Third Way Dispatch: Category Culture

Common Ground Rules

2009-06-16T10:20:00-06:00

President Obama recently delivered his much anticipated Notre Dame commencement speech. With the divide over abortion at the top of everyone’s mind, the President chose to tell the success story of the incredibly diverse six member Civil Rights Commission appointed by President Eisenhower that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As Obama retells it:

“Years later, President Eisenhower asked [Commission participant and then-Notre Dame President] Father Ted how on Earth he was able to broker an agreement between men of such different backgrounds and beliefs. And Father Ted simply said that during their first dinner in Wisconsin, they discovered that they were all fishermen. And so he quickly readied a boat for a twilight trip out on the lake. They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history. “

It was Father Ted’s decision to lean into the commonality of the group at the outset that fostered an atmosphere of productivity and success. My own experience matches the lesson in this story: The key to success for a Common Ground initiative is that it identify and embellish upon the shared values in the group. As Third Way’s Culture Program Director and architect of two common ground initiatives- one around abortion and the other about bridging the cultural divide between progressives and Evangelical Christians (the Come Let Us Reason Together initiative), I have been asked write a piece for the debut of RH Reality Check’s new common ground on abortion website about how to find common ground. Below, I share with you my own discoveries, as corroborated in many places by leading common ground voices. There are four necessary steps, no matter what the issue on the table, to achieving long-lasting common ground:

1. Find the right people

2. Establish that common ground isn’t about compromising principles

3. Focus on the commonalities but embrace the differences, and

4. Don’t stretch it

1. Find the Right People The process must start with the right “guide.” Although often the best guide is thought to be outside of the group, the reality is that most guides will have a take on the issue that he or she necessarily brings to the table, whether public or private. In fact, my own experience dictates that the guide may have the most trust and success when he or she is so candid about his or her position as to be a participant officially representing one of the two sides at the table. Third Way, a pro-choice and progressive organization, directed both of its common ground initiatives as an explicitly interested party. Father Ted, also a participant, led the Civil Rights Commission conversation. The guide must also have the passion of Father Ted for capitalizing on the places of commonality. Even with the right guide, however, the project is doomed without the right participants. And though most Americans when asked like the idea of common ground (e.g. 74% of respondents in Third Way’s national abortion survey want their elected official to look for common ground on the abortion issue), you must be selective to find the right people. Above all else, the participants must be courageous, have a strong sense of self, and be confident. Every key participant I have worked with in my initiatives has fit this bill. The group Search for Common Ground, leaders in this field for over 25 years, explain well why these traits are so important: “As human beings we have an instinctive, emotional response to conflict that is often based on fear. ... A leap of faith is required to move from an adversarial response to a non-adversarial one. It takes character and courage to make that shift.” The participants must also believe that finding common ground is good in and of itself and that it will ultimately help achieve at least some of their end goals.

2. Establish that common ground isn’t about compromising principles Common ground should not and does not entail compromising principles on either side. Without this ground rule, participants simply will not be able to stay the common ground course without feeling like they are being disloyal to themselves (what I call the “ick factor”) and without being devoured by those in their base. (Truth be told, they may nonetheless be devoured, but that’s another story and another reason for the “courageous” requirement above). President Obama embraced this notion at Notre Dame, when after explaining where there is common ground on abortion, he acknowledged: “Understand-I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away.” Search for Common Ground also gets at this principle when they explain that common ground is “[n]ot having two sides meet in the middle, but having them identify something together that they can aspire to and are willing to work towards.”

3. Focus on the commonalities, but embrace the differences You cannot achieve common ground without first identifying the shared values of the group and using them to build a foundation. For the Come Let Us Reason Together initiative, we spent a whole year identifying and writing up the shared foundational values behind such controversial social issues as abortion, gay and lesbian issues and the role of religion in the public square before we successfully tackled what a common ground policy agenda would look like. Identifying these common values is what enables the group to think together, unencumbered by fear and false assumptions, and ultimately to succeed in locating common ground action steps. At the same time, you wouldn’t all be at the table were it not for your differences, so you might as well embrace them. A skilled guide will actually go further and figure out how to employ some key differences to help motivate one side or another to find common ground in the hardest places. It was powerful motivation for our Evangelical Christian friends in finding common ground on gay and lesbian equality to point out to them that many gay and lesbian Americans feel that Evangelical Christians dislike them and wish them ill. Similarly, we helped motivate some of our pro-choice friends to find common ground on abortion by pointing out that many Americans do not realize that pro-choicers agree that abortion is morally complex and would like to reduce the need for abortion.

