A point I and a number of others have made over and over to little or no avail: if we don't start building bridges to the other side, no matter how tough and risky the work, America will become permanently divided and fall.
I would ask all that bother to read this to please open their heart and mind in at least an objective view if not a welcoming one for the sake of our beloved nation.
Cut and paste from
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/samrocha/2014/05/fear-of-generosity/"If you speak to someone about something controversial, like abortion or war, in intimate and full confidence, you will usually hear a vastly different story from the one we routinely hear and see in public, no matter what the opinion is or what side is taken. This is understandable. There are real liabilities to being open and honest. Anyone who has told the unvarnished truth many times in public has been punished for it.
"Liabilities aside, there is still a serious problem: in place of sincere, but measured, conversation and dialogue, we get defensive postures mostly intended to hold ones ground. Sometimes this gains ground, almost unwittingly, but the gains and losses come and go, the former are celebrated and the latter ignored, and soon a fear of generosity becomes the more significant outcome."
And some more:
"Ive heard it said so many times: I would be willing to consider X view, contrary to my own, and I think it has some merit, but the other side is using this to find an opening and muscle their way in. The slippery slope fallacy abounds not so much for logical reasons, but for temperamental ones. People seem to fear the possibility of granting ground or goodwill to their opposition.
"In fact, there are very few subjects of real controversy where I suspect that any side, no matter how crazy sounding, is operating out of malice or bad intentions. Sure, false consciousness plagues us all, and blind spots are always lurking, but when it comes to what people intend, I am not so sure that good intentions cant win the day.
"Of course, as Ivan Illich reminds us, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
"But conversation relies on generosity, the ability to offer your interlocutor the assumption that they are not speaking in bad faith in advance, the assumption of good will and, yes, even good intentions. If we cannot be generous, then we simply cannot communicate. There is no conversation between ungenerous combatants. We cant even fight and we dont, we just repeat the same, tired refrains to people who already agree with us and give angry gotcha replies to the ones who venture into our territory."