Unity08. A people's movement to take our country back.

Michael Silverstein is a Senior Fellow at the Silverwood Institute.

To bring about greater unity among Americans in these most divisive of times, two approaches immediately come to mind. Civility is one. If people addressed issues in a more civil manner and with greater respect to opposing views, we would gradually become more unified.

Focusing on areas of common agreement rather than on things about which we vehemently disagree is another obvious path toward greater unity. Though we certainly disagree about many specific issues, we also certainly agree on most of the basic principles that underpin our political system. Change the focus and you boost the sense of unity.

Both these obvious ways to increase a sense of national unity are of course well worth pursuing. Both, however, are long-term solutions. Let me therefore propose a more immediate means of reaching the same goal. It's one that may seem counter-intuitive at first hearing. But I truly believe it's the best hope to do the job in the shortest possible time. To achieve more unity, we need more institutional disunity.

In recent years we've had what in many ways is the worst possible institutional governance in these United States. We've had one party rule by a strongly ideological party with a slender (a very slender) national mandate. This, more than any disagreements over specific issues, is what has fractured our national unity to an alarming, indeed, a frightening, extent.

People in this country have almost always strongly disagreed about important matters. This is not only a natural, it's a necessary ingredient of any true democracy. What has caused such disunity in recent years is that no real institutional mechanism has been operating in national politics that gives people of different views an opportunity to turn those views into actual policy. Disagreement has thus morphed into disunity.

The "big tent" that in previous years accurately described both the Democrat and Republican parties has been replaced by small tent parties of right and left, parties of out-of-date liberals and radical conservatives. Big tent parties meant that even when a single party controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, both sides of the political spectrum got a piece of the policy-making action. This was even more true when one party controlled one end of the avenue and the other party the other end.

Today's near total, small tent control of that all important avenue gives outsiders little or no say in policy making. It's a situation that brings to mind the title of Harlan Ellison¹s spooky classic, "I Want To Shout But I Have No Mouth." It's also a sure-fire prescription for not getting the kind of compromises that allow unity to grow from disagreement, comity from hostility.

And make no mistake. If small tent Democrats succeed in winning the Congress this year and the White House in 2024 from small tent Republicans, the scary disunity we’ve witnessed in the Bush years will not just fester - it will almost certainly get worse.

What, then, is the best way to most rapidly bring about a greater sense of national unity based on ensuring that all views don't just get a hearing but a place at the decision making table? More institutional disunity is the answer. Divide the power-making function in Washington. View those who disagree with you not as enemies but as necessary negotiating partners.

Disunify the seats of power. And you reunify the nation.