4. Don’t stretch it Don’t go beyond the agreement you’ve got. Shortly after the Come Let Us Reason Together group debuted its common ground governing agenda, which included an abortion policy, President Obama repealed the controversial Mexico City policy or “global gag rule.” This repeal, which freed up funds for birth control to go to poor women in developing countries, arguably fit into our agreement, which already embraced increasing access to birth control for low-income American women. Except it didn’t. We had never discussed the Mexico City policy repeal as a group, and this policy had always been highly politically charged and embroiled in the abortion debates. Before we had time to raise it, reporters called Third Way to inquire whether the groups’ common ground abortion approach included the repeal. Though it was totally in our right to try to persuade the group to support the repeal, we absolutely could not presume to speak for the group about so loaded an issue. I have high hopes for RH Reality Check’s On Common Ground forum, though also some undeniable trepidation, based only on how badly I want this experiment to work. My hope is that no one enters the conversation with the nagging feeling that they are the fish and that everyone instead, in the words of the President, “[r]emember[s] in the end, we are all fishermen.”

End Note: I wrote this article before the murder of Dr. George Tiller. This sad and shocking moment in history contains many lessons, including one with regard to finding common ground. Tragedies like this present an opportunity for those on opposite sides of an issue to come together around shared values, and to decry such behavior as abhorrent and anti-American. In this case, the two communities did just that. Here is the joint statement from pro-life and pro-choice religious leaders condemning George Tiller’s murder as offensive to all of them.

Scalia to NRA: Get a New Argument

2008-06-30T08:52:00-06:00

Imagine this. You’ve been invited to give the keynote address at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. You stand throngs of thousands with the American flag behind you and the words ‘… cold dead hands’ emblazoned on a screen. You begin:

“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia. (Wild cheers)

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. (scattered murmurs)

“Nothing in the [DC gun ban decision] should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill (audible groans), or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings (a collective gasp), or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. (booing)

“[There is] another important limitation on the right to keep and bear arms. (the sound of magazine clips being loaded)

“The sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ This limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’ (a warning shot is fired into the rafters)

“Nor, correspondingly, does our analysis suggest the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents. (Medics are called)

These are the exact words (minus the stage directions) in the Scalia decision. And if you happen to be wondering why there has been muted reaction from the NRA, why Wayne LaPierre looked so uncomfortable talking about the decision on Chris Matthews, why NRA hatchet man Chris Cox could only call it a “monumental decision” in a press statement it is because it is what it is: a stinker for the NRA.

The entire NRA argument for the past 40 years is that gun laws would lead to gun confiscation. They warned that every new restriction was a slippery slope, a potential avalanche toward the rock bottom of abandonment of gun rights. Justice Scalia just told them to get a new argument.

The Scalia decision overturns the DC gun ban and it may effect a few other local laws, but the big laws on the books and the big proposed laws are all safe – the Brady Law, assault weapons ban, gun show loophole bill, reporting of secondary sales, beefing up the background check system, and on the state level – licensing, registration, permits to purchase and limitations on concealed carry.

There is a reason the NRA never wanted this case to go to court. It wasn’t because they feared losing. They feared winning. And they won. They won the skirmish over DC and lost the war on whether gun rights and gun restrictions can coexist. The most conservative court in eons said they could and they should.

Democracy: A Journal of Ideas - Deepen Gun Ownership

2008-03-20T12:26:00-06:00

I am a big fan of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and so I was especially pleased to be asked by them to submit a piece in their special “What’s Next?” edition. My submission is about guns and about the fact that there are 280 million of them in private hands while there are also 300,000 gun crimes. That means that 279,700,000 guns did nothing wrong last year. It also means that we need a new strategy to go after gun crime and target the 300,000 problem guns as expertly as possible, while leaving the rest alone as practically as possible. Here is the link to the article – Deepen Gun Ownership.

In recent election cycles, the greatest feat of liberal tight-rope walking has occurred not over abortion, but gun safety. Candidates talk about renewing the assault weapons ban, then mumble something about the rights of hunters. But there is a better way to take on this issue–one that would yield real reductions in violence without adversely impacting law-abiding gun owners.

There are 280 million firearms in private hands in America, and last year there were about 300,000 gun crimes. That means that at least 279,700,000 guns did nothing wrong. We also know that in 89 percent of crimes, the person using the gun was not the person who originally bought it. In 34 percent of crimes, the firearm was bought in one state and used in a crime in another. And in 32 percent of crimes, the firearm was less than three years old.

