Respect

Tonight I went to the annual dinner of a conservative think tank. I was invited this year, for the first time, because I recently wrote a paper for them outlining what I view as the needed education policy reforms in my home state of Wisconsin (which, in case you're not up on this, changed from blue to red in this past election). It is safe to say I was in the minority in the room, which can be a bit of an uncomfortable feeling. The keynote speaker was the Governor-elect, and the only person in the room besides me that I recognized as having worked for our outgoing Governor was the security guard I'd seen when I had meetings with the Governor at his residence. Speaking of the Governor's mansion, the Gov-elect told a funny story about being bummed about having to spend his Saturday raking leaves rather than bow-hunting and being reminded by a friend that he won't be raking any leaves for the next four years. He's not likely to be doing much bow hunting, either, if he's anything like our current Governor -- the job basically requires you to work almost all of the time.

And while I by no means agreed with everything the Governor-elect talked about last night, I really believe that in order to solve some of our most intractable problems, urban education being one of them, we're going to have to come together and work with people whom we may have previously viewed as being on "the other side" or even "the wrong side." And I think Aretha's got it right -- the key ingredient to having this arrangement work, whether it's a man and a woman or liberals and conservatives, is respect.

Right now, I think that respect is lacking from both sides of the aisle. Against my protest, my son thinks nothing of calling the candidates he doesn't support "idiot," and as I was driving home, I saw a giant billboard that said "How's all that Hope and Change working out for ya?"

So this is my challenge, both to myself and to anyone else willing to take it on: even when we don't agree with someone's else's views or decisions, can we look not for the differences but for the commonalities? Can we then see if we can use this common ground to work toward goals that we all share -- like great schools for our kids? If we could spend less energy on blame and suspicion, might there be more room for solutions?