Agree to disagree... better

 Originally posted to Facebook January 8th, 2021.

I think that political opposition is a vital and necessary part of a healthy democracy. Even when the party one favors is in power, a robust opposition is an important component of curbing excesses and giving voters a chance to express a loss of faith or desire for different priorities. And so I will voice my disagreement with policies and principles with which I disagree, and at my best give rational explanations as to why I believe those policies and principles to be either immoral, anti-productive, or impractical, but I will do my best to refrain from calling someone holding different political views immoral or un-American.
Having said all of that, here are some values, practices, and principles that I think everyone of every political stripe should be reasonably held to, and I believe that there are people of every political stripe who are doing well and also many who are doing very poorly, and we all need to especially hold those WITH WHOM WE AGREE POLITICALLY accountable to these basic principles of engagement:
1 - We need to be better about moving from "rumors" and "allegations" to action - especially action with significant consequences - without first doing work to investigate and verify with corroborating evidence from credible sources. (Recent examples: I've seen people say "the courts refused to examine evidence" when they should have said "no verifiable, credible evidence to support claims was presented." I've seen elected government officials move to invalidate the votes of millions of Americans because of "rumors and allegations" unsubstantiated by verifiable, credible evidence.)
2 - We need to hold elected officials to a higher level of accountability than random members of the public. When someone lambasts an elected official for making demonstrably false statements or for inexcusably vulgar, demeaning, and dehumanizing ad hominem attacks, or for suggesting or encouraging illegal and immoral action from supporters, those who voted for these officials should be the first to call them to account and not excuse their behavior because similar language is all over the internet from anonymous trolls supporting the other side. Greater authority goes hand-in-hand with greater responsibility and ought to be met with greater accountability from one's own supporters. Let's stop being afraid that condemning inexcusable behavior is tantamount to giving approval to political or social positions that were attacked in inexcusable ways.
3 - We need to recognize that there is a difference between wanting the instruments of government to work more equitably and to work toward different goals on the one hand, and acting to subvert, discredit, and dismantle the very instruments of government and defy the carefully and deliberately worded limitations on the use of power in our statutes beginning with the Constitution on the other.
4 - We need to acknowledge that the right to vote and participate meaningfully in democracy has from the beginning been intentionally reserved for those in power, and that the expansion of those rights has always come with long and hard struggles, and that once won those rights must be vigilantly safeguarded. We must recognize that the real danger to democracy is not the inclusion of voices and votes that should be suppressed but the suppression of those that should be included, and that, like a village captured from the enemy in the heat of combat, must be vigilantly defended once captured lest it be lost to future generations.
These are goals that Americans of all political persuasions should join together in common cause to fight for.

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