"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" is a value statement; in the US, some folks agree with it, some do not.

Under your argument, folks who disagreed about that value statement shouldn't bother discussing criminal justice policy; I think that's erroneous and part-and-parcel of Don't Bother With Those People.

Yes, _some_ policy conversations might be futile if folks have completely opposed values, but I don't think we should apply that generally.

We MUST work with people who hold different values than us, without trying to change their values so that they become part of Us.

> Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point).

Arson is not protest. Arson is a VIOLENT type of activism, which is legally classified as terrorism.

Trump (or anybody) shouldn't be allowed to punish folks for speech or peaceful protest. Unfortunately, folks are calling VIOLENT acts like arson and battery "protest", and threats of bodily harm "speech" ("harassment" or "assault" under most US criminal law) -- we should be in favor of the government stepping in to protect people from arson, battery, and assault/ harassment.

> he did not give in to the illiberal demands of the left to chill speech post-2020,

Roth has been president since 2007. What was his response to Nick Christakis's struggle session (plenty of video of that) or Erika Christakis leaving Yale, after she penned an e-mail that students should be able to handle Halloween costumes they find offensive?

The American Left has been illiberal and going after speech for decades; it didn't start post-2020.

This is such a great contrast:

> But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they learned to do back in the 1960s.

and

> but still votes red because she was raised in a religious household and came of age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to christians.

There's no explanation for why the old man votes "blue" other than he learned it in the 60s. OTOH, the woman votes "red" because "she was raised in a religious household" and started voting when The Right was "peddling to christians".

"peddling" -- that's a pretty negative term.

I don't know if it's ironic or demonstrative that an article about how difficult it can be to have political conversations produces a comment thread with such biased viewpoints.

I've listened to Haidt speak about it and his book is in my tall stack to read; I don't think I'd heard of King but I grabbed the PDF. Thank you.

> learned there are still plenty of people that were unhappy the south lost the civil war and want to remedy that

Did you peel that back to the next layer? Did they want to reintroduce slavery? Or did they want independence from a distant government?

I knew folks in the South who thought some of the craziest racist things and probably would've been OK with slavery (I did hear them promote segregation).

At the same time, the vast majority folks I knew who defended the Civil War or wanted secession didn't want slavery or segregation, but local (and often less) government. Did they misunderstand the role of slavery in the Southern secession? Usually. Does that change their _current intent_? No.

The latter group (which was much larger) should be engaged with on the issue of local government and secession, especially in the context of folks in Blue States who've been rattling about secession under Trump.