Two must-haves for a democracy

Last week’s column was in response to an email I felt enmeshed two things: 1. defining behavior that is not healthy or normal, calling it what it is; and 2. engaging with people who disagree with you in a lively but respectful way. I would argue both are essential to a healthy democracy. I would also argue that co-mingling them as though they are the same is dangerous to democracy.

What I saw in an email I received is that the enmeshment of these separate ideas is increasingly easy to do on all sides of the political spectrum, even for good people who mean well. It is something with which I struggle. I do not always get it right.

An emailer unwittingly posed the larger question to my mind of how to divorce the two—to find where the line is when one seeks to engage people of differing reasonable opinions, as well as delegitimize behavior that goes beyond a differing reasonable opinion and into asocial behavior.

This question is important because I want to do both without entangling them. I need the line to be clear, for myself and for readers.

Maybe that goal is impossible. But while I recognize this is a difficult line to see sometimes, therefore a hard one to walk, it is important for freedom-loving patriots to try. In fact, we are going to have to get a lot better at it if we want our country’s greatness to survive and our state to thrive. Walking that line leads us out of our echo chambers.

I tried to draw the line in last week’s column, blurry and bent as my efforts may seem. I also promised I would try to address aspects of LEARNS that leave room for debate, in a good-faith effort to engage those who may disagree with my assertion that LEARNS stinks. And I will try to do that soon, because I recognize there are good and rational people of a different opinion.

But for this week, I want to parse out for readers—and myself—more of what this line between reasonable and unreasonable looks like, so that hopefully those of us who desire to can hone our skills at toeing it, and perhaps propose a model for, or return to, the diplomacy we admire in our historically best and now rarest of politicians.

My emailer wrote: “In your ADG column … you again referenced your House campaign, ‘when I ran for office in 2020, my hope was to help make Arkansas a kinder, gentler place; a place of strength through excellence in public education, economic opportunity and affordable health care’. So now I am going to pose my question: Do you really think name-calling the legislators and other people who have a different opinion about the LEARNS Act is making Arkansas a kinder, gentler place? Or is it again prideful to believe that only the CARES [sic] group and your opinions about the LEARNS Act are viable, reasonable opinions?”

His two questions demonstrate the enmeshment outlined above. The first references “name-calling,” which is somewhat problematic in that it means different things to different people. I take it literally. My parents taught me never to call people names. They were public school teachers, and “no name-calling” is a basic school rule since for teachers’ kids, school and home are the places you live, physically and intellectually; it all runs together.

The trifecta for me is that this was also part of our evangelical Christian ethic. And the spiritual trumped everything else—still does, though for me everything is spiritual, including the physical and intellectual.

This is not to say we never break a rule. Humans mess up even when we try to live according to our ideals. But to us, disagreement with an idea, even disparagement of it, is not name-calling. Labeling teachers “indoctrinators” and “groomers” is name-calling. Putting people into a “Basket of Deplorables” is name-calling. So is saying a candidate is a “baby-killer,” “demon-rat,” “pawn of Satan,” or “libtard.” Or calling another “Crooked Hillary,” or John McCain a “Loser.”

What is not name-calling, at least by my definition, is to say with much sadness that MAGA Republicans have fallen down a rabbit hole, and we may never get them back. It is likewise not name-calling to say that the national Democratic Party leans too far left for most Arkansans.

Also not name-calling is to say that the LEARNS Act is part of a national hoax perpetrated by corporate billionaires to destroy public education, and that those elected officials who pushed it through our Legislature did a terrible disservice to the people of this state.

There are aspects of LEARNS that aren’t terrible. But instituting a universal voucher system is extreme. Just like proposing sweeping changes to FOIA is extreme. It is also extreme to deem tax breaks for the richest Arkansans an emergency. That’s like calling an ambulance for a hangnail.

All this stuff is extreme. And extreme is not truly conservative. These measures, and the behavior that has accompanied them as lawmakers bullied their own constituents for speaking out in opposition, are the reverse of reasonable. A deviation from dignity. A complete withdrawal from wisdom. We know better, and we should demand better for ourselves and our children.

I do not believe name-calling makes Arkansas or anywhere else a kinder, gentler place, but if we hope ever to forge a kinder, gentler state, we must recognize abnormal conduct and designate it as such. We cannot lump in extremist behavior with reasonable differences of opinion. It is a lazy way of thinking which makes us vulnerable to manipulation. That’s what extremists want. We must not give it to them. We must hold the line.