A story that gives me hope

In case you are wondering, this is a picture of Andrew Breitbart, Jamie Weinstein, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Tucker Carlson who all had a jolly dinner together a couple of months ago, which Ayers writes about quite beautifully here.

What’s striking to me is how Ayers describes the tribal fears and hostility he meets from his particular lefty tribe for the sin of eating Republicans and sinners and refusing to hole up within the tribal cocoon. What’s also striking is how everybody involved–particularly Breitbart–came away liking everybody else, including dreaded incarnations of evil Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn (and Ayers and Dohrn came away liking them, including Breitbart).

It accords with my own experience of face to face encounters with people vs. written encounters. There’s something about actually meeting people that tends to form bonds while arguing with them over written or electronic media tends to introduce barriers. Not sure what to make of that. But it confirms the odd sense I keep getting that if lefties and righties talked over a beer or some spare ribs rather than on the internet they mostly find how much they have in common and how much they can’t help liking each other. Reminds me of the lovely afternoon I spent with Matt Talbot of Vox Nova a couple of years ago. A fine fellow with a heart as big as all outdoors and an ornament of the Church.