Finding Political Common Ground - General Principles.

During a 1961 address to the Canadian Parliament, President John F. Kennedy said, “Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder. What unites us is far greater than what divides us.”

Finding Common Ground is based upon the appreciation that the Founding Fathers, JFK and many other leaders understood that united we are stronger than divided.

The goal is to try and discover on what we agree upon and the only means of making that happen is put aside both petty partisan bickering and our own emotional investment in our positions. We need to rise above them and to recognize that we are all Americans who ultimately want what is best for We the People.

Going back to the Revolutionary period, our nation was not unified and not everyone wanted to split from Great Britain. Before both world wars, the US was deeply divided socially. When war broke out, we put aside differences, found a common ground, and that common ground is what made us a world leader and super power. When we have worked together have we done the greatest things.

We now live in a time where our social divisions are being used against us and threaten to split us and remove us from our position as a global leader. Yet when we take a moment to listen to each other, we often find that we're not so different. As often as not, our common goals are made to seem like differences. We recognize the same problems, but often see different solutions.

Just because we have different solutions to the same problem does not divide us unless we allow ourselves to be divided. Instead we can work towards finding a Common Ground Compromise where parts of both solutions are modified to accommodate each other. Each side gives a little so We the People benefit from the best aspects of both solutions. This is not a new concept. Our Founding Fathers embraced compromise in order to bring into being the United States for We the People.

So our challenge is to find those compromises that work for all of us together. That way we all benefit from the wisdom and insight on both sides. This communication channel acts as a Check & Balance that focuses on the core shared principles and practices and we can all agree upon.

This OP is going to be referenced as a Disclaimer to a series of threads focused on different areas where we can try to find Common Ground. It serves as the overall guidelines that we will try to abide by in these Common Ground threads.