Does Civility Mean Abandoning Your Principles?
“It is getting harder and harder to have a conversation across those divides,” says former GOP state lawmaker John Walsh.
If you thought this country was divided before last week, well, you may not believe what’s coming next week. Of course, no one knows what the headlines will read once we get to October. But it’s a pretty good bet that they’ll pick at the divisions among us, and make us more angry, more bitter, and more frustrated with those on the “other side” of our own ideas and beliefs.
It is getting harder and harder to have a conversation across those divides — to really discuss politics or culture without our differences bringing us into conflict.
Maybe it is time for a big conversation about conversation — the ways we talk with one another, what we hope to gain from the idea of civil, productive debate, and whether the whole idea of actually talking to people with whom we disagree is possible, or workable, when there is so much that divides us.
“Compromise is part and parcel to being a human being, but we ridicule it.” – John Walsh, DDP President
On Detroit Today, Stephen Henderson speaks with Downtown Detroit Partnership (DDP) President John Walsh, a former Republican state lawmaker from Livonia and budget director under Gov. Rick Snyder.
“Compromise is part and parcel to being a human being, but we ridicule it,” says Walsh.
Walsh also talks, as a former state budget director, about the looming October 1 deadline to get a budget signed to avert a partial state government shutdown. And he talks about his work at DDP.
