The Value of Differing Opinions - A Way Back from the Breach

Our democracy and the right of free speech is based on the value the founding fathers placed on differing opinions.  It is by the airing of differing opinions that people are either  persuaded or not, or a compromise is found which while not giving either side everything it wanted provides a way for each side to feel good about the outcome.  But ultimately, of course, the majority rules, which means that there will in most political matters be a large percentage of people and their elected representatives who are not happy with the result.  Such is life in a democracy.

For such a system to work, for our democracy and representative government to function, it is of critical importance that even though people and their representatives may disagree with others as to a whole raft of issues, that, as lawyers say, “people agree to disagree,” that they understand that “reasonable minds may differ.”  Which is to say that each side respects that the other side came to its opinions honestly and with reason ... they just don’t agree.

When, however, people become so convinced of the rightness of their opinions that they become self-righteous and ideological in their approach to issues ... that is they feel that they are not just right and the other side wrong but that the other side is somehow evil or harmful ... then there can be no compromise, there can be no reasoned discussion, there can be no art of persuasion and the process of our democratic government breaks down.  And that is the state in which we have found ourselves these past few years.

How have we come to this point?  Why has a system that has operated for more than 200 years, with the exception of the Civil War, with widely divergent points of view and often hot tempers reached the current impasse?  Really, what we are seeing now in the posture of the two opposing sides is most akin to that which our country experienced over the issue of slavery and to a certain extent the civil rights movement.  And that’s disturbing.

On the issue of slavery and civil rights, those in the south felt that their whole way of life, their whole world would cease to be if African-Americans were given their freedom and the same rights as white people.  And they were right.  Their world did change.  But life went on, and white southerners changed too; they adapted to the new reality.  And they found once they got over themselves that much about their world did not change.

The same kind of reality check is needed in the current situation in order to progress from the current Congressional gridlock.  Both sides ... which is to say the liberal left and the far right ... need to understand that life will go on, that the country will prosper, that they and their constituents will be ok, even if their view of government does not totally win the day.  This is surely an instance where there is merit on both sides.  

For example, as staunchly liberal as I am, I get livid when I get emails and petitions, or read articles, in which liberal groups refuse to give an inch on entitlement (Social Security and Medicare) spending.  I’m sorry, but the nation’s debt and deficit are real problems and we just do not have sufficient revenue to continue past policies unaltered as our age demographics change.  

There are ways to cut spending without harming those who are truly dependent on these benefits, and that’s what Democrats must make sure of.  As for the starting age of Medicare, that used to be of critical importance because of the cost of medical insurance.  Now with the new Health Care Law, insurance available through the insurance exchanges for those of limited means will probably not be much more than what one currently pays out of Social Security for Plan B.  So it should not be the critical issue it once was.  There’s also a painless opportunity to raise revenues for SS by ending the salary cap regarding the application of the SS tax.

But how do we get both the public and their representatives to get down from these barricades they’ve erected?  How do we get them to go back to the day when each side respected the other side?

As a Buddhist, I find the answer in the teachings of the Buddha.  The Buddha taught that all things are empty of intrinsic existence, that they are of dependent origination.  What that means is that every thought we have, every opinion we hold, all our perspectives are a function of our learned experience, whether within our family, our peer group, or the larger culture.  

As a proposed statement of fact, this statement is unassailable.  And when one truly accepts that fact, there is no way that one can say any more with certitude that I am right and the others are wrong.  Even if one is Born Again, your opinions are based on the teachings of your peer group, your minister, and they in turn were learned from someone else.  They are as dependent as the opinions of a secular humanist atheist.  And if anyone has the hubris to say that God has spoken to them and this is what God says, beware!

There should be only a few universal rules in coming to a compromise on issues.  First, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; love and respect your neighbor as you do yourself.  Second, do no harm to those who are vulnerable and need the protection of the state.  Third, the social contract must be honored by all citizens, part of which entails that those who are better off have a social responsibility as citizens to help those who are not well off ... that’s what progressive taxation is all about.  Fourth, there can be no sacred cows ... neither military spending nor entitlements.

