A group of high school kids are visiting the West Wing when a precautionary lockdown occurs, due to a terrorism alert. The staff are used to such events, which have become a mere inconvenience, but to reassure the students, they take turns discussing the situation in the world with them.
The subject turns to the causes of terrorism – political and religious extremism, in particular. Josh Lyman takes the ball:
“What's Islamic extremism? It's strict adherence to a particular interpretation of 7th century Islamic law as practiced by the prophet Mohammed,” he tells the kids, “and when I say ‘strict adherence,’ I'm not kidding around. Men are forced to pray, wear their beards a certain length. Among my favorites is there's only one acceptable cheer at a soccer match: ‘Allah-uh-Akbar': ‘God is great.’ If your guys are getting creamed, then you're on your own.
“Things are a lot less comic for women, who aren't allowed to attend school or have jobs. They're not allowed to be unaccompanied, and oftentimes get publicly stoned to death for crimes like not wearing a veil. I don't have to tell you they don't need to shout at a soccer match because they're never going to go to one.
“So what bothers them about us? Well, the variety of cheers alone coming from the cheap seats at Giants stadium when they're playing the Cowboys is enough for a jihad, to say nothing of street corners lined church next to synagogue, next to mosque; newspapers that can print anything they want; women who can do anything they want, including taking a rocket ship to outer space, vote, and play soccer.
“This is a plural society. That means we accept more than one idea. It offends them.”
Josh's speech here is the keynote for the episode – a summary surrounding a complex and long-standing problem in human history, not just US security, but one that almost every society has confronted at one time or another: what happens when worldviews collide. His answer – accept more than one worldview – is more poignant and profound than even he fully realizes.
In the era of the nation’s founding, Western civilization had already been through considerable rise-and-fall of various paradigms of societal rule: monarchy, autocracy, tyranny; religious, philosophical, elitist governance. All had their bad points; some had their good points.
But they all had one thing in common: one worldview was dominant; other worldviews were suppressed. Why? Because in those earlier social/political structures, one person or one class ruled everyone else. And within those structures, different worldviews were a threat to those in power.
The Founders realized that this didn’t have to be; that it must be possible to create a nation of self-governing people, after the example of the Roman Republic, but where those who ruled were drawn not from society’s elites, but rather from all quarters. Jed Bartlet said it like this:
“My great-grandfather's great-grandfather was Dr. Josiah Bartlet, who was the New Hampshire delegate to the second Continental Congress, the one that sat in session in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776, and announced to the world that we were no longer subjects of King George III, but rather a self-governing people. We hold these truths to be self-evident, they said, that all men are created equal. Strange as it may seem, that was the first time in history that anyone had bothered to write that down. Decisions are made by those who show up.”
A self-governing people – where everyone had a voice. Where multiple worldviews were welcome. Where the idea of one-worldview-rules-all – the paradigm of the nation that their parents had left behind insisted on – need not be their societal rule.
Of course, it was an incomplete idea, as the Founders themselves hadn’t yet wrapped their minds around the idea that women are as smart and capable as men, or that how much property one owns doesn’t really matter – but the general principle, that it’s okay if people think differently, was woven into the core of their ambition. The United States would be a nation whose citizens were free – free to think what they please, say what they please, and see the world as they please.
Pluralism.
Not being an anthropologist, we can safely assume that Josh Lyman didn’t fully realize that the idea of free thinking and multiple worldviews in society and government may have been the exception in Western history, but not in all of human history.
Cognitive diversity is actually the inevitable human condition. Our social and political biases are, to some degree, learned from those around us – the families we grow up in, the friends who surround us – but they are also largely a result of our cognitive tendencies, and those tendencies are genetic.
Some people are risk-takers; some are risk-averse. Some people find comfort in routine and sameness, while others enjoy the excitement of change, in the new-and-different. Some people see the safety and progress of their community as best decided by consensus, while others feel safest when someone powerful is in charge.
And because these tendencies are genetic, we’ll find all of these people in every society, every human population. Today, yesterday, and in the distant past.
Before civilization – before structured societies and government – we lived in nomadic tribes. And that great diversity in thinking and viewpoint is what kept us alive. We needed the risk-takers, the novelty-seekers, the ones who could head out into the woods or the plains and come back with food. And we needed, every bit as much, the fire-tenders – those people who were cautious, more afraid than others, who were perfectly willing to sit by the fire at night and keep it burning bright, to scare away predators.
If we’d all been risk-takers, we’d never have lasted. And if we’d all been fire-tenders, we’d never have lasted. And not just those two types, but all types. Human diversity in cognition is as deep and powerful, if not more, as human physical and social diversity.
Pluralism is why we’re alive. It’s why we thrive. And when we cluster into this likeminded group or that, from religions to political parties, we severely limit that ability to thrive.
The Founders gave us a structure, a nation, that could thrive – a government where many ways of thinking were welcome, and processes that allowed everyone to put their ideas out there for consideration without any one person or group dominating the others. Where it was the ideas, not the person or the group, that ultimately became the basis for action.
It’s no exaggeration to claim that the Founders’ template for human progress represents a decisive return to the societal framework that sustained us for almost 3,000 centuries.
In the here-and-now, 20-plus years beyond Josh’s speech and Bartlet’s history lesson, the Founders’ vision is more under threat than ever.
The United States hasn’t been as polarized, as divided, as it is in the 2020s since the Civil War. It’s Red and Blue, through and through, with each side seeing the other as existential threat.
At this writing, in the summer of 2024, the GOP is led by MAGA and Donald Trump, and is making no secret of its intention to eliminate democracy in the US altogether (see: Project 2025). The mutual demonization between Right and Left is all we see anymore.
Even SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito spoke the words (although unknowingly) when he told filmmaker Lauren Windsor (who was recording him) in June of 2024, “One side or the other is going to win.”
“I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully,” he went on to say, “but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised.”
No, Justice Alito, there is no “winning”; neither side can ever “win”. Both sides will always be there. For one side to “win”, to take control and dominate US society, culture, and governance, is to suppress and control all the other sides. And then we’re back to England 1750. We won’t be the United States anymore.
Josh is right: we need to have more than one idea. We must always accept more than one idea. We must accept that seeing things differently is our natural state, and granting each other that freedom is our natural obligation, and that our path forward must be founded on exactly that which Alito eschews: compromise. We have our differences, inevitable differences, but that’s as it should be. That’s human nature. It’s a survival tool we can’t do without.
Those who want one-party rule or extremist ideology in place to control a population aren’t just despotic; they are holding a gun to their own heads. If one side “wins,” that’s the ball game. We need differences to thrive; we need the art of compromise in our societal toolkit, in order to forge the path that’s truly best for all.
So – have more than one idea...
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