American politics is broken, and too few people are thinking about how to mend it. Donald Trump’s presidency has aroused strong and often angry passions among both opponents and supporters, but the problem runs much deeper than that. More and more, political rage seems to be crowding out political engagement. And make no mistake: Without engagement, liberal democracy can’t survive.
Take recent demands to boycott businesses whose investors have voiced support for the President. Consumers are absolutely within their rights to withhold their patronage from any business as they see fit. It’s their money, after all. The question is not whether business boycotts are legitimate. Used judiciously, they can be an important tool for progress, as the civil rights movement demonstrated. The question is whether Americans can live and work together without being so absolutist about politics and intolerant of viewpoint diversity.
The essence of American democracy is that people who disagree, however profoundly, can set forth their views, let the democratic system under the constitution settle matters for the moment, accept the outcome until the next election, and continue to engage with one another productively in the ordinary course of their lives. To put it simply, healthy democracy is about living with disagreement, not eliminating it.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the retreat from liberal political discourse can be found on the training grounds for tomorrow’s leaders: college campuses.
This sad reality was laid bare last week by Steven Gerrard, a professor of philosophy at Williams College. In a column for Bloomberg, Gerrard quotes a letter from students outlining their views on the subject: ” ‘Free speech’, as a term, has been co-opted by right-wing and liberal parties as a discursive cover for racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and classism.”