James Talarico

It is not passive.

It doesn't paper over disagreement.

It sometimes provokes conflict in order to heal conflict.

I mean, I think back through American history, I think about labor organizers.

I think about civil rights marchers.

I think about farm workers.

You know, I think about the politics that made the New Deal possible.

Not saying there's not criticism on policy grounds, but the coalition...

that came together during the New Deal era, during the Great Society era, the coalition that came together to pass the Affordable Care Act, we can glimpse the politics of love there because that was about building a big enough coalition to transform the country.

It included people who didn't agree on everything, but it was people who agreed on some of the big things.

And I don't mean to look at history with rose-colored glasses.

There's problems in all these things, but I'm talking about a general thrust, a general direction of what a politics of union would look like over and above a politics of division.

It's not the gospel unless it includes love for our enemies.

And again, as I said earlier, it's the hardest love to fulfill in our lives, but it is absolutely necessary if we're gonna save this American experiment, if we're gonna save the experiment in self-governance all over the world, is can we have a love for those we disagree with?

And I've been able to cultivate that in my life.

Again, not perfectly.

I oftentimes will feel anger or start to feel hate for some of my colleagues in the Texas legislature.

But at my best, I'm able to maintain a bond of love with them, even as we're fighting, even as we're disagreeing, even as we're debating, even as I'm standing up to some of their most extreme policy proposals.

I still see them as my siblings, as an expression of the same love.

And that, to me, is such a fundamental difference from the politics that we have now.