David Brooks Quotes
We sometimes talk about democracy as if it’s just about voting, and the stuff that happens in legislatures. But, at its core, liberal democracy is a series of concrete human encounters: persuasion, argument, negotiation, compromise. It’s one viewpoint encountering a bunch of other viewpoints in hopes of finding some positive way forward. For liberal democracy to function, we must be able to understand one another to some degree, to see one another’s viewpoints, to project respect across difference and disagreement.
While most talk show radio hosts in the political arena were highly partisan and not very polite about opinions contary to theirs and their major audience, Rehm was a real standout who not only was civil to all people regardless of view point but over her decades of broadcasting, always reminded her audience to also be so with suggestions like this classic.
David Brooks is a conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. He has worked as a film critic for The Washington Times, a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception, a contributing editor at Newsweek, and The Atlantic Monthly, and a commentator on NPR and the PBS NewsHour.
