Jonah Goldberg: Inability to make distinctions has led to toxic discourse
Nothing is more vital to serious thinking than the ability to make distinctions between superficially similar things. The gas pedal and the brake pedal look awfully similar, but if you can’t distinguish between them, good luck getting out of the driveway safely.
Distinctions don’t just matter among similar-but-different things. They’re just as crucial when discussing degrees of a single thing. I think there’s more wisdom contained in the phrase (usually attributed to the Swiss philosopher-scientist Paracelsus) “The
