This won’t work, the Overton window is shifting too fast. We went from ‘segregation is a political issue’ to ‘segregationists are bad people’ over 60 years, ‘homosexuality is a political issue’ to ‘gay marriage is a human right’ in about 30, ‘transexuality is a political issue’ to talking about bravery in about 5 years and ‘immigration is a valid issue’ to ‘no human being is illegal in what looks like 2.

Rapid change means there is little reason to get invested in conversation- after all the positions will shift soon so all the connections and information you get will shortly be worthless.

I read the article at VS. What a condescending, insulting piece of writing. The viewpoint is that liberals have the higher moral ground and they must help conservatives to join the conversation, even though they are wrong (my perception of the article).

There are “explanations” as to how groups can reach out “toward keeping conservatives comfortable,” as if liberals feel they are dealing with children to be patronized instead of adults that just happen to have a different, but EQUAL viewpoint.

This is highlighted in the ending section: “What this means is that the very nature of most civility initiatives begins with a frame that many conservatives don’t fundamentally share with their more liberal neighbors.”

Could it be that initiatives need to be designed with a frame to be inclusive for both liberals and conservatives instead of one conservatives don’t fundamentally share?

Maybe there would be more participation from conservatives if they were not vilified (“the enemy” by Obama, “basket of deplorables” by Clinton, etc) daily by liberals and the press (a redundancy). Asking participation from such a publicly vilified cross-section of America is a challenge, as they may not believe it is not just a set up for ridicule of their positions by the press to be expounded upon by the progressives. People naturally do not like to be attacked for their viewpoints. This is the behavior that resulted in Trump.

Maybe the start of civility should be your conversations with media regarding facts in reporting and presentation (ABC,NBC,CBS CNN, MSNBX, FOX, NYT, WaPo, LAT, Politico,etc), but where are the eyeballs and clicks without discord, bias and outright deceit. When there is fairness, there may be better participation from other than pseudo-conservatives.

The founders of civilpolitics.org appear all to be on the liberal side of nearly every issue (Haidt has actively worked to elect progressives and defeat conservatism), but thankfully, do recognize the need to understand the side they do not agree with. If the goal of civil conversation is to be achieved, the bias cannot be that the conservative position is wrong, but to be tolerated. From the viewpoint of conservatives, too often, they follow that same premise.

“Challenges notwithstanding, the rewards you’ll get for your efforts to welcome conservatives are both essential to your success and will be transformational for you.”

The rewards will come when you are willing to welcome conservatives to the conversation as equals.