The path to enlightenment is never straight, nor is it well-marked. Nor is there just one path. We all walk our own road to, or away from, understanding.
A few days ago, Joe, a friend of mine, reached out to me to see if he and I could—via this blog and other social media platforms—engage in a public series of discussions and debates about the pressing issues facing the nation and, in a broader sense, the world. It was an intriguing suggestion to say the least.
I am the elder of the pair; he is in his mid-30s, and I am in my late-60s; I was born shortly after the beginning of the Atomic Age and the Cold War; he was born after Vietnam, but before 9/11 and the onset of the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East. The America I grew up in was filled with white-male machismo and women-as-objects; the world Joe entered was moving out of that stone age fog and into a new epoch of myriad equalities (not yet attained, but at least acknowledged).
There were no personal computers in my world until I was in my late 20s; he grew up in a world where microchips were ubiquitous, and social media dialog was becoming the common bond of the global communications community. I witnessed the first American space flights; he will probably see an American on Mars.
I was already a working journalist 50 years ago when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. My generation believed fervently that the Civil Rights movement would take hold and sprout love and brotherhood. Joe’s generation grew up to see an accelerating polarization between conservatives and liberals, and the widening disparities separating black aspirations from white opportunities, and the wealthy one-percent from the middle class and the impoverished. Politically, we are not quite oil and water, but we acknowledge we do have diverging points of view on a variety of issues.
So it was quite thought-provoking when Joe messaged me his idea for starting a public discussion about our perceived differences and our potential commonalities…whatever those might be…and how we might examine our individual frames of reference through reasoned, supported, defended, open-minded dialogue.
Here is part of Joe’s message to me:
“Startlingly, most people seem to have no interest in finding truth or cementing a principle that can be agreed on through debate. Maybe I am too young to remember political discussions of days gone by, but it certainly seems that vitriol and hyperbole are at the forefront now when perhaps there was more compromise or agreement in the past.
I often think about something that was said by President Bush (43) at the memorial service for Dallas police officers who were killed in July 2016. At that service, he said,
‘At times it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates too quickly into dehumanization. Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. This has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.’
That has really stuck with me and is something I warn students about and am dismayed about when I see it on political media of whatever form. I am certain that you and I have a love for America and probably approach some of the issues in different ways and would disagree, but I am curious as to why and how those disagreements take place.
Whenever someone asks me how I came to some conclusion in political affairs, I always tell them I, "zoomed out." By that, I mean that I try to focus less on the intimate details of each situation and find something in philosophy or time-honored tradition that supports what I think is right. Sometimes, that leads to me positions that you might think fit in nicely on the right, but many other times I find myself at odds with older Conservatives who can't understand why I wouldn't care about something like legalizing marijuana or gay marriage. I believe the younger generation of conservative/libertarians probably finds a lot of common ground with people who consider themselves solidly on the left. I am wondering if the reverse can be true too.”
The path to enlightenment is never straight, nor is it well-marked. Nor is there just one path. We all walk our own road to, or away from, understanding. No one would have predicted that I, a once-staunch Goldwater Republican, who worked for Reagan and George H.W. Bush, would vote for Barack Obama; would become a vocal advocate for gun control; and would, last November, take out a bonded license in Fairfax County in order to officiate at the wedding of two women who love each other very much.
Now, in this new, yet-uncharted socio-political era, Joe and I are going to examine some of the foundations of our choices and perceptions and test Joe’s question of just what it means to be left or right, conservative, liberal, libertarian, or independent, and whether there are common bonds that can soften the edges enough to overlap and blend the differences.
We have chosen this blog as our starting point, and as often as we can—we are both involved in other pursuits—we will ask a question or pose an idea and, “zooming out,” use this forum as our debate stage, espousing our philosophies, revealing our positions, opening ourselves up to cross-examination, all in the spirit of better understanding and comity.
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