"Don't make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice"

Confusing agreement with solidarity erodes the foundations of a just society. The impulse to defend only those who mirror our beliefs turns justice into a partisan favor rather than a universal duty. A commitment to fairness matters most when applied to people we find difficult, wrong, or even offensive; otherwise, it is merely preference dressed up as principle.

Defending others from injustice does not imply endorsing their ideas. It affirms that human dignity and due process are not contingent on ideological alignment. Rights lose their protective power if they must be earned by conformity. By separating support for rights from support for beliefs, we preserve the distinction between moral accountability and dehumanization, between critique and persecution.

This stance requires maturity: the capacity to hold two truths at once. You can oppose a person’s views while insisting they be treated lawfully and humanely. You can resist harmful rhetoric while rejecting censorship that crushes legitimate dissent. You can challenge actions that cause harm while refusing collective punishment, scapegoating, or vigilante justice. Such clarity guards against the intoxicating ease of tribalism, where enemies deserve anything and allies deserve everything.

There is also a pragmatic wisdom here. The protections you uphold for adversaries are the same protections that will shield you when tides turn. Consistency sustains the credibility of institutions, reduces cycles of retaliation, and cultivates a culture in which disagreements are negotiated rather than annihilated.

Practiced daily, this ethos looks like speaking against unfair treatment even when it benefits your side, demanding due process for those you dislike, resisting dehumanizing language, and separating people’s intrinsic worth from their opinions. It is an ethic of courage: choosing principle over convenience, conscience over applause. By defending others from injustice without requiring agreement, we honor the very idea of a common moral ground, a society where rights are shared, not traded.