II. The Nature of The Beast

Productive Political Discussion:  a conversation in which each participant acquires a deeper understanding of the other's point of view, and also of his own.  As the conversation becomes productive, we begin to see the points at which our value systems converge, and division yields to unity as it must.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reason political discourse is so challenging is simple: Our positions on political issues are directly connected to our own value systems – our individual codes of right and wrong.  Consider life versus choice, or who can and can't legally marry, or capital punishment.  It’s no surprise that people on either side of a political discussion often feel like the other person’s sense of morality is being imposed on them.  In fact, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Political discourse invariably pits one person’s subjective morality against that of another.  That's just the nature of the beast, and it seems to present a dilemma.  After all, conventional wisdom has it that a productive discussion is an objective discussion – one in which progress comes from an exchange of facts and data, not opinions and feelings.  However, the linkage between our moral sense and our political opinion is so strong that it makes objectivity quite difficult in a political conversation. 

Any mechanism that permits a productive discussion must therefore defy conventional wisdom.  In fact, the solution to the problem turns conventional wisdom on its head.

But let’s be reminded of the problem: The problem is that we want high levels of productivity to come from a conversation in which one person’s sense of morality faces off against another person’s sense of morality.  A high hurdle, it would seem.  Further, none of us has any intention of disconnecting the linkage between our moral code and our stance on a political issue.  Nor, as you will see later, do we need to.