Perspectives: How to change minds – lessons from the Prop 2 and Kavanaugh controversies

October 7, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — The past few weeks have provided compelling lessons in how to advance an idea in our society. We’ve also seen some clear examples of what not to do.

Many of us were surprised last week to hear that proponents and opponents of Utah’s medicinal cannabis initiative, known as Prop 2, had reached a compromise that would satisfy both sides. That such a consensus could be reached on what had become a highly contentious issue is remarkable, to put it mildly.

To put into perspective what came out of those meetings, we first must understand the history behind the effort to protect legitimately ill patients from criminal penalties for therapeutically using all or part of a plant.

For the past 5 years, efforts to provide patients with access were met with unyielding opposition. State legislators, medical lobbyists and LDS church leaders were unwilling to consider the injustice that was taking place.

Every bill that was brought before the legislature was either killed in its infancy or otherwise kicked down the road to avoid dealing with the issue. The sticking point always came down to a complete unwillingness to relinquish even a nanometer of state control.

Fearful fantasies of drugstores-without-walls on every corner were conjured up as justification to avoid facing the reality of how bad laws were treating innocent patients and their families as criminals. Most of the opposition could be summed up as authoritarianism masquerading as preening rectitude.

The goal of Prop 2 is to limit government power from being used to criminally prosecute sick people who could find therapeutic benefit in using cannabis or its derivatives. Many who strain at the gnat of the exigency to limit a portion of bureaucratic oversight are blissfully swallowing the camel of absolute government oversight which currently exists.

It was only after the Utah Patients Coalition overwhelmingly succeeded in gathering enough signatures to place an initiative on the ballot that opponents finally realized that the tide of public support had turned. Public support was growing for rolling back the bureaucracy and expanding patient access.

With the writing on the wall, opponents, at last, recognized that advocates for Prop 2 had taken the moral high ground. To their credit, these opponents came to the table and were able to work out a compromise that would satisfy the needs of patients without throwing caution to the wind.

One of the main reasons this turnaround came about was because of the diplomatic and reasoned way that the leaders of the Prop 2 effort went about making their case.

I saw firsthand, during the time that I worked with Connor Boyack at Libertas Institute, how taking the high road is the key to persuading your opponents to reconsider. When their opponents resorted to highly distorted and underhanded tactics, Boyack and others in the Utah Patients Coalition continued to calmly debunk and inform rather than engage in disingenuous fearmongering themselves.

Since self-determination is at the root of this issue, the Utah Patients Coalition efforts were reminiscent of a quote from Leonard E. Read’s essay “The Essence of Americanism” that stated:

The philosophy of freedom is at the very pinnacle of the hierarchy of values; and if you wish to further the cause of freedom, you must use methods that are consonant with your objective. This means relying on the power of attraction.

Contrast this approach with the bullying, blunt force hysteria and mob mentality that typified the opposition to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Protesters disrupted the confirmation hearings in ways that would have produced shame in a tantrum-prone toddler.

They stalked the halls of the U.S. Capitol and staged noisy protests for any senator who caught their eye.

Sen. Orrin Hatch was accosted by a group of angry, shouting women who cornered him near a staff elevator. Hatch was patient and unruffled but quickly realized that the protesters didn’t wish to converse with him so much as they wanted to shriek at and intimidate him.

When Hatch shooed them away with his hand while inviting them to come back when they were willing to talk with him like adults, the protesters unleashed their inner chimps to the point that his security detail had to threaten to arrest them. What these protesters actually stood for remains unclear.

Did the protesters change the minds they hoped to change?

Perhaps we should ask the newest Supreme Court justice how that worked out.

Jeffery A. Tucker beautifully sums up why attempts to achieve social harmony through governmental force so often fail:

The real answer is to live and let live and embrace the kind of legal order that instantiates that principle. It’s the only path to the harmony … so many others seek. The alternative is to keep tearing each other apart in a great struggle to control the whole.

There’s a lesson here for anyone who’s paying attention. Take the high road, even if it takes a bit longer.

Bryan Hyde is an opinion columnist specializing in current events and liberty viewed through what he calls the lens of common sense. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: bryanh@stgnews.com

Twitter: @youcancallmebry