Over Super Bowl Weekend, I went to a debate convention. The convention was focused primarily on getting teenagers to debate current issues, and I represented the Democratic party. During the conference, I listened to many young democrats speak to rally up the other democrats. At the end of one of the rallies, one teenager said, “we are young, we are strong, and we are right!”

This may not seem like much, but I believe this viewpoint does innumerable damage to our society. Not so much the young and strong part — but the idea that Democrats (or the members of any side, for that matter) are somehow always “‘right,’” I find problematic. 

Not only is this viewpoint unhelpful, but when we look at current events and debates in partisan politics like immigration and taxation, — we see more often than not that each side believes they are unconditionally correct. In the example of immigration, I see two main sides: One that supports generally more open borders, and another that doesn’t. 

In Seattle, we see a lot of the liberal mindset that we need to allow more immigration flow over our Southern border. In liberal news sources that are common in Seattle, we see stories of Central American immigrants who have undergone innumerable hardships on their months-long trek from gang-violence-ridden countries to the U.S. border. While this is a very important viewpoint, and one that is generally underrepresented in our country, we can’t just ignore the fact that illegal immigration does have some ill effect on Americans.

I’d also like to emphasize that I have, and will in the future, oversimplify problems like this. We, all of us, should keep an open mind. We’ve all, at one time or another, been unable to see, understand, or acknowledge a counterpoint in an argument. A lot of the time, it seems to me like we should be able to just stop using cars or stop eating meat for climate change, or end the sale and ownership of firearms to help save American lives.

But at the end of the day, every issue has more sides than my own.