I’m flattered that Anthony, from the Democratic Society Blog, took the time to respond to what I posted yesterday. While, I personally don’t have anything invested in the transpartisan movement, I’d like to take advantage of Anthony’s comments as an opportunity to develop my own thoughts on this matter.

Anthony’s response appears to be based upon related to a set of fears/concerns that were also raised at the recent National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), in regards to “Attracting Conservatives to Dialogue Events.” During this workshop, Jacob Hess identified three fears that conservatives bring to the table, when considering the possibility of participating in a dialogue on a “hot” political topic. I list them here, replacing the word “dialogue” with “transpartisanship.”

  1. Doesn’t transpartisanship assume that all truth is relative? (Fear of having to give up the truth).
  2. Is transpartisanship part of a larger effort to convince me of something? (Fear of hidden agenda)
  3. Does transpartisanship mean I’m going to have to compromise my beliefs? (Fear of being changed)

I believe that one of the problems that we have in encouraging real face to face dialogue on the “hot button” issues in our society, is that potential participants are threatened by the prospect of having to abandon a core belief and/or value in the name of some abstract common good. I think that the concept of “transpartisanship” might trigger some of the same fears.

In the NCDD workshop, the Rev. Greg Johnson suggested the key to bringing conservatives into dialogues might be in stressing dialogue as an opportunity for “conviction with civility.”

From my brief readings, it seems that the term transpartisan was developed as an alternative to non-partisan or bi-partisan. Non-partisan seems to indicate the kind of “centrism” that Anthony is concerned about, while bi-partisan appears limited to the two majority points of view. It seems that the value of talking about transpartisanship might be:

  1. indicating that on any given issue, individuals bring a multitude of (partisan) positions to the table.
  2. that is it possible to dialogue with political opponents on issues, without giving up ones own position or values
  3. that the goal is not to “get everyone to agree,” but rather to find a generally acceptable solution to a problem – GIVEN the fact that folks with very different ideas and viewpoints are sitting at the table

In short, I don’t agree with Anthony that transpartisanship is about centrism or that it is about getting everyone to agree on the issues. Rather, I think its a new word being attached to a very old concept, which is simply – “how do we get folks with very different ideas to work together respectfully, towards practical policy decisions.”