Michael Demmons has a public plea for intelligent discourse on his blog, concerning “talking points” that some commenters might leave on his blog:

For the most part, people who leave comments at Discount Blogger are smart, respectful people. Most of them argue the point, or agree with it, in a way that furthers the debate. There is a small subsection, however, that I don’t believe contributes much to the debate. Those people I label the “Talking Points People.”

[...] If you have a comment, please make it. But if you disagree with something I’ve said, try to do it with an original argument. Don’t just spout things we’ve all heard a thousand times that don’t add anything to the debate.

I left a reply in his comments section that got me thinking about the nature of talking points themselves:

I will, however, issue you a mild word of caution: sometimes the thoughts that you consider talking points are actually what people in good faith, 100% believe and agree with, and that they usually would call on these talking points because they think these pro forma words better elucidate their views than if they tried to do so themselves.

Sometimes we end up hearing the same things again and again from the same kinds of people and it becomes numbing. However, I’d like to assume good faith on the part of these “talking points parrots” that they actually believe what they are saying. I like to assume good faith that sometimes, despite our disdain regarding the familiarity of their words, their words are actually mentioned in earnest. I say this because my words may very well ring as “talking points” to some other people who might read my blog.

To dismiss my — or someone else’s — words as talking points merely because they start off on the same note, or that because they have been read and heard elsewhere, seems like an unfair dismissal and is a sign more of a refusal to actually pay attention to the intent and substance of a person’s argument than it is a sign of that person’s lack of originality. As it has been said before, great minds think alike.