you look at it. Thirdly, just as when you dismiss a person’s arguments and they eventually come up with a decent idea, groups you hate tend to eventually slip up and do the same. You can’t just dismiss “one of them” for being “one of them.” You have to logically look at what they’re saying and take each issue point by point – otherwise, sooner or later, you’re going to be wrong.

… those who publicly agree with you are either “misunderstood” or “persecuted.”

If you’re constantly wrong, I have no doubt that the people who always agree with you are mocked, ignored, or even held in great contempt by everyone else. Want to know why? It’s not because they’re misunderstood, it’s because they’re always wrong – and not only that, but they’re always loudly proclaiming that they know better. They’re special. They’re the only ones who see the world for what it really is. Everyone else shuns them because they’re afraid of the truth. Either that, or they’re shunned because they’re loudmouthed morons. Take your pick.

… there’s a conspiracy to suppress your point of view.

I’ve listened to music that’s never been on the radio. I’ve watched movies that have never been in theaters. I’ve read badly xeroxed pamphlets. I’ve got copies of all sorts of nutbaggery laying around my apartment. I’ve never even heard of a website being suppressed or the FBI shutting down a blog. Listen kiddos, there’s no conspiracy here. If your message was worth listening to, people would listen to it. Your message isn’t getting out because no one cares enough to listen. It’s not getting out because you’re wrong. If you had a brilliant revelation on the nature and direction of humanity, it would go viral in 7 seconds flat. You don’t. It won’t. The government, or Skull and Bones, or the G20, or the IMF, or the Illuminati, or the banks, or Count Dracula doesn’t need a vast conspiracy to keep your message from getting out. It’s self-contained. No one’s listening because you’re just wrong.

… the idea won’t work because it doesn’t solve every single problem.

Perfection is the enemy of progress. If you have a whole series of problems, or one really big problem, and the solution proposed turns it into one mediocre problem, take the solution. No, it’s not perfect. Yes, there are problems with it. But it’s better. Cleaning a room makes it messier at first while you reorganize, and sooner or later you’ll just have to clean it again. You don’t put off cleaning because it’s not going to solve your problem instantly and perfectly. Building a bridge is going to cause traffic problems while construction goes on. You don’t ignore a looming bottleneck in your traffic grid because solving the problem is going to temporarily inconvenience people. Solutions are rarely so simple and elegant as to have no downside. There’s always going to to problems that go unanswered, unintended consequences, and side effects. Looking for a perfect solution to all the world’s problems is a fool’s errand. You’re not looking for the perfect solution. You’re looking for ideas to make the world better. If you refuse to make things better because it doesn’t make things perfect, you’re wrong.