Confession: I’m a drinkin’ Baptist.
That’s a dangerous combination, because Baptists love to argue, and alcohol loosens our tongues. Recently I almost got into a fistfight at my favorite bar with three guys — count ’em, three — at a nearby table who I overheard praising Trump and cursing Biden. At this late date in Trump’s long career of villainy, that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Fortified by “liquid courage” (the worst kind), I challenged the trio with some colorful language. We exchanged insults. Soon realizing, not for the first time, that I was an idiot on the way to getting my butt kicked, I bought them a round. They quickly invited me to their table and bought me a round. Then we had a civilized conversation.
Erich Bridges
The most articulate of the three admitted he actually loathes Trump. He approached me a few weeks later, apologizing for his behavior. I did the same. As we talked, I learned to my amazement he’s more liberal than I am on multiple social issues. His beloved daughter is gay. But he’s a fiscal conservative and fears for the future of his 401(k) and the U.S. economy under extended Democrat rule — a reasonable concern you hear from a lot of reluctant Trumpers.
Lessons learned: No. 1, don’t get into political arguments in bars; it’s not only foolish, it’s bad for your health.
No. 2, don’t assume everyone in the other political camp is a crazed felon.
No. 3, listen to people you think are dead wrong, no matter how hard it might be. You might learn something.
Listening is as important to free speech as speaking, not to mention to Christian behavior.
I abandoned polite debate with Trump supporters, however, after Jan. 6, 2021. If you’re still supporting this guy after his brazen attempts to overturn a national election and foment violent insurrection, I reasoned, you’re an insurrectionist, too. That’s treason in my book.
I still feel that way about hardcore MAGA types. There’s no point in negotiating with them. Either they get with the program — respect for democracy and the rule of law — or they go to jail.
But there are tens of millions of other Americans in the political wilderness. Traditional Republicans. Moderates. Social and economic conservatives. They don’t want to vote for Trump again (or even DeSantis), but they hesitate to pull the lever for the current crop of Democrats. These are the swing voters who will decide the next several national elections.
They must be persuaded, with respect and patience, to turn away from the dangerous populist nationalism Trump represents. He’s far from the only merchant of this toxic brew. It will outlast him on the American political scene, even if he deservedly lands in prison, and it has seduced many millions in Europe and beyond.
“In a democracy, competing interest groups must compromise.”
In a democracy, competing interest groups must compromise. There is no alternative except violence — or the tyranny of the majority (or minority). Compromise requires listening and dialogue.
This includes you, progressives. Especially you. You’re notorious for dismissing everyone who isn’t as “enlightened” as you as racist, classist, misogynist Neanderthals. Some of them are. Many aren’t. Are you willing to try to discern the difference?
“When you don’t know someone personally, it’s easier to assume the worst about him,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul wrote recently in a piece titled “The Most Profound Loss on College Campuses Isn’t Free Speech. It’s Listening.”
“And if you assume your opponent is immoral, you don’t have to listen to him, because you think he’s not worthy of charitable interpretation,” she wrote. “But if you assume your political opponent is operating in good faith — even if the person isn’t a friend or significant other — you’ll be inclined to hear him out.”
Her immediate subject was the most recent incident — among countless others — of American university students shouting down a conservative speaker or preventing him/her from speaking at all. On March 9, Stanford Law School students interrupted guest speaker Kyle Duncan, a federal appeals court judge and conservative Trump appointee, so many times that he asked an administrator to intervene. She essentially affirmed the protesters but asked them to let Duncan continue. The session staggered to an end after many in the audience marched out.
“Advocates of free speech denounced the hecklers’ refusal to let Duncan deliver his remarks,” Paul wrote. “Defenders of the students justified their own right to speak. Duncan and others lamented the tenor of the protests and the response from an administrator who failed to quell the vitriol and asked, ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’
“The administrator was asking, essentially: Is it worth letting someone speak if some students consider that person’s views objectionable, even abhorrent? But another question to ask is: What gets lost if we don’t let that person speak?”
Is this what we have come to in America?
“They all want to silence speech they don’t like.”
There’s no moral difference between the Stanford protesters, MAGA loudmouths who shout down political opponents and fundamentalist groups that seek to ban books in school libraries. They all want to silence speech they don’t like. That is unconstitutional, undemocratic and un-American.
“We know universities can do a better job of preventing one form of speech from inhibiting another,” Paul concluded. “The harder task, but perhaps the more important lesson, will be teaching students not to want to do so. They shouldn’t avoid opportunities to hear other perspectives but should actively seek them out and reckon with the humbling fact that what they already know — or think they already know — may not be all there is to know. Isn’t that, after all, precisely what learning is about?”
I was reminded of that while shooting off my fool mouth in a bar. Somehow, conversation broke out instead. Who knew that could still happen?
Erich Bridges, a Baptist journalist for more than 40 years, retired in 2016 as global correspondent for the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board. He lives in Richmond, Va.
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