One of the fallacies of discourse is that there are two sides to every issue. For example, one of Carinda Horton's fans said that "Horton's show respectively portrayed both sides of an issue." This is an indirect quote by the Duluth News Tribune, "Talk show host Horton let go by Duluth station", 2009-05-28. Carinda Horton was a talk show host on KDAL-AM in the Duluth-Superior area.
There are often one side, two sides, three sides, or any number of sides.
There is really only one side to the issue of the earth being round. There may be some that believe the earth is flat, but all the evidence shows that earth is round. Not exactly perfectly round, but sufficiently round to not be flat, square, or egg-shaped.
The two-side fallacy comes from so many people believing in "two-party system". You're either Republican or Democrat. But even that was not always true. In the days when the parties were less rigid than now, many Democrats would agree on a particular issue with the majority of Republicans, and many Republicans would agree with the majority of Democrats on the same issue.
Even when there seem to be two sides to an issue, there are quite frequently really three: for, against, and don't give a damn. How many people in Duluth wish the school board and "Let Duluth Vote" would just shut up about the Duluth School District's Red Plan?
If we had a true democracy, we would have only independent candidates, each being relative unique in their positions and not beholden to any larger group. That probably will never happen, because people with similar views will work together more often than not. Our best arrangement is to have multiple parties with overlapping views. Unfortunately, we won't get this as long as people are concerned about "throwing their vote away" by voting for other than a Democrat or Republican.
The best thing about having more than two views is that we are more open to new ideas. Suppose there had been only two sides to the slavery question: keep all people with any African ancestry as slaves or send all of them back to Africa. The third side is to treat all people with any African ancestry as full citizens. Stay tuned: we're still working on that.
