The Path to Unity

How America can unify our citizenry for the betterment of all

If our country is in dire need of any one thing, it’s unity. I have two ideas that might help us get back on a path towards it. One we can do right now as individuals. The other we will need to do collectively. But first, a little history.

The earliest US election of which I have memory was Nixon versus McGovern. The first presidential election in which I voted was in 1984 when then President Ronald Reagan was running for re-election against Walter Mondale, who had been Vice-President under Carter. Since then, I think I’m on safe ground when I say that our nation has become increasingly politically divided. This most recent election was by far the clearest example. The problem with such divisiveness is that it not only creates resentment, hostility and anger between people who would otherwise have little in which to disagree, it also makes progress at the level of government almost non-existent. It’s reached the point where we don’t expect Congress to do much of anything. Progress seems to only occur briefly when one party has total control over Congress. It should come as no surprise that over at least the past several years the approval rating for Congress has hovered around 20% or less. Clearly it would seem that unity is better than divisiveness. Compromise is more likely to lead to progress than immobility. Don’t get me wrong. Diversity of opinion is just fine and is arguably necessary to make sure we have the best possible outcome. It’s just that we seem to have gone too far. How did this happen? What can be done to fix it? Let me give you my thoughts on the former before returning to the latter.

If we could hop in a time machine and set the dial to take us back 100,000 years we would find a planet with (relatively speaking) very few humans on it. Estimates range from 10,000 individuals to 100,000. The entire population was made up of small tribes of around 20 to 50 people. As you can now imagine, with so few humans in total, tribes did not often encounter other tribes. Researchers use the word “infrequent” to describe the interval. When they did happen the result, unsurprisingly, was neutrality, cooperation or conflict. There was a lot of survival benefit in being loyal to one’s tribe and suspicious of others. Today we have over 8 billion people on Earth with the average size of the population in which we each live ranging from 100,000 to 3,000,000. Imagine that. The lower end of that range is the same as the maximum number of people likely to have been alive on this planet 100,000 years ago.

While the population has grown perhaps 8000 fold over that time, evolution moves a bit more slowly. Our genes are lagging far behind in a race with our reproduction. The result is that we are still very tribal in nature. While this tends to be more true in less populated areas it’s still true for us all regardless. Much of the progress we have made over the last 100,000 years has been a result of overcoming our instincts by thinking more rationally. We have learned to cooperate for the benefit of those willing to cooperate. But despite all of this we continue to remain instinctively very tribal.

Tribalism certainly has its benefits. It makes a lot of things easier. We feel a sense of kinship with our fellow humans who are members of our tribe. The more in common we have with someone, the more kinship we feel towards them. The downside to tribalism is when it interferes with our ability to feel kinship with our fellow citizens who are not members of our tribe. It’s disappointing that the tribe to which we all belong, being citizens of the United States of America, doesn’t provoke a strong tribal instinct unless the tribe as a whole is under attack.

Here in the US two of the biggest tribes are the Democratic and Republican parties. Just slightly less than one third of adults are Democrats, slightly less than one third are Republicans and slightly more than one third are Independents or registered to one of the smaller, lesser known parties. For most voters, being a member of one of the two big parties makes things easy. When you meet someone who is a member of the same party, chances are you have similar values. It makes voting easier as well by allowing voters to vote for candidates in their party without having to spend too much time understanding their background, experience and positions on important issues. For the average voter, if a candidate is from their party, it’s easy peasy.

The problem with this of course is that it means a lot of voters are making uninformed decisions. Parties make voting easy but the choices we are making are so important that it should not be an easy decision. Voters should be taking the time to understand all the variables involved in choosing the best possible options. Candidates themselves are no better off because supporting the various party positions is important to gain party support. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States (Washington, Jefferson, Madison and others) were wary of political parties, fearing that they could lead to division and corruption. Their apprehensions stemmed from concerns about the potential for factionalism (another word for tribalism) and the prioritization of party interests over the common good. Unfortunately they themselves didn’t heed the warning they felt in their hearts. Instead they found the allure of the power of numbers simply too tempting and began forming political parties themselves. I think it goes without saying that their fears were warranted.

So what is this path to unity of which I speak? We need to end the political tribalism by putting an end to political parties. This would allow candidates to decide what is it they truly value and run on those values. For example, I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative. Neither party fits that description. If I were to run for office it would require that I compromise on my values. If there’s anything about which we should not compromise, it’s our values. It would also promote compromise amongst members of Congress as they would no longer be pressured to follow their party. The elimination of political parties would mean that voting would require voters to put the time and energy into understanding for whom and what they are voting. Would this make voting harder? Yes and it should be. If you can’t make an educated vote, you shouldn’t be voting at all. Disenfranchisement is not the point of this suggestion. The point is that if we want to make the best decisions we can, if we want our country to have the best chance to succeed, we each have of put in the time to decide who and what is best for our country rather than simply voting for our tribe.

Politics is not a sport. We really need to stop treating it like one.

Eliminating political tribes (parties) would be no easy task. Our Founding Fathers were concerned about the divisiveness they would likely create and yet they didn’t do away with them by making political parties unconstitutional. I have no doubt that had they known where we would be 248 years later, they almost certainly would have done so.

Unity is not something we will accidentally stumble upon. It’s going to require a big change. It’s going to require that we make it a priority. The priority. By eliminating the thing that divides us, unity will be the natural result. It won’t remove conflict. We will still have varying opinions on what is best, but it will focus us on the specifics rather than the destructive distraction and divisiveness of political parties.

We would also need to severally limit per person donations to politicians and Political Action Committees (PACs). Otherwise these organizations will become the new political parties. It’s worth noting that in the 2024 US presidential election, according to a study by the Brennan Center, donors who gave at least $5 million to super PACs supporting Trump or Harris donated a total of $864 million. If each of us truly has one vote then the rich should not be able to utilize their wealth to have an outsized influence on the political thoughts of others. The competition should be one of ideas, not of funding. I’m not suggesting we eliminate free speech. There are many avenues anyone can utilize to speak their minds that don’t cost millions of dollars. I’m suggesting that the playing field should be made level. Via a ballot initiative, the state of Maine quite recently approved a donation cap of $5000 per person to any one Political Action Committee. That’s a good start. The tiny state of Maine has a reputation for pioneering political change. That Maine’s initiative passed with 74% approval is telling. It will no doubt meet legal challenges though. We can only hope that it can withstand them.

If what I have written speaks to you, please forward the link to this post to everyone you think could benefit from it. That takes very little effort. You may be thinking that the changes I’m proposing would never actually happen. They certainly won’t if each of us is unwilling to take the time to ask others to consider them. Every big movement started as a tiny one. This could be the first pebble that starts an avalanche.

We have seen our Founding Fathers fears realized. We can honor their memory by taking action.