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.
I hate it when people do this to me. I never wanted to do it to them.
Those words are from the “last post” of one of the best bloggers ever, IMHO, the cryptically named Hilzoy, who has now “retired.” It remains to be seen if Hilzoy defines retirement like Brett Favre does, but no matter how long her absence, I agree with the Dish’s Patrick Appel that her “voice will be sorely missed.”
It will be sorely missed because Hilzoy had a reliable, recurring knack for challenging the rest of us to be members of the “good citizenry,” as she defines it in the excerpt above. In fact, I think the most important words from that excerpt might be its modified-golden-rule sentences:
I hate it when people do this to me. I never wanted to do it to them.
A month ago today, I explained why I was finding it increasingly difficult to listen to the contemporary right wing of American politics. Hilzoy’s parting shot encourages me to try again to listen to them, even though many of them clearly don’t want to listen to me and my ilk.
Granted, Hilzoy acknowledges in her final post that there are some “political opponents” who have “clearly forfeited” their right to “respect.” But she also suggests we be careful to keep that list of forfeitures (forfeitees?) limited — to make it a true list of exceptions, not of entire classes or categories of people.