Tag Archives: Letting the Other Side Win

Letting the Other Side Win

Many years ago, when one of my sons played on a church baseball team, I remember a heated confrontation between players at one of the games. I don’t remember the exact play which started the argument, but the young boys, all presumably church goers, fell into a heated debate about the call. Fortunately, the leaders were able to tamp down the hostility before blows were exchanged.

Unfortunately, Americans today in the political realm too often appear in need of adult supervision. Granted the stakes are high. Abortion, election results, sexual identity, and other issues have bitterly divided us. Surely, no one can deny either the importance of the issues or the major impact of political decisions on them.

What should be questioned is our hostility, even seeming hatred, toward those who disagree with us. How can we find paths that allow disagreement, but without hatred, even on matters we consider of utmost importance, even dealing with human life?

How should we choose to fight when we lose a political round? Even when we are sure our cause is not only right but morally right?

The only acceptable path, it seems to me, is to allow the winners to win, then become members of “the loyal opposition.” To correct political directions we believe to be wrong, we have the freedom to organize peaceful campaigns, present our arguments through newspapers and social media, and talk to our friends and neighbors.

No matter how absolutely sure we are of our beliefs, no one, in fact, including us, is infallible. Surely the height of arrogance is to assume that we are.

Letting the Other Side Win

Carl Bernstein, the author, along with Bob Woodward, of All the President’s Men, has written an account of his earlier days as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. In his recent book, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recounts events he covered in the Kennedy/Johnson presidencies, beginning when he was in his teens.

When reading about the scandals, tragedies, and major political events of the 1960’s, I was struck by a sense of dé·jà vu with some of today’s events

Bernstein described a campaign rally in Maryland for George Wallace, running for president in 1968: “It was the first time I’d seen a demagogue inflame the emotions of American citizens who I’d thought were familiar to me.”

His reporting on the Wallace rally included a description of a group led by someone waving a Confederate battle flag. “When the bedlam subsided, he [Wallace] repeated his boilerplate speech about federal encroachments on states’ rights and his opposition to the civil rights bill, saying it would mean death to labor unions and private property.” Later in the speech, Wallace told the crowd, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The anger that spurred rioters on January 6, 2021, to attack the capitol is related, it seems to me, to the same emotions spurring those Wallace supporters. It also was evident in the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in the death of a protester.

Again and again, we have difficulty allowing the political process to play out when the process brings in changes we don’t like. That difficulty ignited falsehoods about stolen elections in 2020, leading finally to those January 6 riots.

The final test of democratic rule is allowing the other side to win.