Application of these rules would arrive at numerous ways to cut the deficit and slow the growth of the national debt through a combination of raised revenues and reduced spending without harming either individuals in need, the strength of the economy, or our national security.

Media and the Polarization of America

We have become so accustomed to the extreme polarization of our country that began in earnest during Clinton’s second term and has gone off the deep end during the past few years with the creation and ascendency of the Republican Tea Party movement, that it’s hard to remember that there was a time not that long ago when things were very different.  But they were,

After Lyndon Johnson fought for and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the deep south turned Republican, the red states were (with the exception of the 1964 Goldwater debacle) pretty reliably the deep south, the plains states, the Rocky Mountain states, and the west coast.  The Republicans expanded their take of states in Nixon’s elections, Reagan’s, and Bush I’s.  In 1988 they did lose Washington and Oregon, and in 1992 they lost California, which have since been permanently in the Democratic camp.  But after Clinton, they seem to have permanently gained the lower Midwest (Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana).  Likewise the blue states have been pretty consistent, with the exceptions noted above.

So we have existed for the past 48 years at least with a large number of states reliably red, a large number reliably blue, a few changing from one to the other, and a few being the swing states, which is to say they have no established pattern.  But despite that fact, there were circumstances or candidates ... like Goldwater in 1964, McGovern in 1972, the Iran Hostage crisis in 1980, and Reagan in 1984 that turned the presidential map almost totally blue or totally red.

We were in other words a country with a distinctive political map which nevertheless responded to events or personalities in a way contrary to that pattern.  People were far more flexible.

This flexibility could also be clearly seen in the workings of the party’s representatives in Congress.  Although Republicans and Democrats have always disagreed on many things, acrimony was not common.  More common was a tone of civility and frequently “crossing the aisle” to work together in the country’s best interest.  The vast majority of legislators were centrists, as was the electorate.

So what happened to turn our country from a nation of partisans who nevertheless could be bipartisan in the interest of the country and who could, as lawyers say, “agree to disagree,” to a country where one party ... the Republican ... has become a hotbed of rabid, radical, ideological partisans who will brook no compromise?  The answer I think is to be found in the evolution of media in the United States.

Prior to 1980, people got their news from the three major TV networks, all of which were mainstream and centrist, and newspapers which were for the most part also mainstream and centrist.  Whether it was Huntley-Brinkley or Water Cronkite, these were the men who formed public opinion about current events.  Whether you lived in a major urban area or in an isolated rural one, they were your eyes to the rest of the world.  And the respect with which they were held impacted how people, whether Republican or Democrat, saw the major issues of the day.  Even after 1980 when CNN was founded and programmed news 24 hours a day, the basic pattern of centrist news organizations continued.  The result was that people were in general more centrist in their outlook.

Radio was also pretty much a centrist medium prior to 1987, when the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine, which had required controversial viewpoints to be balanced by opposing opinion on air.  One year after that, Rush Limbaugh started his nationally syndicated show on ABC.  Many other right-wing personalities followed suit.

Then in 1996 Fox News started its cable broadcast.  Now you had right-wing news interpretation available 24 hours a day.  That together with the large panoply of right-wing radio talk shows available nationally ... they’re called “conservative talk” but they hardly fit the classic definition of “conservative” ... means that Republicans throughout the country, whether living in small rural towns or in urban areas, now can choose to get their news and their opinions from Republican [sic radical] conservatives, rather than from mainstream broadcasters in the mold of Concrete and Huntley-Brinkley or Brokaw.

This shift in the nature or function of media is, I believe, the single most important factor in the rise of extreme partisanship on the right and our nation’s current polarized state, even more than the rise of the Religious Right during this same period.  People who may have had such opinions before didn’t have them validated by national media.  Now they are emboldened and feel they are in the vanguard.  And those who didn’t have such thoughts have now been brainwashed by the constant barrage of right-wing commentary and have become right-wing radicals.

Add another notch to the belt of the deregulators.