Ideological purism leads to reflexive thinking (if you can call it thinking). It's not whether you like something or agree with something, it's whether you should, and each new choice and new experience sends you racing for the handbook. Ideological maturity, on the other hand, requires an open mind and admits the possibility that you still may have something to learn. A mind that can under no circumstances be changed isn't much of a mind at all.

I treasure writers like Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens precisely because I so often disagree with them. They are practitioners of political heterodoxy, and it's readily apparent that the positions they take are based upon personally-held values that are the result of years of intellectual soul-searching rather than adherence to a party line. They may be wrong on occasion—sometimes wildly—but they're writers from whom the discerning reader might hope to actually learn something. That's more than can be said for most of the ink-spillers out there.

Ideological purism provides a kind of closed-minded comfort. It encourages engagement only with like-minded partisans and it disdains not only those diametrically opposed, but potential allies who fail to pass the purity test as well. It is, simply put, a way to be politically engaged without all the bother of thinking. Ideological heterodoxy, on the other hand, requires intellectual courage and invites attack from the groupthinkers poised on either horizon. It's also the only way to go to sleep at night burdened only by a shame that is yours and yours alone.

Now I think I'm going to go listen to that one Kelly Clarkson song I like. Yeah? Screw you, too!