This indicates that the root of America’s gun crime problem is not the number of guns in the hands of Americans, but an extensive web of gun trafficking operations that funnel firearms to criminals. In some cases, the trafficking operations cover long distances. Nearly 40 percent of all crime guns recovered in New Jersey and New York came from Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. Nine out of 10 crime guns changed hands between the first purchase (which was likely legal) to the last purchase (which was certainly illegal). What we need, then, is a new national strategy to reduce gun violence: Don’t restrict gun rights, but instead deepen the sense of gun ownership.

The first step is to make gun trafficking a federal crime, not a term of art. There is only one statute on the federal books that deals even indirectly with gun trafficking–a vague, loophole-ridden law that allows only federally licensed gun stores “to engage in the business” of dealing in firearms. Since federal law allows any individual to sell his or her own firearms to anyone else, the “engaged in the business” bar is virtually insurmountable. And since any individual may also sell firearms without performing a background check, asking for identification, or keeping any sort of record, the requirement that individuals not knowingly sell to criminals is merely a suggestion. That is why federal prosecutors in 29 states filed five or fewer cases related to trafficking behavior over a recent three-year period.

Trafficking should be redefined as selling multiple guns out of a home, car, street, or park that have two or more of the following characteristics: obliterated serial numbers, are stolen, are new in the box, or are sold to underage buyers or people with felony records. This would still allow individuals to privately sell firearms to people they know or trust, and it would put the onus on sellers to demand a background check for those they don’t.

Beyond the new law, finding traffickers isn’t that hard. Investigators can readily aggregate the crime gun trace data that we now have–data that identifies the original buyers and sellers of hundreds of thousands of guns later used in crime. They will discover that about 1 percent of the nation’s gun stores are the source of more than half of the nation’s crime guns. And they will discover that a select group of individuals repeatedly turn up as the original purchasers of guns later linked to crimes. This is not a quirk of fate; these people are gun traffickers.

Moreover, investigators can easily check every gun recovered in a crime against the National Stolen Firearms Registry, which contains the serial numbers of two million stolen guns. Under federal law, possession of a stolen firearm adds five years to a prison sentence. True, the criminal apprehended with a stolen gun is usually not the person who lifted it. But those five years are a great bargaining chip–one state and federal prosecutors consistently leave on the table–to determine the person who actually sold the criminal the gun. Play the same game with obliterated serial numbers–another five-year penalty under federal law. An obliterated serial number hides the trafficker and provides no benefit to the person using the gun in a violent crime.

Finally, we need to close the gun-show loophole. It is no coincidence that 13 of the top 14 crime-gun-exporting states do not require background checks for sales at shows. This loophole is exploited by buyers who obtain used guns to resell on the streets.

What ultimately matters isn’t the number of guns. It’s the number of bad people who have them. With a national firearms trafficking strategy, we can pull the roots out of the illegal operations that kill and destroy people and communities.

Howard Dean Picks a Winner

2007-11-26T16:04:00-07:00

In 2006, DNC Chairman Howard Dean ordered the Party to spend a bunch of money in Philadelphia. He poured money in so local organizers could put together an effective operation. For this, he was pilloried by folks inside his own party.

The catch is that this wasn’t the City of Brotherly Love – it was Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Back then, Dean was criticized by many in and out of the Democratic Party, for his “50-State Strategy.” He was widely mocked for his focus on party building in deep red states. Why, they asked, was Dean throwing away money by paying people to “wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose?”

Dean believed, as we did, that it was folly for a major party to write off large swaths of the United States, and that the only way to build a national party was to make it truly national.

Dean has, it appears, been completely vindicated. First, the dire warnings that his spending on the long term would imperil the Party’s short term prospects in 2006 were laid to rest with the rout that turned the Congress over to the Democrats. Now, with the retirement of John Warner and Trent Lott, it appears that the Democrats have the real prospect of picking up a Senate seats in Virginia and, of all places, Mississippi.

This is a truly extraordinary turnaround – until recently, the Democrats held only four Senate seats in the 13 states of the Old Confederacy, two in Arkansas, one in Louisiana, and one in Florida. With Jim Webb’s victory in Virginia in 2006, Mary Landrieu’s bright prospects in 2008, and the two new openings, Democrats have a real chance of holding 7 Deep South seats in 2009, with others perhaps on the way (I’m looking at you, Kay Bailey Hutchison).

Combine that with some southern House pickups and Democrat Governors in Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, not to mention other red states like Montana, Kansas and Wyoming, it is now hard to argue that Dean’s vision of a truly national party isn’t taking hold.

