You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them.
Peggy NoonanRead
We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom. ...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.
Interpretation
We need to communicate our true desires for forgiveness and wisdom in our national life to our leaders.
In this quote, Peggy Noonan emphasizes the importance of understanding and voicing the collective desires of the populace, particularly in the context of national life. She suggests that qualities like forgiveness, grace, and maturity are essential priorities that should be recognized and reflected by political leaders, and that it is the responsibility of the citizens to continuously express these values to ensure they are represented in governance.
In practice
During a town hall meeting discussing community values.
You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them.
You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.
If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
Naps are nature's way of reminding you that life is nice, like a beautiful swinging hammock strung between birth and infinity.
When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink.
Nothing could be more dangerous to the existence of this Republic than to introduce religion into politics
The government has no money of its own. It's all your money.
Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.
But I also want to give them a pathway so that they can earn citizenship, earn a legal status, start learning English, pay a significant fine, go to the back of the line, but they can then stay here and they can have the ability to enforce a minimum wage that they're paid, make sure the worker safety laws are available, make sure that they can join a union.
What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.
The new social question is: democracy or the rule of the financial markets. We are currently witnessing the end of an era. The neoliberal ideology has failed worldwide. The U.S. movement Occupy Wall Street is a good example of this.
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