By Sam C. Holliday
October 31, 2013
American Thinker
Most people have never heard of the Hegelian Dialectic, the esoteric concept that currently shapes most policy decisions. Even those who closely follow the debates within the political elite have no idea that they are resolved according to the Hegelian Dialectic. Nor do they know that their own expectations about compromise is rooted in the Hegelian Dialectic, or that it also explains why those who stand firmly on principle are rejected as "extremists." All of these attitudes are outcomes of the Hegelian Dialectic; it also explains the ever-increasing centralization of political power, large government bureaucracies, excessive taxation, and dissatisfaction with government.
For at least 5,000 years there has been no agreement on how best to resolve disputes over who should get what, when, and how. Some favor the adversarial approach that ends in a definitive outcome, but others are willing to agree to disagree while living with diverse opinions. The Hegelian Dialectic is a method of resolving disagreement in which some proposition (thesis) is opposed by another proposition (antithesis) with a resolution by a higher-level proposition (synthesis). This is how most lawyers, politicians, and academics think disagreements should be resolved. It is how those who favor authoritarian regimes think policy should be determined.
