Beyond Comity

In 1989, as the Berlin Wall came toppling down and the Soviet Union began to fall apart, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed “the end of history.” Although he was referring to what he considered the triumph of the Western liberal idea, that phrase has acquired a variety of meanings. In a stroke of great irony, we can now observe the end, or at least hiatus, of one history: that of a truly unified United States.

Today, the US is riveted by divisions and polarization: in race, religion, ideology, politics, and more. The truth itself is clouded and contested, highlighted by the advent of “alternative facts.” Driving it all, at the core, is a growing fundamental divide in belief of what defines our nation.

It is in this context of crisis in our liberal democracy that we must consider the speech given recently by Senator Marco Rubio during the Attorney General confirmation hearings. A number of the words that were said, especially relating to broader ideas and at the beginning, were absolutely correct. Can anyone contest that “debate [is] impossible if matters [become] personal?” And his statement, “I don’t know of a single nation in the history of the world that has been able to solve its problems when half the people in a country absolutely hate the other half,” rings with an intuitive truth.

The superficial correctness of some of these larger sentiments, however, only makes the faults in the speech more egregious.

Beneath Senator Rubio’s words is a deep bias. To claim that one half of the country hates the other seems itself a gross exaggeration, and it also implies that one side is specifically to blame. However, the dislike, the sheer political polarization, is mutual, running in both directions, and this implication is both disingenuous and dangerous.

There is also a deliberate ignorance of reality. With a few exceptions, the recent history of Washington has been unrestrained partisanship. How can the senator proclaim with zeal that “this isn’t a partisan issue,” when partisanship is what has driven Washington? Was the confirmation of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court not a partisan issue? Or the budget conflict that led to government shutdown? When does partisanship end and begin, and on what types of issues?

Perhaps most importantly, the senator does not go far enough; he does not carry his arguments to their logical conclusion. It sounds good to declare the essential necessity of decorum and evenness in debate. While true, he fails to acknowledge a key component of that necessity: that it, debate, is a prerequisite to compromise. Compromise drove the founding and history of this nation. It is not enough to simply acknowledge the validity of the other side’s argument but not work together, not take the best of each side’s stances, and not craft a better solution for all that is acceptable to all. That, I would argue, was the aim of the founders in crafting a government founded on debate and checks between branches of government.

Senator Rubio acknowledged that when his colleagues disagree with him, he tells himself “I don’t agree, but I know why they’re doing it; because they represent people who believe that.” There is a difference, however, between acknowledging and understanding, between noting and incorporating. Even now, we witness Congressmen falling in line with their party more and more. This is a fault of both major parties, but the end result is the same regardless: Compromise continues to slide away and the Senate becomes less and less an institution predicated on comity.

I applaud the senator for many of his words and for driving at the heart of the dysfunction that has increasingly characterized our government. In his own words, “we are reaching a point in this republic where we’re not going to be able to solve the simplest of issues.” In that, he was completely right.

It is a shame, then, that there is much he omitted, whether in in the interest of party lines or his own belief and conception of our ideals. But these omissions only allow our ills to fester, and if we continue to fail to confront them, we will indeed witness an end of our history, in one way or another.

Darwin Yang ’19, a History concentrator, lives in Leverett House.