During the past few weeks I have been at several public hearings, during which I have noticed a very disconcerting trend.
We as a people are becoming more and more polarized, and less and less able to listen and comprehend.
Three public hearings come to mind — a special use permit hearing at the city level, a waste-to-energy contract hearing at the county level, and Kansas Corporation Commission hearing concerning a new power line at the regional level.
In each case "concerned citizens" came to the hearings to "get answers to their questions."
I wish that's really what was going on out there. But what is really happening is people come with an agenda, and they really are not looking for answers. We have forgotten that a conversation requires a speaker and a listener who switch roles once in a while. We all would rather just be speakers, and forget the listening part.
To get answers and to better understand what might be happening and why, one must be willing to listen.
Sitting in the back row, elbowing your buddies and cracking jokes while others are talking doesn't qualify. Assuming you know all there is to know on a given topic doesn't qualify either.
Civil discourse, like that our forefathers relied on, is all but dead. The extremes are yelling at each other, never listening and never trying to make a compromise. It's quite frustrating.
So, how does a president bring us back to the time of civil discourse? What policy can create change?
I believe undoing something Ronald Reagan did is a step in the right direction. Undoing his dismantling of the equal time policy is a step in the right direction.
The equal time policy said the airwaves are public, and because of that, equal time must be given to opposing views. Reagan did away with that FCC regulation, and look at what we have as a result.
Broadcast news is no longer fair or balanced. Talk radio is filled with the extreme right and extreme left. The majority of the American public —those who are somewhere in the middle, really are left out.
Debates are no longer about presenting your view, then listening to the other guy and finding some place in the middle where everyone can win.
We are now an always or never society, a society of I win and you lose, rather than a sometimes and we can both win society.
Those people, the majority who walk in the middle, are called boring and wafflers. They are put down and degraded.
Look at the Iraq conflict for example. It's either stay the course until ultimate success, or pull out as soon as possible. Where's the middle? Maybe a combination of the two is the best way. Maybe rather than sending more troops, we should send more relief workers — more teachers, doctors, nurses, agricultural workers and peace teams protected by our military. Maybe a slow withdrawal as those relief workers help get the country up and running is the way to go.
But our debate doesn't allow for that. It's all or nothing.
Bringing back the equal time policy isn't as difficult as one might think. At some point every network has to use airwaves — even if that's the uplink to a private sattelite and the redistribution to the ground. Besides, all we would be asking so-called journalists to do is their job which is fair and balanced reporting.