June 1, 2019

There Is Always Common Ground

“Civility and decency are secondary values” are words that should give us real pause.

A little skirmish broke out the other day in the conservative political/intellectual world. I hesitate to call it a skirmish, because it was partly a debate about viewing cultural debates as war, and strategies for winning. I thought immediately of my late friend Andrew Breitbart and how restless he would sometimes get when conservatives would get too “eggheady.” This would happen especially when he visited friends in established conservative movement circles.

One presidential election year, I caught up with New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan on the final night of the Republican convention in Tampa. He was giving an invocation at both parties’ gatherings that year, and getting grief from many on the right for inviting both presidential candidates for the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York. Dolan implored people to consider that if we couldn’t even break bread together, where could we come together? Fast-forward to the Al Smith dinner with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, when the hostility – at an event where the candidates are supposed to roast each other and laugh together – could have been cut with a knife. But at a quiet moment beforehand, even then, even in that worst of our modern elections, Dolan managed to get the two candidates to stop and pray privately together.

All that was in my mind when Sohrab Ahmari closed a piece criticizing my National Review colleague David French (both are friends) with these words: “Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism. Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral. To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty.”

“Civility and decency are secondary values” are words that should give us real pause. And if you’re partial to Ahmari’s thinking right now – wherever you are coming from – included in your summer reading should be Peter Wehner’s new book, “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”

In it Wehner, who is, among other things, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, writes: “The task of citizenship in America today is not simply to curse the political darkness but to light candles. This can be done one person at a time, in your neighborhood and city, at a homeless shelter and a school board meeting, at neighborhood gatherings and city councils, and in countless other settings.”

Wehner admits, “The great challenge for a book like this is that its greatest reach may be with people who least need to hear its message. The political entrepreneurs and social provocateurs who win profit and promotion by demeaning politics and coarsening discourse are not going to be swayed by a book like this.

"But modern psychology and ancient wisdom both show,” Wehner continues, “that the effect of example can be profound. One such example was set by a prophet from Nazareth many years ago, and there have been many since.”

“What are we waiting for?” Wehner asks. “If each of us inspires or moves one or two or three other people to give politics – real politics, not just political theater – a second chance, to think twice before sending that inflammatory tweet, or to listen and question instead of jumping to disagree, then there will be millions among us. We don’t need to transform everyone’s behavior or temperament (something no conservative would ever want to attempt, by the way). Reach the moveable middle, and the country and the culture will move with it.”

The contempt in the air is something of a social madness. It’s our moral duty to combat it with a better example. We all have our roles, but as Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan put it in her commencement address at Notre Dame this year: “The secret of successful politics: Be moved more by what you love than what you hate.” That doesn’t mean we can’t disagree, and deeply. But it also means we might still find a meeting place in our common humanity in the midst of some of our most contentious and necessary debates.

COPYRIGHT 2019 United Feature Syndicate

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.