United We Argue

Ask ten Americans what it means to be American and you'll get eleven opinions, most of them shouted. We like to picture our founding as a moment of unity. A room full of powdered wigs, nodding in solemn agreement. It wasn't. It was a room full of men who despised each other's positions and stayed in the room anyway. That, right there, is the oldest American tradition. Older than baseball. Older than apple pie. Older than complaining about the weather. We were arguing before we were a "we." Take Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, running for a Senate seat in 1858. Seven debates, three hours apiece, nothing but a wooden platform and Illinois weather. No microphones. No moderators. No mercy. Twelve thousand showed up at Ottawa, twenty thousand at Galesburg, farmers riding the rails in from three states just to watch two men argue about slavery all afternoon. Lincoln lost the race. Published the transcripts anyway, and two years later he was President. Losing the argument, it turns out, beat…