Fisticuffs or Reason: The Best Ways to Settle Our Differences?

Op Ed By Haney Hong

Published July 17, 2019 on LinkedIn

This month in our history, Aaron Burr – while serving in office as Vice President of the United States – fatally shot his intellectual nemesis and then-former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Fans of the musical Hamilton probably knew that.  The show has taught us all some history.  I’ve been especially grateful that the musical reinforced certain concepts about government with my staff at the San Diego County Taxpayers Association.  I had one teammate who’d often take a public policy recommendation of ours and then sing the very song from Hamilton where that same idea was lyrically presented.  I loved how she used her music dorkiness to advance her policy wonkiness.

Many Americans have learned through this award-winning hit that these two men hated each other so much that they decided this newborn country just wasn’t big enough for both of their ideas.  Hamilton said that people had a “religious duty” not to vote for Burr. Burr, of course, shot him. It’s hard to describe their feelings about each other with anything other than deep-seated hatred.

I hope that my singing staff member and the other Americans who’ve attended a performance of Hamilton learned that people disagree.  And what’s significant is not just that folks think differently.  It’s that people with great thoughts and the best of intentions can still be on opposite sides – and vehemently so.  

Even after learning well-intentioned, good folks disagree from Hamilton, we should ask ourselves this very important question: how should we settle our differences?  Do we get to resolution the same way that Burr and Hamilton did?  

We are going into both a presidential and mayoral race here in San Diego, and no doubt, there will be plenty of opinions about the candidates for both races.  I have faith that we won’t get violent in San Diego and other parts of the country, but I’m worried.

It’s hard for me to believe, but some folks still think violence is a useful approach in dealing with disagreement.  In the last month, there was an Antifa attack against a young journalist in Portland. And sadly, there are the perpetrators of hate crimes.  I also don’t have enough words in the column to list out all the times that then-candidate Trump suggested blows as a way to deal with someone with whom you do not see eye-to-eye.

And while you and I may not be violent physically, here is some bad news: most of us are complicit in the fisticuffs.

Think about the nature of our disagreements in San Diego.  Anyone living here knows that housing is ridiculously expensive.  Most, if not all, of San Diego’s intelligentsia believe we need to work together to address our housing crisis.  And before some of the local leadership even have a chance to get together to smooth out solutions or push some incremental idea, dogma-driven San Diegans won’t give our leaders any wiggle room to debate without crying out some alarm.

We attack people in our minds.  We attribute disagreement to flaws of character.

For instance, the “not in my backyard” – or NIMBY – crowd will accuse those who want more development as people who want to destroy their neighborhood.  And then the “yes in my backyard” – or YIMBY – crowd will decry the NIMBYs as heartless or selfish.  

While the self-proclaimed “woke” of San Diego will criticize what I just said as over-simplification and hypocritical stereotyping, they’ll miss the bigger point.  It doesn’t matter what side of the argument you’re on. What matters is that we need to settle our differences with reason and civility. Attacking the character of others adds nothing to the dialogue.  It’s not unlike Hamilton saying it was a “religious” duty not to vote for Burr. Offensive comments are offensive.

And our attacking the soul of another is not civil – in fact, that can trigger violence.  Countries go to war when they cannot get to agreement through diplomacy, and diplomats have to be willing to respect one another to talk.  Citizens will get violent when bullying one another in the press and other public forums. The blows come out when we don’t create the space to dialogue reasonably on issues like housing.

I hope we’ve learned that in the 215 years since.  None of us should end up like Alexander Hamilton. As we go into this election cycle here in San Diego, let’s try to avoid the duel.