I thought to take an American issue about which we would now say that only a single position can responsibly be held, namely human slavery. I wondered: How was it possible that many Americans -- in many states, the majority -- could find themselves settling down to life in a democratic polity whose public thought was anchored to a bill of rights and yet condone slavery?
I did not want to tax my own polemical resources on that one, and so I went to the Internet and discovered something called "Teacher Created Resources Inc." Collected here are arguments useful to student speakers when assigned a debate topic. I found a page headed "Anti-Slavery Speech," instructing students on how to present the argument against slavery -- and the opposite argument, for slavery. For slavery? Yes.
"Many Southerners and slave owners were in favor of the institution of slavery. The idea that slavery might be abolished was very frightening to the Southerners. Write a speech that is persuasive in justifying slavery.
"... Use background information from the perspective of a master who owns slaves.
"... State the advantages of slavery to the economy of the South. List the conditions that slaves live under on your plantation. Describe your religion and (explain) that, according to it, slaves are in their appropriate place in society.
"... Discuss the benefits that the slaves and the white Southern economy will experience because of slavery."
We have to imagine that there were public men in the age we speak of who, giving thought to slavery, walked into an epiphany of the kind Gov. Romney claims to have walked into in the matter of abortion. Early utterances by Abraham Lincoln were ambiguous in the matter of slavery, and, of course, the principal draftsman of the Bill of Rights was a slave owner.
Isn't it an obligation of some kind, in a society that yields to public discourse for judgments on the law, to permit a contender for high office to change his mind on basic issues without incurring the charge of hypocrite or opportunist?