A House Divided

The summer is speedily sailing past us, as it always does, and I’m still waiting to climb aboard. This year it seems I am working as hard as ever, but my work now consists of a combination of law practice and other time-consuming projects, such as my podcast (“Higher Callings”), this newsletter, and getting ready to teach again (this time, two law school courses). Especially with the next semester fast approaching, something’s gotta give, and the first thing to give will be this newsletter.

I won’t be abandoning it, just slowing it down. Instead of publishing on a set schedule as I’ve been doing (every Sunday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern for people who subscribe), I’ll publish more sporadically as my time and interest allows. I’m guessing that the January 6th Committee hearings will continue to prompt some posts, as will other less political topics. So to my subscribers (and thankfully, it’s a free subscription!) I say, please continue to open Reflections of a Boston Lawyer when it lands in your inbox, but please don’t expect to see it every week or on a set schedule. In late fall of this year, when I’m done teaching, I may get back to a regular schedule, but until then I hope you won’t mind receiving something that’s less frequent and less predictable.

For today, I’ll leave you with a thought that’s been on my mind quite a bit this week. Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but I continue to be disappointed at the American people’s continued and increasing polarization. Most of us seem to be divided into two camps - the liberals and the conservatives - and those camps are continuing to migrate towards their extremes. Where is the center of American politics? Where are the leaders and the rank and file who seek not to demonize the other side but to find common ground with them? Where are the deal makers, the compromisers, the peacemakers who understand that we don’t all have to agree to get along, but that we have to get along to succeed? Why aren’t we electing them to Congress and asking them to lead us out of our disabling divisions?

They are, it seems, being crowded out by the right-wing sycophants, on the one side, and far-left progressives, on the other. As Abraham Lincoln famously said before he became President (quoting Jesus), a house divided against itself cannot stand. He was addressing slavery, and positing that America was destined either to legalize slavery in all states or abolish slavery in all states (and thankfully he championed the right choice in that dichotomy). Today, there is no single, predominating issue that divides Americans, there are a host of them — from abortion to guns to race to LGBTQ rights to immigration to climate change, and on and on. A civil war won’t resolve our differences. What can at least alleviate them is for a majority of Americans to put aside their personal animosity towards those with opposing views, to look for the good within their political adversaries, to find the humility to recognize that no one has a monopoly on truth or right and wrong, and to understand that to move forward Americans must find common ground and be willing to compromise.

Our legislators, and now our highest court, have abandoned compromise solutions and instead apply a winner-take-all mentality to our society’s biggest problems. Bipartisanship has given way to power politics in which few legislators are willing to vote across party lines because, if they do, their party will banish them. As we’ve seen especially among Republicans in the House of Representatives, brave souls who vote their consciences and put country over party quickly succumb to the pressure to resign, while others are voted out of office. On the other side, far left progressives complain about and call for the replacement of more moderate Democrats among their ranks. Where nominees for seats on the Supreme Court used to win confirmation by an overwhelming majority of Senators (Scalia was confirmed 98-0; Ginsburg 96-3), today they barely squeak through, and only if their party controls the Senate.

Even Roe v. Wade, that 49-year-old decision that was overruled by the Court’s new Republican super-majority, was itself the product of compromise. What else can you call a ruling whose recognition of a woman’s constitutional right to abortion depended on the stage of the pregnancy, or that was supported by Justices appointed by both Democratic and Republican Presidents? In overturning Roe, the Dobbs majority rejected that compromise and replaced it with a completely one-sided decision representing the sheer exertion of power by Justices appointed to the Court largely because of their willingness to do so. Equally troubling, the decision’s author demonstrated no interest in finding common ground, no acknowledgement of the legitimacy or even good faith of opposing viewpoints, and no recognition of the chaos, disruption, and suffering the decision would cause in the states where abortion is banned.

But my disappointment is not directed solely towards the far right. We all, conservatives and liberals alike, have a natural tendency to demonize people with whom we disagree, to assume the worst about them, and to deny any possible legitimacy to their views. People on both ends of the political spectrum need to do a better job of trying to understand opposing viewpoints without assuming the bad faith or ulterior motives of those who hold them, and to find ways to work with those with whom we disagree. And there needs to be room in our politics for those who bring with them more moderate, less polarizing views and temperaments. Only with their help can we make the center hold.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the rest of your summer and I will try to do the same!

________________________________

As I wrote this, I was reminded of William Butler Yeats poem, “The Second Coming.” I encourage you to read the whole poem, linked here, and to listen to Joni Mitchell’s musical version of it, which I’ll link below. Here is the first of the two stanzas, which Yeats wrote shortly after the end of World War I. It struck me as having particular relevance to America today.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And here is Joni’s version: Slouching Towards Bethlehem