Like many days, yesterday was a travel day for me.  On my journey to be with family this Thanksgiving, I was struck by how NICE people were to their fellow travelers. A few examples: (1) people looked at each other and let mergers into the line to board my flight, where I often see people with eyes fixed straight ahead, seemingly intent on NOT letting people in front of them; (2) people helped each other with suitcases and "big steps" getting on and off buses and trams; (3) people in a crowded and disorganized queue at a fast food restaurant asked those around them if they were waiting to order before stepping forward to place their own orders. And last but not least, to the gentleman in row 17 of Delta Flight 1706 to Chicago, who exchanged seats to let a mother sit next to her daughter, you rock, dude.  Well done.

I travel a lot, and I'm pretty sure what I experienced yesterday was an elevated level of niceness. Niceness to those around us, as simple as it sounds, reflects the core principle of our republic--the principle that each of us has worth, or value. That principle is the foundation for systems of justice and governance that are supposed to provide each of us equal treatment--treatment reflecting our equal value as human beings, regardless of wealth, health, occupation, race, gender, orientation or any of a multitude of other differences arising from circumstance or choice. I suspect that this is the way most of us have chosen to respond to the utter lack of niceness in our national political dialogue these days. I hope I am right. Because giving each other that basic R-E-S-P-E-C-T is one of the most important things we can all do to be accountable citizens.

​Happy Thanksgiving!

Two things I've learned about my fellow Americans during the past three years bother me: (1) Too many of you are unable or unwilling to decide for yourselves what is true and what is false; and (2) Too many of you put loyalty to your political party ahead of loyalty to the principles for which our country is supposed to stand. 

When the president hears something critical of himself or his policies, he declares it is "fake news," and too many of you just swallow his assessment uncritically.  You should be able to decide for yourself what is true and what is false.  We know that a statement is true when the statement rises to the level of "justified true belief."  A statement rises to the level of justified true belief when it corresponds to the world in a way that it is independently verifiable and that it is coherent with a broader set of justified true beliefs. And "independently verifiable" doesn't mean that your cousin agrees with the statement--it means that the overwhelming majority of credible sources confirm that the statement is a fact and / or that the statement allows you to predict things about the world that you can also test and prove to be true.

The most important thing about the American political process is not whether one party or the other wins or loses an election.  Rather, the most important thing about the American political process is that it preserves the set of processes that are most likely to produce fair, unbiased outcomes and that recognize the equality, dignity and sanctity of individual persons before the law, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, age, gender or sexual orientation. So when the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan refused to bring comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate in June, 2014 to the floor of the House because he was afraid that enough of his Republican party might support it to give the Democrats a win, that is not a victory for the Republicans.  When the Republican-controlled Senate decided in 2016 that they would not even give the Supreme Court nominee selected by the last Democratic president the same procedural justice--a confirmation hearing--granted other Supreme Court nominees, that is not a win for the Republican Party.  These are not victories for one political party--they are defeats for the American political process, for the rule of law, and for the dignity of the individual person.

The message of my book, Accountability Citizenship, is simple.  Figure out your values, figure out which candidates best represent those values, and vote for those candidates.  I voted early.  Tomorrow is election day.  Please vote.