Science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid — and merits universal acceptance — only if it can be indepen… - Michael Crichton

In the comfort of the library, he had read accounts of past violent acts, murder and slaughter. He had read descriptions of streets slippery with blood, soldiers soaked in red from head to foot, women and children eviscerated despite their piteous pleas. But somehow Chris had always assumed these stories were exaggerated, overstated. Within the university, it was the fashion to interpret documents ironically, to talk about the naïveté of narrative, the context of text, the privileging of power…. Such theoretical posturing turned history into a clever intellectual game. Chris was good at the game, but playing it, he had somehow lost track of a more straightforward reality—that the old texts recounted horrific stories and violent episodes that were all too often true. He had lost track of the fact that he was reading history.

Sometimes women scare the hell out of me.

Characterization lies at the heart of the impulse to polarize every issue — what we might call the Crossfire Syndrome. We are all assumed, these days, to reside at one extreme of the opinion spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro-big government. We are feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world, few of us hold these extreme views. There is instead a spectrum of opinion. The extreme positions of the Crossfire Syndrome require extreme simplification — framing the debate in terms that ignore the real issues.