‘National Conversations’ leave us all mute

No matter the specific issue, the folks inside the Beltway prefer to repeat the same old rhetorical tropes. And their personal favorite is no doubt calling for a “national conversation.” James Taranto of the WSJ has compiled a list of recent “conversation” invocations here. Last month, President Obama urged “a national conversation about mental health.” The White House website is apparently starting a “National Conversation on Responsible Fatherhood and Strong Communities.” Over the past year, Obama has called for a national conversation on climate change, the NSA, and gun control.

Conservatives are rightfully wary of these kinds of “conversations,” because they usually entail a lot of browbeating rather than true discourse. A conversation, by nature, requires numerous voices, but the DC characters tend to summon such conversations precisely when they’re hoping to drown-out opposing views. Last week, Obama paid lip-service to this frustration in his impromptu press conference on the George Zimmerman verdict when he said:

There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race. I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.

I’d like to go further than that. Appealing to national conversation is so ridiculous because a “conversation” with over 300 million people is logically impossible. Conversations occur on the local level. We have conversations with our family members, friends, neighbors, and coworkers everyday. But how in the world are we supposed to chat with “the nation”? Even if we actually wanted to, we can’t. It’s an absurd abstraction. Sure, the Internet and national media network allow us to interact with a relative in California or a like-minded blogger in Texas or a favorite newspaper columnist in New York. But these interactions are still occurring inside the institutional frameworks of family and the “public association” of newspaper readership, which Tocqueville discusses in Book II of Democracy in America. They are still, to a degree, localized within voluntary associations and self-selecting groups of people based on blood ties or common interests.

It’s true that there have been significant historical moments when Americans were all discussing the same topic—eg. Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, or 9/11. However, those conversations were still happening among friends and family. You can’t speed-dial the president to express your fear and awe.

Thinking historically, I decided to revisit the Federalist Papers. If ever there was a time to urge a “national conversation” it would have been when Americans were weighing whether or not to ratify the Constitution, right? Not quite.

Even as Federalists calling for national union among the states, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison acknowledged that political reflection occurs at the local and individual level. The thought of President Obama turning to Reddit to influence voters would probably have given them a heart attack on the spot.

Hamilton, surely the most nationalistic of the Founders, starts off in Federalist No. 1 by writing that the fate of the Union is reserved to the American people by virtue of their “conduct and example” and “reflection and choice.” That kind of republican behavior doesn’t happen when we’re all mindlessly gathered round the teleprompter—or more likely, half-watching to the CNN announcer report on those who were half-listening to Obama read off the teleprompter.

John Jay strikes a similar note, remarking in Federalist No. 2:

[I]t certainly would not be wise in the people at large to adopt these new political tenets, without being fully convinced that they are founded in truth and sound policy.

In order for Americans to embrace the new Constitution, they needed absolute convincing, which meant reflecting and organizing as localities and states and then, if they were in agreement, adopting the Constitution’s new “political tenets” at large. Somehow, I doubt today’s political elites wish us to be “fully convinced.” Rather, they pray we’ll be just listless enough to allow their particular bill to pass or for them to eek out another election.

James Madison, my personal favorite of the Founders, says it best in Federalist No. 46 when he suggests that it is beneficial to the republic for people to be more attached to their respective states than the national administration:

With the affairs of these, the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant: and with the members of these, will a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal acquaintance and friendship and of family and party attachments (emphasis mine).

In Madison’s assessment, people are naturally included to be conversant with those who belong to their mutual local attachments—to such an extent that national interests will not trump the priorities of communities and states.

We’ve come a long way since Madison’s day. A return to the localized American spirit of the 18^th century will only occur if our political elites and their communication staffs stop haranguing us and let us get back to our actual daily conversations.