I’ve already given a maudlin shoutout today to @monacharenEPPC. I want to take the occasion of what she did today to remind people that it is easy to speak up when you’re around people who agree with you. If you believe, as I do, in the #CoalitionOfAllDemocraticForces,
we must particularly honor and treasure the voices who speak up when it’s hard, who speak up where it’s hard and unpopular, and who speak up at cost to their social and professional worlds.
We must remember that it really is okay to disagree about the political and agree about the pre-political—that large set of democratic commitments that exist as an antecedent matter to the ability to disagree about the political questions we’re accustomed to fighting over.
We must remember that some of the bravest sacrifices—you know, the ones in which people give their lives—take place for those pre-political commitments in the face of great political disagreement. Think of all the soldiers who have died protecting one another without asking...
...what their comrades thought of marginal tax rates, of reproductive rights, or of climate change.
I have my own political views. Though I feel strongly about some of them, I consider agreement with them in others to be the most minor of political virtues.
Every day, whatever you believe, remind yourself that it is possible to be a good person and share a fervent commitment to democratic values and institutions and yet disagree with you about many of things that define you politically.
Remind yourself that right now, we need a movement grounded in the pre-political commitments—a movement in which we all protect the space to disagree about the many things about which we can and should and will disagree.
Keep the tent big, people, and always keep it open to those who disagree with you but are committedly democratic actors. Right now, that is by far the most important thing.
That’s all I got.
