"Democratic governments exist to help citizens with differing opinions find common ground - the place where people's thoughts, opinions, and beliefs intersect. Whether it's Congress, your state, or the local town council, elected leaders often have to make trade-offs - giving up some things they favor to gain support for others."
That's the preamble to a Girl Scout badge, Finding Common Ground. The purpose of the badge is to learn "strategies for bringing people together to find common ground." Requirements are basic common sense. While designed for adolescent girls, it could be an excellent course for our elected leadership and all adults. In the aftermath of Tuesday's election, with blame, analysis and dire predictions swirling, we all need to step back and focus on how to get along.
There are five steps in the process of earning the badge, each with several options.
The first is to get to know someone different from you. That might be someone of another faith, another tradition or another opinion. Any of us can invite someone different into a conversation. We can each present our positions or beliefs, listen respectfully to one another, then each say a few things we like about the other's ideas. How painful can that be?
Recently, I heard Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., talk about how he has done this with a liberal Democratic representative from California. Their common ground is food safety and farming. They are working together to craft legislation to address those concerns. They had to have that first conversation to get it going.
Girl Scouts next look at several methods of decision-making methods (majority rule, consensus, compromise), then set about to make decisions in a group. Those decisions can range from planning a menu or a short trip to whether to start a robotics team.
We could start with simple decisions in our groups, too, such as whether to meet in the morning or the evening, or whether to start a regular discussion group about improving school quality. We could then learn by discussing how well we did, and what we liked or disliked about various decision-making approaches.
From there, Girl Scouts move on to exploring civil debate. Their possible topics are likely to be things like whether mandatory drug testing should be required to participate in certain activities, whether the school year should be lengthened, or whether schools should ban junk food. They can choose whatever they are interested in.
Come to think of it, those might be good topics for adults, too. They deal with current issues and reflect the same kind of debate that lawmakers and others in authority are having as well. Girls are encouraged to learn how to use facts and logic in a debate, and to hold a debate themselves, perhaps with assistance from a debate expert. Alternatively, they can watch a live debate or study an important historical debate. What's important is that at the end, they identify and discuss the common ground in the arguments. Adults can do exactly the same thing.
Girl Scouts then study compromise. What is it? What are some local or national examples? In our hyper-partisan atmosphere, people on all sides dig in and refuse to compromise even a little. That's why we have such political gridlock, anger and blaming.
Perhaps we could go back to those people we talked with in the first step and discuss a compromise on a particular topic. As Kingston pointed out, hyper-partisanship concentrates power in the leadership, and limits compromise among those at other levels. When only the top leadership can work out a deal, compromise is harder to come by on a broad scale.
President Dwight Eisenhower summed it up well when he said, "People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters."
Finally, Girl Scouts learn about mediation, because in real life, it sometimes takes a facilitator with no opinion to bring people together. They can set up their own mediation, with ground rules and guidelines, or ask an outsider to help them.
We can do the same thing. Over the years that St. Joseph Catholic Church and the Holly Hills Neighborhood Association negotiated terms for the new school and church that is literally in our backyards, sometimes we needed a mediator to be sure everyone was heard and that people stayed on topic. In the end, we resolved several issues in which everyone got some of what they wanted and no one got everything.
Girl Scouts founder Juliette Low said it best: "To put yourself in another's place requires real imagination but by doing so, each Girl Scout will be able to live among others happily."
We can do this, but not if we all wait for someone else to start.
• Myra Blackmon, a local Banner-Herald columnist, works as a freelance writer, consultant and instructional designer.