Home > Work > Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt
41 " Research shows that insults actually intensify people’s opposition to one’s point of view. "
― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt
42 " Rule 2. Don’t attack or insult. Don’t even try to win. "
43 " Rule 5. Tune out: Disconnect more from the unproductive debates. "
44 " Resolve to pay attention to ideas, not just politics. "
45 " James Madison, in the fourteenth Federalist Paper, warned that the “most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rendering us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness. "
46 " John Adams believed that the cancer of faction in America was to be “dreaded as the greatest political Evil, under our Constitution. "
47 " In his farewell address, George Washington famously warned against “the baneful effects” of political enmity.41 "
48 " These are practical reasons to avoid them, but there’s the moral reason, too: they’re just plain wrong. We simply should not put up with insults, whether from the other side or our own. Indeed, I’ll take it a step further. When someone on your side insults people on the other side, it is your responsibility to take it personally and stand up for those with whom you disagree. "
49 " You know what our world needs: more love, less contempt. "
50 " Rule 3. Never assume the motives of another person. "
51 " The truth is that highly partisan conservatives and liberals are shockingly clueless about the other side—about their motives and everything else. One 2018 study from the Journal of Politics has revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year, when in fact just 2.2 percent do.13 And Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are gay or lesbian, when just over 6 percent are. "
52 " John Adams’s maxim: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”1 "
53 " Conquer anger through gentleness, unkindness through kindness, greed through generosity, and falsehood by truth. "
54 " On reflection, I realized that I am the angry one, the ill-tempered one, the miser, and the liar. My job is to conquer me. My tool for doing so is to show warm-heartedness to others, especially when they are not showing it to me. Your opportunity when treated with contempt is to change at least one heart—yours. "
55 " This is a classic weaponization of values. It’s not something that good or moral leaders should ever do. "
56 " Don’t remember this from the 2016 campaign? That’s because those words were uttered by Ronald Reagan on September 1, 1980, during a speech delivered before the Statue of Liberty. Reagan coined the phrase “Make America great again.” He used it as a gift, not a weapon. "