The vast majority of Americans are not happy with the direction of our country, and rightly so. We are a deeply fractured nation living through the most intense partisan divide of our lifetimes. Our elected representatives seem wholly incapable of compromise, much less collaboration. And yet, without compromise and collaboration, we may have difficulty in keeping the American experiment alive.
When Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government the Founders had created, he responded, “We have a republic, if we can keep it.” While we have kept it so far, continuing to preserve our republic may require real change because the current climate of rancorous discourse and the lack of basic civil behavior is unsustainable. And that real change is not about the transfer of power from one party to another, but rather for the partisans to learn once again how to work together to discover the common good. This won’t happen if the political elites on all sides remain riveted on imposing their partisan agendas rather than working to find common ground.
We can only discover the common good if we are first willing to find common ground. It’s long past time to replace entrenched partisan debate with respectful dialogue that leverages our collective intelligence to integrate the strengths of differing perspectives into workable solutions. If the common good could speak to us perhaps this would be her message:
Do not assume you know who I am
I am none of you
I am not what you think
I am not what you feel
You will only know me
When you reach into the hearts and minds
Of all of you
Only then will you understand
That you are only a part of me
And that I am all of you.