A quick plug for Peggy Noonan's essay A Hope for America in today's Wall Street Journal.
Noonan writes that "What we need right now, at this moment, is a kind of patriotic grace - a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we're in and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative." She argues for a combative, partisan politics that rises to the level of the challenges we face as a nation.
To Noonan's admonition I would argue that before we can have political debates worthy of having, we have to learn how to debate at all. Too many high schools and colleges don't teach students how to argue. They don't teach the construction and defense of an argument. Students don't learn that political disagreement need not be personal disagreement. We never learn to, as Noonan would have us do, "fight honorably and in good faith, while - and this is the hard one - both summoning and assuming good faith on the other side."
Students are taught to not argue about politics or policy. They are discouraged from promoting political positions in the classroom. Professors are punished for taking political positions and demanding that students do the same. All of us are encouraged to align with one side or another and stick to the label. We are socially rewarded for brand loyalty rather than rationality.
Democracy demands debate. It relies on argument. Democracy relies on competing factions fighting for their positions.
The "civic engagement movement" is good and important, it teaches young people to take responsibility for their communities and each other, it teaches people to get out and do something that needs to be done. To this civic education we need to add instruction in "civil argument" We need to teach students how to argue about what to do, what the priorities are and how they should be approached.
Maybe Noonan addresses this in the book from which the essay is drawn - and if not, maybe she can be persuaded to make it part of her next project.
