“We need to approach conversations in a spirit of humility and life-long learning and a devotion to a distinction between our political views and our constitutional views.”
- Jeffrey Rosen, Address to the Chautauqua Institution, July 27, 2017
I feel like a complete, unmitigated, phony.
After two decades of teaching civics to high school and college students, I am officially, undeniably, in despair. How can I deliver my well-rehearsed, beginning-of-the-year civic oration about the importance of watching the news, staying informed, and “getting involved” when I, myself, no longer feel compelled to watch the news, check my Twitter feed, or turn on the radio?
It’s certainly not that North Korea’s bellicosity is inconsequential, President Trump’s unconventional style is a bore, or that I am weary about the power of my students to “put a dent” in the world around them. The world continues to be richly titillating and fascinating, ever-evolving and surprising, worthy of our constant attention, learned commentary, and passionate engagement.
So why the despair?
The tone, tenor, and pitch of our civic discourse has devolved into a monotonous carousal of shrill invective and tired outrage, a never-ending news cycle that feeds itself on a vapid and corrosive tribalism in which there is no hope of ever reaching consensus or compromise. American politics has morphed into a tragi-comedy in which the proliferation of impersonal social media platforms amplifies voices of outrageous indignance or ad hominem attacks. Virtual town squares result in an endless stream of digital cut and thrust where the aim is not mutual understanding or meaningful accords of recognition but complete annihilation of those we disagree with.
But here’s what’s most upsetting to many of us teachers: our children are watching how we handle controversy. They are listening to the words we use when describing our fellow citizens with whom we disagree. And while I passionately want my students to be aware of the world around them, what I do not want is for them to learn the wrong lessons of a de-humanizing civic engagement.
It was not always so. Daniel Webster, perhaps the greatest American senator in the history of our republic, was deeply steeped in the words of The Bible, Milton, and Shakespeare. Like his hero of the Roman Republic, Cicero, Webster believed that the words we choose matter for the people and country we want to be. Leadership isn’t akin to bombast. Idealism isn’t analogous to dogmatism. To rouse what Lincoln later described as “the better angels of our nature,” Webster possessed a fundamental but soaring faith that his enemies were neither evil nor un-American.
They were merely wrong.
Why can’t we do this today?
Why do we ascribe the worst possible motivations to those with whom we disagree? Why must supporters of Obamacare be “takers” or “socialists” and citizens who object to violently removing confederate statues be motivated by the most pernicious of racial motivations? Why must Trump supporters be “deplorable” and coastal progressives “urban elites?”
A fundamental and animating value of western liberal democracy is a stentorian commitment to robust speech, a vigorous and unending national conversation in which we try our best to find common ground in our fellow citizens. How this speech is exchanged and the tone in which this conversation is conducted affects the types of people who are attracted to public life. Our political institutions will never attract the best and most vibrant voices of our society—people with a “continental reputation” as Hamilton described it—if we continue to cloak our disagreements in language that seeks to broadly insult huge swathes of the electorate or individually demean those who offer an unpopular opinion.
Webster understood that to engage in high minded debate and charitable disagreement is inviting, not alienating. It fuels optimism, encourages patriotic esprit, and convinces fellow Americans that there is a fundamental and important nobility in politics. After all, cynics don’t move mountains. Skeptics don’t inspire the body politic to ameliorate its political sensibilities.
However, the political arena of today is neither ennobling nor inviting for young Americans. It magnifies the base sentiments of online trolls and digital charlatans while ignoring the quiet but very real eloquence of young people who merely want to contribute to their country. The lesson we must teach our young people is that it is both noble and necessary to listen to the voices that annoy, frustrate, and confound us. Self-imposed cocoons of homogeneous thinking are not just antithetical to the demands of citizenship in a pluralist society, but they make it less likely we will ever challenge the orthodoxy of the age or push ourselves to consider perspectives that might result in progress.
For those who believe that political wounds can never be healed consider the friendship of the two pillars of the American Revolution, the North of the Revolution (John Adams) and the South (Thomas Jefferson). Most considered the friendship irreparably damaged after John Adams broke protocol by leaving the nation’s capital at dawn on the morning of Jefferson’s inauguration.
Years later a mutual friend, Benjamin Rush, urged Adams is rekindle the friendship. The result is a series of extraordinary letters in which both men “explain themselves” to one another and to posterity. They were generous, forgiving, and most of all, magnanimous for the sake of the country.
Like Adams and Jefferson we must learn to talk. Really, really talk to one another. And if we simply cannot understand why someone would think what they think, the answer is not to walk away, belittle, or insult. Keep talking. You might not ever agree. But most of the time you will come to accept that there are valid reasons for someone else’s opinions and that, yes, there is a very real human being behind them.
John Adams’s final words on July 4, 1826 were purported to have been, “Jefferson still lives.”
I believe that America still lives. But it doesn’t thrive or flourish.
Now. Lets talk about it . . .