WACO. Texas (ABP) — Democracy depends on something in short supply today in the United States — civil discourse involving people who disagree, author and legal expert Stephen Carter said Sept. 17.
Stephen Carter (Yale photo)
|
Carter, a professor at Yale Law School and author of The Culture of Disbelief, delivered the keynote address at the inauguration of Kenneth Starr as Baylor University’s 14th president, Sept. 17 in Waco, Texas.
“I worry deeply that we are losing the ability to debate” in meaningful ways, Carter said. Democracy demands that citizens “do the hard work of actually sitting, talking and working things out,” he insisted.
“The great symbol of the collapse of dialogue is the bumper sticker,” Carter said, bemoaning the tendency to “reduce complex ideas to slogans and applause lines.”
Americans should hold convictions deeply and vigorously defend their beliefs, but they should not dismiss people who have opposing views as bringing nothing valuable to the conversation, Carter asserted.
“The more we express life that way, the less democratic we will be,” he said.
Too many activists of all political persuasions focus only on winning and getting their way, rather than engaging people with whom they disagree in a dialogue characterized by mutual respect, Carter insisted.
Kenneth Starr (Baylor photo)
|
He pointed to the positive example of late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom Carter worked as a law clerk. In Marshall’s later years, Carter worked with him on an oral history project, recording the first African-American justice's recollections from his years as a civil-rights attorney battling Jim Crow laws — including as the lead plaintiff's attorney in the high court's groundbreaking 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. The opinion outlawed racial segregation in public education and sparked a wave of massive — and often ugly — resistance among white Southern politicians and officials.
Carter noted Marshall’s tendency to speak even of the most ardent segregationists with some fondness, because he recognized their essential humanity.
That perspective enabled Marshall to negotiate groundbreaking advances in civil rights, because even his opponents knew he did not see them as enemies, and they were able to find some common ground.
“We need to see people with whom we disagree as fully human and equally beloved by God,” Carter said.
-30-
Ken Camp is managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard.
Related ABP story:
In Baylor inauguration, Starr touts $100 million fundrasing initiative (9/20/2010)