THE CITY
cided to our side and recapture the hearts of those whose fidelity to progressivism is shallow. Like dating, this will take work. We have to keep the end‐goal in mind. It’s a process, requiring patience and the portrayal of our best selves. This means demonstrating an ability to engage in roundabout, inefficient dialogue. It means affirming the other, gently and grace‐ fully offering alternatives (or not). It means putting out an attractive quality that compels the other to want to know more. The Occupiers are not our enemies, they are our fellow citizens— and correcting them, educating them, and winning them to our cause should be our aim. Not all of them will listen. But some of them will.
Eric Teetsel is the program manager of the Project on Values & Capitalism at the American Enterprise Institute. 34