People Acting In Good Faith Do Disagree

hilzoy signs off...and speaks for the majority of political junkies, activists, and average voters.

A democracy is essentially about determining the course of our nation together. To do that, it helps a lot to have a good citizenry. A good citizenry is informed, serious about things that are worth taking seriously, and not liable to be led off course by demagogues. (Everyone doesn't have to be like this, but you need a critical mass of people who are.) But I've always thought that a good citizenry is also composed of people who assume, until proven wrong, that many of the people who disagree with them are acting in good faith.

This matters for policy: you're unlikely to choose sound policies if you assume that anyone who disagrees with you is a depraved, corrupt imbecile. It's hard to learn anything from people you have completely written off. But it's also corrosive to any kind of community or dialogue to assume the worst about large numbers of people you've never met. It makes you less willing to try to take their problems seriously, and to try to figure out how they might be solved, or to try to understand what's driving them.

When I was first elected to the Iowa Senate, one of the more soft-spoken members of the chamber was given the task of promoting a limited death penalty proposal. It made him the target of unending, vitriolic commentary. Whenever he was challenged on the floor, he reassured members that "people of good will CAN disagree." I recalled his words numerous times over the next decade during the most heated debates.