SO I LOOK 'EM IN THE EYE AND SEZ TO THEM,,,

In the award-winning movie TWELVE ANGRY MEN we're squeezed into a rancorous jury room which -- according to our western judicial system -- is an example of how free societies reach responsible decisions. Head-butting, idea-blazing confrontations are a messy but productive process.

Which makes you ask: What exactly are these ideas with which we are always butting heads?

Our Founding Fathers didn't try to define them, simply say they were our "unalienable right." Buddha probed deeper: "All we are is the result of what we have thought." Centuries later Descartes wrote: "Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am." Pascal nuanced: "The heart has its own reason that reason knows nothing of." In our age Einstein added: "The process of scientific discovery is in effect a continuing flight from wonder."

Scramble these comments and it would seem that as citizens of a free society, it is our unalienable right to think what we will, but our thinking will probably always be a tug between our rational need to find exact answers side by side with our emotional need to remain in a state of awe and wonder.

To put all this another way -- for exactitude we have our computers! for everything else we have us!

Right now the "us" spend the majority of our time at work, play and sleep. Whatever's left over is spent in arguing (AKA, public discourse). In Washington, in bars, in restaurants, in classrooms, at family dinners, and most of all in radio & cablecast shout sessions. It's not twelve angry men; it's 300 million angry men, women and that third gender known as pundits.

Were our Founding Fathers to return, one wonders what would be their reaction to their creation? Chances are the same as would be other great minds returning to behold the consequences of their creations. Buddha, Moses, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohamed, Luther, Locke, and how about Bill Gates. It might go something like this: "How did you all get everything I said so wrong...?"

Our tale ends with this. Recently jury decisions that get it wrong can be over-turned by an impeccable new test. DNA. If only there were such a test for what we get wrong in our daily head-butting, idea-blazing confrontations. Oh but wait, there is...!

That last whispered report, gossip, gaffe or soundbite we heard. Yes, our unalienable right to be wrong. It usually goes something like this: "I just heard from someone who knows these things...."