Imagine someone who believes something you find outrageous, foolish, or even dangerous.
The idea of giving that person your valuable time and listening to them seems counterintuitive, but you do it. Now, despite stark disagreement, imagine you also recognize their inherent human dignity and respond to them with grace instead of derision or scorn. Finally, you depart each other’s company in good humor while still disagreeing over some big issues.
That thought experiment may sound daunting, or even pollyannish, but it’s the price of healthy American democracy. Respectful disagreement provides a preferable alternative to political violence. But it also serves as a catalyst for fostering relationships, overcoming hyperpolarization, and cultivating the best ideas for solving everyday problems. And it’s a practice that requires our eternal dedication.
This is the charge of civility.
“The determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way to shared accomplishment,” as President George W. Bush put it in his first inaugural address – which is worth your time if you haven’t read it.
We need the people in our country who challenge us in various ways – socially, ideologically, intellectually – even when it’s unpleasant. They better equip us to preserve social peace and find solutions to common issues by forcing us to consider, even empathize with, different perspectives.
And through respectful disagreement, those same people sharpen our own thinking or actions by forcing us to articulate our views and confront the potential shortcomings. This can also infuse us with a little humility.
Obtaining a better, nuanced understanding of myriad views also makes it harder to hyperbolize people’s actual positions or demonize them. At the very least, such engagements provide an opportunity to improve our personal temperament by practicing patience and compassion.
We’re not the first people to struggle with hyperpolarization. We’re certainly not the first Americans to experience how it poisons society. And if our free Republic endures, we won’t be the last.
Thankfully, as Alexandra O. Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility explains in her book, we’re more than capable of overcoming this challenge. An ancient lineage of scholars spanning the globe have catalogued the practices that serve as antibodies to incivility. Their collective wisdom assesses that, “relationships, like civilization, are fragile” and that, “minimizing the threats to them by restraining selfishness, and considering how our presentation and conduct affect others, buttresses both friendship and community.”
Practicing healthy disagreement – where we passionately argue ideas or beliefs without demonizing people or groups – qualifies.
It’s fantastic news that Republican Governor of Utah Spencer Cox, the outgoing chair of the National Governor’s Association, is evolving his yearlong Disagree Better Initiative into a new nonprofit. Through this project, he has rallied leaders nationwide on promoting the absolute necessity of Americans engaging in healthier debate. Otherwise, as he told us on The Stratgerist podcast, “we’re screwed” as a nation.
Disagree Better convened events across the country and amassed various resources and research on how people can develop and practice this skill.
It also recruited governors – Democrats and Republicans – to publicly showcase respectful engagement through a blitz of short, social media videos. Each vignette emphasizes that disagreement is “OK” and even “crucial” for American democracy. And as Cox explains, “conflict isn’t bad, it’s the way we disagree that matters.”
In one, Democratic Governor of Maryland Wes Moore and Cox acknowledge their different political positions and upbringings, but share a fist bump over being proud Americans who love college basketball and sport “stylish haircuts.”
Another features Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, pointing to respectful disagreement as one of America’s most time-honored traditions – along with rejecting the metric system (amen!).
These simple acts of civility constitute serious courage in a climate where bashing political opponents is normal and leaders fear threats of violence for deviating from party orthodoxy.
These videos also made a real impact on Americans. A Stanford University study found that participants exposed to the Disagree Better ads showed decreased “partisan animosity” and increased “conversational receptiveness and support for bipartisanship.”
The research further revealed incentives for political leaders and candidates to model civility. It found that voters – primary, general, even the most hardcore partisans – showed increased likability towards the participating governors after watching the ads.
“It’s enough of an effect size to where if you were in the context of a campaign, you might consider doing disagree better to advance your candidacy,” Stanford University Professor Rob Willer, the study leader, noted.
Besides, as James Madison argued in Federalist 10, ending disagreement would be impossible without removing liberty or imposing conformity – which he likened to eliminating air because it feeds destructive fires. So, the preservation of our very freedom is also tied to disagreeing better.
Navigating our differences requires something that doesn’t devolve into violence or contempt for fellow citizens – both of which corrode national cohesion. We call that “thing” by different names: pluralism, civility, disagreeing better. But they all get at the idea captured by our national motto of e pluribus unum, “out of many one.”
Practicing these things could be as simple as listening patiently to another perspective. Or, instead of trying to win an argument, demonstrate curiosity about the other side’s position. Above all, critique ideas, not people. And it’s likely we’ll find compromise or common ground in some areas as we continue to disagree strongly in others (which is perfectly OK, even healthy).
“Americans are generous and strong and decent, not because we believe in ourselves, but because we hold beliefs beyond ourselves,” President Bush once observed.
We have a duty as citizens to rise above our selfishness; exercise civility; and live the values of freedom, justice, opportunity, and compassion that make our country great.
And we’re capable of doing so.