I’ll bet Michael Moore (not the Sicko guy, the former AG of Mississippi and the likely Democratic Senate nominee) is pretty happy that Howard Dean helped his state party rebuild. And you’ve got to admit – Chairman Dean really knows how to pick ‘em.

Third Way Calls For a Halt to the Culture Wars

2007-10-12T07:50:00-06:00

Yesterday, Third Way and a group of national Evangelical leaders held a press conference and announced something audacious and potentially historic – we called for a halt to the culture wars.

We did so with the release of Third Way’s new paper Come Let Us Reason Together: A Fresh Look at Shared Cultural Values Between Evangelicals and Progressives. EJ Dionne devoted his Washington Post column to our paper on Tuesday, A Culture War Treaty, and I discussed it with Christian conservative radio host Paul Edwards on the Paul Edwards Program this week.

This paper not only seeks a truce in the battles between progressives and Evangelicals, it offers concrete proposals for common ground on the toughest matters that have divided the two sides: abortion, gay and lesbian issues, and the role of religion in the public square.

At the release of the paper, Third Way stood with Pastor Joel Hunter, a one-time President-Elect of the Christian Coalition, Professor David Gushee, a leading Evangelical thinker and columnist and our Evangelical co-authors, Dr. Randy Brinson, who runs Redeem the Vote and Joe Battaglia, President of the Christian media firm Renaissance Communications. The press conference was co-sponsored by Faith in Public Life, a group that helped connect Third Way with many of these Evangelical leaders. You can watch the press conference here.

The paper is supported by more than 20 groups from both sides of the divide, Evangelical and progressive. They span the gamut from the Human Rights Campaign and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to New York Divinity School President Paul DeVries and Texas megachurch pastor Bob Roberts. You can read all of the statements of support here.

The paper includes original analysis of the most recent public opinion research on Evangelicals, which presents a new formula for understanding the diversity of the Evangelical community. We found that roughly 1/5 of Evangelicals are progressive already, 1/3 are moderates (even on tough cultural issues) and 1/2 are conservative. That means that about 1/2 of American Evangelicals – about 25 million people – are open to progressive points of view.

Our paper also offers a corresponding set of recommendations on how progressives and Evangelicals can find common ground approaches to issues such as reducing the need for abortion, respecting the role of religion in the public square and affirming the human dignity of gay and lesbian people.

I hope you’ll take a look.

Abortion Reduction Has Its Day

2007-07-23T08:53:00-06:00

The Democrats are showing signs of change on abortion. Yesterday, the Democratically controlled House easily passed an appropriations bill that contains a major – and brand new – abortion initiative. But unlike Democratic abortion bills of yore, this one brings together both sides of the debate and is aimed squarely at abortion reduction.

This “Reducing the Need for Abortions Initiative,” which grew out of a bill crafted by Tim Ryan (pro-life D-OH) and Rosa DeLauro (pro-choice D-CT) passed as part of the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education funding bill. It invests real money – $647 million – in reducing the need for abortion by funding programs that address the circumstances that lead to abortion. It contains provisions that prevent unintended pregnancies, such as increasing the funding for the nation’s only dedicated family planning program (Title X) and also creates and funds a new teen pregnancy prevention program at CDC. At the same time, it includes measures designed to help support pregnant women and new families who need more support to go forward with their pregnancies, such as increased funding for child care, after-school programs, and nurse home visitation programs for new moms. It also funds an adoption awareness campaign at CDC and domestic violence prevention.

In proposing and then passing this bill, the Democrats have made a bold new statement about their changed outlook on abortion. First, they are showing that they are dedicated to finding common ground on this divisive issue. As Congressman Ryan put it: “It is our moral obligation to address those issues with which all sides agree. Whether you are pro-life like me or pro-choice like my friend Congresswoman DeLauro, the common ground we must build upon is our serious desire to reduce the rate of abortions.”

Second, – the Party is now letting pro-life Democrats inside the tent. We saw this with their loyalty to Bob Casey, Jr. in Pennsylvania – his dad was barred from the podium at the 1992 Democratic Convention for his pro-life views, but now-Senator Casey (who shares his father’s views on abortion) was warmly embraced by the Party during his Senate run last year. We are seeing it again in their decision to listen closely and follow the lead of pro-life Congressman Tim Ryan.

Third, by prioritizing an initiative designed to reduce the need for abortion, Democrats are making a clear statement that they understand the moral complexity of abortion.

The Democrats remain and will always be the party of abortion rights, but they are looking more and more like they are ALSO the party of reducing the need for abortion.