Eric Herr: Bridging the chasm of political polarization

Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, opens with a national commitment to individual equality and rights, implicitly recognizing and protecting the diversity of America.

Enabled by the Declaration, we bring to our communities, our state, and our country an array of backgrounds, cultures, circumstances, ideas, faiths, moral intuitions, ideas, associations, objectives, needs, hopes and more … an array that is one of our greatest strengths. Yet, this rich diversity is collapsing in the public square when faced with today’s hyper-partisan political duopoly, where winner-take-all politics thwarts any action and debases the idea of open discussion and multi-partisanship. Instead of diversity, we now face extreme political polarization that infects governments, politics, public policy, media, friendships, education, healthcare…it even reaches down to family conversations around the dinner table.