What Do We Have to Agree On?

This piece ran in the newspapers in early May, 2025.

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People are not all going to see things the same way. Our backgrounds are different. Our values are not identical. We each have our own psychological structures. People will believe different things, want different things. How are we going to deal with the inevitable disagreements?

One thing that history shows us is that much of the time, in a lot of places, certain basic articles of belief and feelings of allegiance have been obligatory. People might be burned at the stake or driven out of a country for not agreeing about certain things.

Then there’s the democratic way to deal with disagreement. The American Constitution declares, in effect: “Disagreement is allowed.” Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. No more burning heretics at the stake.

The very idea of “heresy” contains the insistence that there is only one right belief. And given the way many people hold their religious beliefs, it’s understandable that they’ll feel those who disagree must be wrong.

But in a democracy, there is no crime of “heresy,” because we respect the rights of others to make their own decisions about belief and allegiance. “Agree to disagree” is built into the free society.
Still, within religious groupings, some embrace a greater diversity of beliefs than others.

Tolerance of political diversity also varies from one political culture to another. The South has always been a place where opposing the majority belief — particularly on matters of race — was often punished, or at least not well accepted. A white person who openly opposed segregation, for example, was not in an enviable position.

It was a crime, in the opening decades of the twentieth century, for any teacher to contradict the Southern “Lost Cause” distortion of what the Confederate States of America had actually fought for. Punishing those who buck the group agreement has remained part of the culture.

And much the same is true now about opposing Trump.

(I heard lately of a holiday family dinner in which the Southern men who were Trump supporters taunted the women in the family who are deeply distressed by Trump’s election. An old cultural force was there expressing itself—an ethic of white men not leaving alone those who stray from the group agreement on which side we’re all on.)

I understand that it can be challenging to hold one’s own beliefs with conviction, while also being OK that others see things differently. But some cultures mold people to be more insistent on conformity of belief. The abortion issue, for example, could be resolved by saying, “Everybody gets to deal with this difficult issue according to their own beliefs.” Instead, a lot of people have a need for everyone to act in accordance with their group’s beliefs.

I also sometimes find someone’s position “unacceptable.” When it comes to who one voted for in the 2024 election, while I wouldn’t taunt someone who helped turn that election into a profound national catastrophe, I am not “accepting” of disagreement about that issue.

I wouldn’t abridge anyone’s right to their opinion. But I reserve my own right to have intense feelings – disturbed, maybe even disgusted — about people voting for what seems so obviously a threat to the survival of what’s best about America. (So obvious the nation would have been in better shape if we’d picked a random name out of a random phone book to put in the presidency.)

But still, it’s a free country.

And that’s the one thing that I’m willing to insist we all must agree upon: the defense of the Constitution. The Constitution is a pact, it is an agreement—an agreement about a way of dealing with disagreements. And that’s why the defense of the Constitution is the one thing that our Founders insisted people wielding the power of the state must swear an oath to defend.

What Americans agreed to — with their ratification of the Constitution – was to establish a way for some disagreements to simply coexist side by side (speech, etc.), while on those on which a collective decision was necessary, the disagreements would be resolved according to agreed-upon rules, that entitle the majority to make certain kinds of decisions for the whole, even over a minority that wanted things decided differently.

The Constitution is a means to allow human diversity to exist, while requiring that when the whole must act as one, the many will get their way while the fewer will be overruled.

Our Founders knew from history that tyranny arises if the ruler’s power isn’t checked, and war arises if the state can’t govern the nation. So they set up a system of liberties for each citizen, surrounded by an order that uses checks and balances — and an oath for men of honor — to protect the Constitution that dictates how laws can be enacted that are enforced on everyone.

So we Americans would be foolish not to insist that everyone agree on the Constitution. Because that enables us to live with (some semblance of) liberty and justice for all.

But of course, one of the defining qualities of this moment is that we have an electorate that didn’t do its part to protect the Constitution, and now a President is assaulting the very structures (the Constitution and the Rule of Law) that Americans long ago agreed to maintain.