The American Spectator | USA News and Politics "I met with the self-appointed emissary to B. last week, and he met with me, the self-appointed emissary to B. Our mission: to breach the divide. What divide? Good question. However, we know it exists. We know it threatens the well-being of the Great Republic. We as a society cannot thrive if the reds and the blues are committed to each other’s destruction and cannot share bathrooms.
"The rot has got to where it is not only reds and blues; the two sides are divided against themselves and cannot give a simple answer to what ought to be a simple question: What do you, as a red, believe, bedrock? And you, as a blue — I am referring here to American political organizations, not redcoats and patriots — what are your basics?
"Under the circumstances, I thought to begin with what I knew, however small and of little weight in the political world; to wit, the battle of ideas, the engagement with principles and ways of thinking about them. Even here, among both reds and blues, the thinkers — sometimes called intellectuals — whose job is to explain and define key questions cannot see eye to eye or concept to concept.
"Agreeing on positions is not necessary if you agree on principles. For example, the question of whether we are a democratic republic or a republican democracy does not preclude disagreeing on setting term limits for the peoples’ representatives.
"B. and B. are magazine men. As boys, they were enthralled at how William F. Buckley Jr. had launched a magazine that became the beehive of the conservative movement. They both drew inspiration from Irving Kristol, who famously said that if you have problem, start a magazine. Now nobody knew, or appeared to care, who was writing what where.
"My response: Go back to fundamentals. Otherwise, what? You want Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene to define what conservatism is?" . . .
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