Grant me smart adversaries rather than dumb ones….

“Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers. We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom: their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength.”

I found the following quote from an article eulogizing Milton Friedman to be really thought-provoking. Originally written by John Stuart Mill, a 19th century philosopher and economist, it was used in the Salon article to point out how even left-of-center economists owed Milton Friedman a debt of gratitude. However, it’s interesting to see how applicable his observation/prayer is to many other people and situations. In terms of preferring enlightened adversaries to weak ones, I can certainly think of all sorts of places where that is true, from George W. Bush and the neo-conservatives, to people like Stuart and Tim at or Mike at .

I suppose that shouldn’t be too surprising; very few people are actively malicious. A few act out of pure selfishness, to be sure, but most do the bad things they do out of sheer cluelessness or incompetence. A good thing to keep in mind.