Charlottesville will move on

Charlottesville will move on

Prologue: This article presents the case of growing hysteria against our own history and the attitude to morally correct the historical wrongs.
Charlottesville incident gives us an opportunity to look into the reasons and areas to correct in order to prevent these happenings and loss of innocent lives.

Last weekend several thousand alt-right activists and white supremacists came to Charlottesville, ostensibly to protest against the plan to move a statue of Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park.

We start with a paradox : It was only because we live in a strong democracy, with a robust commitment to free speech, that these people were able to march in the first place. Narrowly speaking, their presence was in a way an expression of our democratic values, even as they sought to destroy them. In response, we must find an answer that both fights back against voices of hate, but at the same time stays true to the values that undergird our community in the first place.

We talk a lot about the brilliant mechanics of the Constitution: its checks and balances, its separation of powers, its amendments that articulate and develop them further. Those institutions are like the limbs and muscles of our body politic. But the system is nothing without its soul — the norms and values that enable us to collectively solve problems without force, violence and intimidation.

The people who visited terror last weekend, were using the mechanics of the Constitution — freedom of speech, freedom of assembly — to attack its soul, to set fire to the pillars of civility, deliberation, compromise, tolerance and reconciliation that underwrite the system of government.

Some have said that the answer, in the wake of Charlottesville, must be to restrict the rights of white nationalists, to alter the Constitution’s mechanics in order to save its soul. But that is a dangerous path.

Democracy, like a muscle, needs to be worked out. But it’s not mere stimulus and response. We now have to make the right choices. What does this mean, practically?

It means that companies must be more vigilant about their role in the public sphere. They must use their weight to press for tolerance and diversity, whether that means pressuring states on transgender bathroom laws or refusing to sell services to groups that advocate hate.

It means that our colleges and universities must re-engage with the public, to see themselves, as they once did, as sites for community building and education. And they must recommit to instilling the values of deliberation and civility in their students.

It means that news organizations must redouble their efforts not only to convey correct facts, but to present the contextual and fact-checking resources that readers need to understand what’s happening.

It means mentors teaching young folks that they don’t always have to fight to get what they want, that carrots often work better than sticks. It means government agencies using negotiation rather than just mandates. It means politicians agreeing to sit down together and negotiate, rather than lob hopeless bombs.

And it means governments finally telling the truth about race in our history. It means strong new programs to build bridges between isolated communities. And yes, it means political parties and organizations actively reaching out to the economically dispossessed, who feel left behind by today’s cultural and economic changes.

Madison famously asserted that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” For that, he’s been tarred as an eternal pessimist. But he also wrote, “Human beings’ basic qualities deserved esteem and confidence.”