United We Fall: Ending America's Love Affair with the Political Center      Phil  Neisser (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008)

United We Fall uses analysis of American history, group behavior, and political theory to challenge conventional wisdom by claiming that the world needs more disagreement, not less. The “best” views, it points out, often come from the edge rather than the “center” and on balance people stand to benefit if their ordinary political conversations, neighborhood encounters, and public debates include who they count as “radical” or as enemies of one kind or another. Such engaged disagreement often brings good ideas in from the margins (where all ideas begin) and, even more important, it counters demonization and misunderstanding, these being the two biggest obstacles to effective problem-solving as well as the root causes of terrorism and unjust violence.  To put it another way, the rejection of the fable of “United We Stand” is essential in the battle to defend security, freedom, and democracy. 

Main Points

* U.S. history is marked by many episodes of disagreement failure, where harm was done and problems went unsolved because people failed to share and understand ideas and experiences that were playing an important role in the situation at hand.

*Cross-border public talk is even more important to democracy than elections; indeed it’s what makes elections meaningful registers of public opinion and useful guides in the creation of public policy. 

*Conspiracy thinking about power is widespread and often stands in the way of effective disagreement, problem solving, and community building. Disagreement events that cross borders of serious difference can help replace conspiracy thinking with more realistic and generous ideas about how the world works.

*The problem of the mass media is not political bias on the left or the right so much as a reliance on official sources, an excessive concern to appear neutral, and an overuse of formula. The media tend to either skirt disagreement or turn it into a spectacle.  A more pro-disagreement world of news and entertainment would make for a more pro-disagreement public, and vice-versa.

*The idea that a nation must be united in order to be strong in the face of its enemies is not verified by history, fact, or logic. On the contrary, national strength of the lasting kind requires the presence of competing radical perspectives – including criticism of the nation itself – in the public realm of debate, discussion, and decision-making.

*In today’s disagreement-unfriendly environment, multiculturalism tends to be misunderstood and unfairly vilified; either turned into a mushy celebration of “difference” that doesn’t challenge and teach or made into manipulative pseudo-conversations that assume that certain people need to be “educated” by others. What’s needed instead is the pro-disagreement multiculturalism of principled listening.

*A pro-disagreement ethic needs to be incorporated into civic education programming at the college level, used to transform discussions about race-related issues, and brought into the ways people think about and combat terrorism.

*The highest form of community is one where disagreement thrives, where people enjoy meaning, membership, and bonds of obligation but also have freedom of the mind. This combination becomes possible when community members regularly cross borders to encounter opposing ideas and learn of different experiences. Such enounter, and the resulting disagreement with others, is what enables a person to disagree with themselves, and it’s only by means of such self-disagreement and reflection that one is able to change her or his views on a subject. That is freedom of the mind.

 *It’s not easy to walk the line between generosity of spirit, on one side, and political and ethical conviction, on the other.  Doing so requires a pro-disagreement sensibility, and that means having faith in what one stands for, while also having faith in the higher truth that one’s opponents always have something worthwhile to say. Such faith is possible, but it will suffer or even wither without the support of widespread disagreement practices.