"People who are the most deeply committed to an idea or policy are the most critical of it."

　　The speaker claims that people who are the most firmly committed to an idea or policy are the same people who are most critical of that idea or policy. While I find this claim paradoxical on its face, the paradox is explainable, and the explanation is well supported empirically. Nevertheless, the claim is an unfair generalization in that it fails to account for other empirical evidence serving to discredit it.

　　A threshold problem with the speaker&aposs claim is that its internal logic is questionable. At first impression it would seem that firm commitment to an idea or policy necessarily requires the utmost confidence in it, and yet one cannot have a great deal of confidence in an idea or policy if one recognizes its flaws, drawbacks, or other problems. Thus commitment and criticism would seem to be mutually exclusive. But are they? One possible explanation for the paradox is that individuals most firmly committed to an idea or policy are often the same people who are most knowledgeable on the subject, and therore are in the best position to understand and appreciate the problems with the idea or policy.

　　Lending credence to this explanation for the paradoxical nature of the speaker&aposs claim are the many historical cases of uneasy marriages between commitment to and criticism of the same idea or policy. For example, Edward Teller, the so-called "father of the atom bomb," was firmly committed to America&aposs policy of gaining military superiority over the Japanese and the Germans; yet at the same time he attempted fervently to dissuade the U.S. military from employing his technology for destruction, while becoming the most visible advocate for various peacul and productive applications of atomic energy. Another example is George Washington, who was quoted as saying that all the world&aposs denizens "should abhor war wherever they may find it." Yet this was the same military general who played a key role in the Revolutionary War between Britain and the States. A third example was Einstein, who while committed to the mathematical soundness of his theories about relativity could not reconcile them with the equally compelling quantum theory which emerged later in Einstein&aposs life. In fact, Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life criticizing his own theories and struggling to determine how to reconcile them with newer theories.

　　In the face of historical examples supporting the speaker&aposs claim are innumerable influential individuals who were zealously committed to certain ideas and policies but who were not critical of them, at least not outwardly. Could anyone honestly claim, for instance, that Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who in the late 19th Century paved the way for the women&aposs rights movement by way of their fervent advocacy, were at the same time highly critical or suspicious of the notion that women deserve equal rights under the law? Also, would it not be absurd to claim that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, history&aposs two leading advocates of civil disobedience as a means to social rorm, had serious doubts about the ideals to which they were so demonstrably committed? Finally, consider the two ideologues and revolutionaries Lenin and Mussolini. Is it even plausible that their demonstrated commitment to their own Communist and Fascist policies, respectively, belied some deep personal suspicion about the merits of these policies? To my knowledge no private writing of any of these historical figures lends any support to the claim that these leaders were particularly critical of their own ideas or policies.

　　To sum up, while at first glance a deep commitment to and incisive criticism of the same idea or policy would seem mutually exclusive, it appears they are not. Thus the speaker&aposs claim has some merit. Nevertheless, for every historical case supporting the speaker&aposs claim are many others serving to rute it. In the final analysis, then, the correctness of the speaker&aposs assertion must be determined on a case-by-case basis.

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