In the winter of 1777 and 1778, while the Continental Army suffered through the brutal conditions of Valley Forge, a political effort emerged to remove George Washington from Army leadership. What later became known as the Conway Cabal involved military officers and members of Congress who questioned whether Washington was fit to command. At a moment when an emerging nation faced an existential threat, Americans were already deeply divided over leadership, strategy, and the direction of the country. There were public accusations, private correspondence, political maneuvering, and bitter disagreements among people who nevertheless shared a commitment to government by the people.

Rather than an exception to the American story, political tension, in many ways, is the American story. The United States was never forged from perfect unity. The colonies differed sharply in religion, economics, regional identity, political culture, and moral vision long before independence was declared. America has often functioned less like a single culture than a fragile coalition of distinct regional identities learning, however imperfectly, how to coexist within a shared experiment.

Our founding was not the triumph of unanimous agreement, but the difficult work of building a country amid profound disagreement. Less than a century later, regional differences over slavery plunged the nation into a brutal Civil War. Yet, even after that trauma, Americans began the long, imperfect process of stitching the country back together.

As Memorial Day approaches, Americans will gather in cemeteries, churches, town squares, and backyards to honor those who died serving and defending this country. Conversations will center on sacrifice, courage, duty, and freedom, all of which require something that seems more like a lost art than a part of our everyday existence: the ability to disagree without treating one another as enemies.

These conversations can become difficult for several reasons.

First, research shows our civic language has become politically loaded. While terms like “patriotism” signal differently across party lines, ideals like “freedom” still resonate broadly. True freedom is not just an individual right; it is the difficult responsibility of living alongside neighbors who see the country differently than we do.

Second, our political culture increasingly encourages us to see fellow Americans not merely as mistaken, but as dangerous, dishonest, and immoral. Democrats and Republicans alike routinely imagine the worst about one another. According to the More in Common “Perception Gap” report, voters drastically overestimate their opponents’ extremism. On average, Republicans and Democrats believe 55 percent of the opposing party holds extreme views, when the actual number is closer to 30 percent. Although somewhat lower, Independents are not immune to these errors, misreading both parties by an average of 16 percentage points.

The danger of all this is not disagreement itself. Healthy disagreement is a defining feature of the American experiment. The United States was forged through argument. Throughout our history, Americans have battled over abolition, suffrage, civil rights, war, immigration, labor, and nearly every major social question imaginable. Conflict is not evidence that democracy is failing but evidence that democracy is alive. Rather, our current existential threat is a growing belief that our political “other” is too far gone ideologically.

This Memorial Day, we should absolutely honor the courage and sacrifice of those who served this country. We should also remember that they ultimately served a constitutional system built to protect freedom, pluralism, dissent, and self-government, not ideological uniformity. We do not honor the dead by pretending Americans all think alike. We honor them by remembering that freedom requires the courage to argue honestly, listen carefully, and remain bound to one another anyway.

In fact, that’s the essence of patriotism, properly defined. The true test of patriotism isn’t found in how loudly we claim to love our country, but in how we treat our fellow citizens when we disagree with them. If we’re serious about honoring the memory of those who’ve paid the ultimate sacrifice, we can start by rejecting the politics of contempt and recommit to the hard work of decent debate and self-government together.

Prior to a tenure from 2020-2023 as CEO of End It For Good, Inc, Brett Montague, a native of Hattiesburg, spent several years as a Training Manager at Sanderson Farms, Inc., focusing on areas of Corporate Communication, Trust, & Teamwork. Dr. Graham Bodie is Professor of Media & Communication at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. His courses and curricula are informed by more than two decades of research on the role of listening in shaping relationships, leadership and virtuous civic living. He is also the Chief Listening Officer for the Listen First Project.

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