Common Ground, At Last

Edison Lee tells it like it is.

Civil Discourse III

With regard to truth: That which is true is that which accurately reflects reality. Falsehood is a bad map with which to build meaning. It leads us to do things which don’t work for us. They are not useful. They don’t solve the problem.

With regard to facts and opinions: A fact is that form of data which appears to be fully objective. Facts are observation that can be verified. The problem with facts is that they are often not true. Opinions can be true but they can’t be verified the way facts can. Opinions are not less important, just less verifiable.

With regard to conflict: I take pains in my book to suggest that conflicts are the circumstances of others not being as we want them to be, not the strategies we use to try to resolve them. A conflict is not the same as a fight. I don’t know that the conflict is personal, but you certainly see the world differently from the way Frank Rich does and, for that matter, I suspect you see it differently than Glenn Beck does.

With regard to being “mean spirited:” While the banter is no doubt good for business, I see being mean as associated with doing something which is harmful to another while being fully able to see that the harm is being done. It isn’t mean if it is an accident, but if I do something which is harmful to another and I have every reason to know my choices may do harm, I am being mean.

So, does it make sense to you that someone listening to Glenn Beck might come to the conclusion that President Obama is racist, is fascist, and is a communist? Does it seem like Beck is building a case that supports those opinions? And does it seem that doing so could be understood to be harmful to the President?

Civil Discourse II

An engineer looks at his world through the eyes of an engineer. Pastors and counselors will look at the same scene and see it perhaps differently. As I look at the world I see truth as good, right and useful. I see 'not true' as flawed, failed and without merit.
So, when I read Frank Rich's piece in the Times, I breezed past his opinions without much reaction. Opinions are not about fact; they are just interesting. What I choked on was the mis-statement of fact. My own experience is different from that of Mr. Rich. I call his experience flawed and declare that he failed as an observer. I see no personal conflict here at all with him. I merely point out his error. I prefer suggesting he was not paying attention to the broadcast than to say he lied. Perhaps he read the work of someone else rather than do his own research. Perhaps the paper told him to say that.
Frank Rich and Glenn Beck frequently toss barbs at each other, each sharing his own opinion. I can see this as "conflict" although the word seems a bit too strong. Since neither is mean spirited, it seems more like banter than anything else. I'm sure the continued dialog is good for both mens' business.

Civil Discourse

Bruce, you and I have been having a conversation by email that I want to carry onto the blog.  For our readers, here is the conversation so far.

Knowing that Bruce is a follower of Glenn Beck and not a fan of the New York Times I was struck by a recent column by Frank Rich. Rich has been with the NYT for nearly 30 years, the last 15 of which he has been writing opinion columns for them.  His column was actually somewhat sympathetic, to my way of thinking, to the concerns Beck raises and which energize his followers.

Bruce’s response was to point out how much the NYT gets Beck wrong and even suggested that they didn’t even watch the show in which Beck allegedly accused Obama of being racist, fascist, and communist.  If they had they would have known that he only accused Obama’s associates of being so.

During the show, Beck questioned Obama’s true political beliefs in that he had surrounded himself with black nationalists, avowed fascists, and Communists.  He stopped short of accusing the President of being a racist, but not very short. [email by Bruce to Mark]

I doubt that we are going to have agreement about what a racist, a fascist, or a communist even is, much less, who is one.  My concern has more to do with the observation that even Frank Rich is acknowledging the high level of anger and distrust that is present in these conversations.  I am wondering if we would like to have a discourse which leads to a productive use of anger and the construction of greater trust?

To my way of thinking we would do better to try to resolve the conflict.  That would require us to have a sense of what the conflict is about and what it would take to resolve it.  I must say, I don’t know what the conflict is about.  The government is making choices which scare and hurt people, and those people are reacting in anger.  But I am not sure that even the people who are angry know clearly how it is they are being harmed. 

If we can clarify the issue, then the next question is, “What would it take to resolve the conflict?  What do we mean by resolution?”

If what we mean is that my side makes the other side lose, then name calling makes sense.  It is a way of making the other look bad or silly.  But if what we mean is that we come to a way of working together that gets everyone what they need, then name calling is just another way of picking a fight.  What we would find as a more constructive strategy would be to see if we can each see the validity of the other’s perspective, even when it is not one we hold to ourselves.  This is what I see Frank Rich trying to do.  He is trying to appreciate the validity of the point of view of Beck and his followers.  As hard as that is to do, I think it is a much more constructive tactic than calling people names.

1. America really is good

Saying this does not imply that other countries are not good or that every individual or societal decision is "good." It does acknowledge the fundamental value that we all have. Too often, we become convinced that our shortcomings make us "bad." Those who might wish to oppress or surpress us have to first convince us that we are not good. Some suggest that our society must "pay" for the wrongs our citizens committed in the past. We don't insist that we are perfect, just good and worthy of God's love.

9. The government works for me.

The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Which why this is our government. We are the government. We control it, it doesn’t control us. We are a democracy.

But again, who is the them. A government is an institution, not a group of people. It is the laws and the policies and the agencies we create for our common welfare. Making the government into our enemy denies our responsibility for having created this mess in the first place. It allows us to claim that this mess is someone else’s fault.

It seems to me that the relationship we have with the government is not so much one of authority in which someone has the right to tell someone else what to do, as it is a kind of mutual accountability. The government can tell me that I have to pay my payroll taxes and if I don’t, I am going to experience consequences. I want to live in a society in which there are clear rules and everyone has to abide by them equally [see #5]. But that means that the government can control me. I have to answer to the government.

On the other hand, I am one of the owners of the system. It serves at my pleasure as I vote for it and pay for it. I am the boss… as is everyone else. We share that title equally, regardless of class, or race, or gender, or ethnicity. I love this country.