Preventing the extreme from hijacking the agenda.

One of most predictable, insidious and crippling impediments to genuine problem solving in the  negotiation between opposing parties or even groups with competing interests is the tendency for the extremes of both sides to hijack the agenda, and thereby start to redefine the terms of the discussion in such a manner that those in each camp who seek accommodation and solution, even though they may constitute the clear majority, are marginalized, made less relevant, prevented from compromise and reasonable solutions with shared wins disappear.
I heard the lecturer in a seminar  on negotiation tactics challenged that some problems defy a negotiated settlement, and the example posed was peace between the warring parties in the middle east. “The solution can only come” he answered, “when we realize that the moderates on both sides have more in common with each other than they do with the extremes of their own side”.
Imagine, for example that the moderates on each side of a territorial conflict are trying to work out together reasonable boundaries and rules of engagement by which they can move towards a shared common peace and prosperity. Each sides moderates are trying to weigh what the can give, what they must keep and how can they compromise. The extremes, however, on each side, however, believe that the other side has no right to any of the territory, and in fact has no right to exist. There are inevitably those within the extreme fringes of both camps who believe they have the right, duty and opportunity to intervene in the dialogue by, say, blowing up a restaurant, or by expelling families from a village. These extreme actions force the moderates further away from a common ground, force each side into an increasingly polarized and unreconcilable position, and tend to make any solution impossible. The agenda, one of finding a mutually beneficial compromise, gets hijacked to protecting oneself or maintaining order.
I don’t want to get side tracked into discussing it in detail but rather wish to point out as an example some of what has happened over the last two weeks in the USA concerning the issues of racial disparity in policing and how to find a meaningful solution to an issue which I believe most people recognize as a problem.
Any mass protest will draw some who find an opportunity to cause some mayhem. I believe most moderates both on the relatively right and the relatively left of the nation would have wanted to move through that towards confronting and solving some of the more pressing underlying problems.
The president took a far extreme position of insisting that so called law and order be maintained by the use of overwhelming force, invoking the militarization of the police and calling for the possibility of lethal force.
A more moderate and much larger segment responded with enormous peaceful marches and protests, and condemnation of the president by a very large and respected cohort of military and political leaders, even of his own party. It seemed that  the effort of the extreme to hijack the agenda away from the need to find meaningful progress in the relationship between police and population was not successful, had in fact backfired, and a large, general, perhaps actionable consensus seemed about to form that such progress was necessary and that until it came, there would be large but peaceful expressions of protest, including some as creative as renaming the site of the greatest police violence “Black Lives Matter” Plaza. I am sure the president loved that.
But then the extreme on the other side decided it was their turn to hijack the agenda. The city council of Minneapolis voted to disband the police.
Shall we imagine what would happen then? Lets say the thousands of police officers agreed, and simply laid down their badges,  (but not their guns!) and walked off the job. Maybe a couple of these dismissed officers now need to put food on the table. Where better to take it than from businesses, stores and the other citizens. They have the guns, they can do it. What are you going, call the police?
I am not going to go further with this train of thought, this argument, because this example in itself is not the point, the point I wish to make is that we must be on guard, no matter where we fall along a political spectrum, to guard against the inevitable tendency for the extremes, the fringes, to take over the conversation, and prevent a meaningful solution to the problem.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. The center must hold. We must find ways to seek common cause based on those values which we can discover we share.
The current site, the blogs and posts, is dedicated towards trying to find our common shared values and to arguing that we must come back as a nation to that shared center before we move forward.
In these pages I will try to derive what core American values are, and whether they are being pursued in the government we presently have.
So far there are three pages.
The next will take an historical episode in which the center could no hold, and look at some of the aspects and results of that time.