The Case for Unity

America has a polarization problem. The vast majority of us want to live in a civil society that supports freedom, economic prosperity and equality under the law. Those goals are self-evident, but in the last decade we’ve gotten so busy tearing each other down that we aren’t operating as a democracy anymore. At the extreme ends of both the left and right in our political discourse, both liberals and conservatives embrace pseudo-fascist tendencies that leave no room for nuance. Pushing it much further could tear the country apart for good.

Democracy doesn’t mean everyone gets along, or that we will ever share a single view point. It’s based on the revolutionary assumption that people can get together, acknowledge problems as they really exist, and come up with solutions that work reasonably well overall. The only way to get your policies to come together in a democracy is by creating as large a tent as possible. You can’t do that by excluding people. Exclusion only leads to becoming less and less influential overall.

This video is my attempt to try to find common ground across the political spectrum. My highest hopes are that this is a platform that most Americans can agree on, but if I am going to be honest, I am more than a little concerned that people on the left and the right will attack me for suggesting that we try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Further reading:

“The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianboff and Jonathan Haidt https://amzn.to/3R1z7tg

A study indicating that most Americans believe we will fall into Civil War in the next few years:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.22277693v1

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#blacklivesmatter #thinblueline #Polarization