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8 ways to find common ground

Gridlock plagues Washington. Polarizing soundbytes get constant play in the 24/7 news cycle. The culture wars rage on. But these Monitor op-ed writers suggest there’s more common ground than meets the eye. Here are eight powerful perspectives on the possibilities for meeting in the middle.

3. Class warfare. War on teachers. War on business. War in America?

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Psychologist Jeremy Shapiro writes: “Fierce partisans on both the left and right, not content to simply point out errors in each others’ reasoning, frequently accuse each other of outright malevolence.”.

Shapiro continues: 

While the “war” metaphor may win media coverage and rile voters, it prevents Americans from having the type of debate that could lead to more effective responses to our society’s problems.

The problem, Shapiro explains, is that “The war metaphor means something different; it says opponents are not well intentioned but are engaged in a purposeful attempt to harm.”

He offers a list compiled from mainstream politicians and commentators:

The left accuses the right of waging: The right accuses the left of waging
War on the poor Class warfare
War on working people War on business
War on the middle class War on the middle class (yes, both)
War on immigrants War on savers
War on the family War on the family (again, both)
War on children War on marriage
War on the elderly War on the American way of life
War on public employees War on religion
War on teachers War on Christmas

Shapiro finishes:

Our politicians and pundits should give up this manipulative form of rhetoric. And citizens should support leaders who exchange this cheap emotional ploy for the hard work of evidence-based reasoning and persuasion.

Jeremy Shapiro is a psychologist and director of YouCutTheBudget.com.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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