I describe myself as a tough-love, consequences-compassion oriented, progressive-conservative. The result is confusion by most and animosity from all sides. Despite this setback, I cling to the belief that this posture will enable me (and hopefully the majority of America) to thread the needle and avoid polarization.
The following examples might clarify this situation:
When in the company of conservative, limited government, spend thrift oriented folks, if I express support for a breakfast program for students, I get ridiculed as a big spender, big government guy. So I recommend leading off with how students scored higher on tests and ease into explaining that this occurred thanks to the breakfast program whereby kids learned better because they were not hungry. Lead off with the results and the consequences rather that starting with program proposals and funding requests. The end goal is to get their attention followed by their agreement. If your audience is hell bent on not spending on kids, ignoring their hunger and will not consider the positive test results, further conversing and convincing is probably an exercise in futility. This strategy using the breakfast program could be applicable to all sorts of situations where programming and spending is needed but starting the discussion with real world examples and human interest stories showing concrete benefits and consequences gets better results.
When in the company of liberal, progressive oriented folks who support more government and increased funding, I get ostracized if I propose cutting waste, reducing bureaucraacy, requiring accountability and demanding consequences for programs and funding. For example, I propose slapping an ankle monitor for an indefinite timeframe to a spousal abuser until such time that the abuser participates in therapeutic counselling. Require 24/7 monitoring and tracking until mandated and intensive therapy changes the abusers’ ways and he comes to terms with his demons. The initial reaction of most liberals who consider themselves to be progressive would be that I am harsh and draconian. I counter that it’s actually more compassionate and progressive to mandate intensive counselling and require continuous supervision/surveillance since in the long run that’s best for the abuser. Get to the root cause of malevolent behavior. Stop depending on useless, after-the-fact restraining orders and get the abuser off-the-street and into treatment. Start with toughness and consequences and end with compassion.
As with the conservatives, it sometimes makes more sense to get the liberals and progressives listening and agreeing before they immediately assume you are being harsh, discriminatory and regressive. If they are hell bent on ever expanding programs and unlimited spending, then no amount of discussion of consequences, personal responsibility and root cause solutions will change their perception of you as some sort of heartless neanderthal.
In sum, enter every conversation with someone of an oppositional persuasion with human interest stories and concrete examples that hopefully will resonate with them. Engage in a thought experiment where there is no mention of whether you are a liberal or conservative, believer or non-believer, democrat or republican, libertarian or even an anarchist for that matter. If you can achive agreement at this stage, it will be harder for the other person to backtrack at the tail end of the conversation. There will be those who agree up to this point and reverse course at this juncture in the conversation. That’s ok because you have flushed them out and they are showing their true colors. Now you know that further attempts to change attitudes will be an exercise in futility.
I hope that this suggestion assists and look forward to any further feedback and suggestions. As always, my ongoing blogs can be found on www.dunnwriteswell.com
Dunn Writes Well 