I am aware that Tony Blankley worked for Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, but for me, Tony Blankley was the conservative voice on KCRW’s political show “Left, Right, and Center.” I discovered the show in the late 90s and have listened religiously for the last several years. After he died recently, they did a show in his memory and I was surprised at how emotional I became. I tended to agree more with the liberal and center voices on the show, but in retrospect, I really appreciate how Blankley approached their ongoing conversation. It wasn’t just that he was extremely intelligent and likeable. It was that he engaged the liberal and centrist positions with seriousness and respect, every week for years and years.

It’s a rare opportunity to get to listen in on that kind of conversation. It’s easy to find professional idealogs (and amateurs too, of course) mocking their enemies from a safe distance. On all sides it’s a straw-man game: shoot down a caricature of your opponent. I hope I am not an idealog, but I find myself doing the same thing. Listening to Blankley over the years has helped. In most cases, I can now see conservative positions not as differences in accuracy or integrity, but differences in values. He just had some different ideas about what was important than I do. And that is OK. We each get to say what is important to us.

A good lesson to learn. Thank you, Tony Blankley.

The cast of Left, Right & Center: Matt Miller, Arianna Huffington, Tony Blankley, Robert Scheer (photo by Marc Goldstein)