Confident Pluralism (John Inazu)

In Confident Pluralism, professor John Inazu tackles an issue of monumental importance: how to survive- even thrive- in an era of deep differences.

Summary
We don't like different.  Even those who claim to embrace diversity and inclusion often bound their approval to include certain schools of thought and exclude others.  In other words, we approve of differences as long as we deem them acceptable (translation: we're all intolerant of something).  In an increasingly divisive society, we're heading for problems unless we learn to handle living together holding fundamentally different convictions.  To address this issue, the author coins a term he calls confident pluralism.

"Confident pluralism argues that we can, and we must, learn to live with each other in spite of our deep differences.  It requires a tolerance for dissent, a skepticism of government orthodoxy, and a willingness to endure strange and even offensive ways of life." 

"Confident pluralism allows genuine differences to coexist without suppressing or minimizing our firmly held convictions."  The goal "is not to settle which views are right and which views are wrong.  Rather, it proposes that the future of our democratic experiment requires finding a way to be steadfast in our personal convictions, while also making room for the cacophony that may ensue when others disagree with us."

He argues that confident pluralism "remains possible in both law and society."  To that end, he looks at constitutional commitments and civic practices.

Constitutional Commitments
Inazu focuses on voluntary groups, public forum, and public funding requirements- "the structural arrangements that we need to make confident pluralism possible."

Voluntary groups: "Government officials should not interfere with the membership, leadership, or internal practices of a voluntary group absent a clearly articulated and precisely defined compelling interest."

Public forum: "Government should honor its commitment to ensure public forums for the voicing of dissent and discontent.  Expressive restrictions in these forums should only be justified by compelling government interests.  Private public forums that effectively supplant these government-sponsored forums should in some cases be held to similar standards."

Public funding: "When the government offers generally available resources (financial and otherwise) to facilitate a diversity of viewpoints and ideas, it should not limit those resources based on its own orthodoxy."

Civic Practices
"Many people are dismissive or insulting of those with other viewpoints . . . [and] many people only listen to viewpoints with which they already agree."  This is problematic, and Inazu develops imperatives for three civic practices (speech, collective action, and common ground) based on three aspirations: tolerance ("a willingness to accept genuine difference, including profound moral disagreement"), humility ("recognizes that our human faculties are inherently limited . . . all of us, whether religious or not, live and act on a kind of faith"), and patience ("involves restraint, persistence, and endurance").

Speech imperative: "We should take steps to soften our tone and move out of our echo chambers.  We should choose to avoid the hurtful insult and the conversation stopper.  Living speech, even in the midst of real and painful differences, can be one of our most important bridges to one another."

Collective action imperative: "Boycotts, strikes, and protests against private actors are in most cases compatible with confident pluralism.  When we engage in these forms of collective action, we should bear in mind the civic aspirations of tolerance, humility, and patience."

Common ground imperative: "Even in the midst of our deepest differences, we might share enough common ground to maintain the possibility of relationship across those differences.  We can bridge relational distance even when we cannot bridge ideological distance."

Review
This is an excellent book.  Short, concise, well-written, fair; I highly recommend it to all.  This is a topic with no easy answers, so Inazu's proposals, by his own admission, are not a guaranteed solution- but it's likely the best we can do.  Parting thought:

We must be willing to abide someone else's unfamiliar or even repellant practice because the same tolerant impulse protects our own idiosyncrasies- Supreme Court Justice William Brennan

Rating: A