In the Jan. 5 issue of The Forecaster, Edgar Allen Beem caricatured the opinions that liberals and conservatives have of one another, successfully capturing the prejudices that are contributing to the polarization of our political system. I thought he did a good job, but behind the prejudices are sets of real concerns, and it would be good if we could stop and listen to what these are.
Our country is in a bit of a bind and I think if we stopped the political rhetoric and listened to the underlying concerns that different people have we might agree on what the real problems are. It might be useful to encourage some dialog between liberals and conservatives (and libertarians and Greens as well). I don’t think it would be useful to simply have people argue with each or try to convince each other. I do think it would be useful for people to listen to people from different persuasions honestly say what is on their minds. My guess is that we might discover a good deal of underlying agreement, and might even agree about some things that need to be done.
Joseph de Rivera
Brunswick
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