On lots of topics we can take different sides. It's easy to do this with a specifics: would you rather have a new city park or a new bypass on the highway? And sometimes the topic are divisive, but people still have different opinions.

However, there are some points of view where you have no choice but to pick one side. And I think these undebatable positions are worth considering in themselves. How do we get to the point that we are talking about stuff everyone agrees on?

What are some topics you can't take the opposite side on? Here are a few:

We all want free speech. Right? Be able to say whatever we want to say and not have any laws made against that. Yes, nobody has to listen to our speech. And people can use what we say to make decisions about us. But Congress “shall make no law…” [1] People can say whatever they want.

But of course Congress can pass truth-in-advertising laws so that companies can't blatantly lie about what's in a product. And you can make it illegal to cause a false panic by yelling “fire” in a crowded building. And limits on political campaign activity. And requirements for warning labels for flashing lights that might cause epilepsy. But yeah, we generally all want free speech.

It's hard to even talk about exceptions which is how undebatable this point is.

Everyone is pro lower-taxes, especially for themselves. You can't say, “I think all Americans should pay more taxes!” That's just not something anyone wants to consider.

And me either! But stuff does have cost. So we are going to have something like taxes.

Put away a few too many drinks and then on your drive home you kill a family of four, that's something most all of us feel requires a stronger hand of justice. That's why you don't see people marching in opposition to version of Bentley's Law [2].

Likewise, academic studies show “the public views sex offenders as deserving greater punishment and less treatment or rehabilitation than other criminal offenders” [3].

We have to be able to discuss any position. We have to be able to consider any perspective. As George Elliot wrote in 1871, “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view” [4].

Too much of our modern political discourse isn't actually discourse. It's just people agreeing not to have a debate.

[1] "...abridging the freedom of speech"...

[2] Requires a conviced DUI perpertrator make a monthly support payment to victims. Passed in four states as of 2023.

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6818402/

[4] George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who chose to use a man's name as “she felt women writers were not taken seriously.” Because in the 1870s, it was “undebatable” that women could not make serious contributions to literature.