James Talarico

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.

I'll just tell you one quick story.

My colleague James Frank represents Wichita Falls in North Texas.

He's a Freedom Caucus member, the most conservative members of the House.

James and I started a stupid friendship based on that we share the same first name.

And, you know, we joked about it and talked about how we were the James caucus and he was chair, I was vice chair, you know, whatever.

But then that led to us having some more real conversations.

And we started to figure out that he and I are both really dissatisfied with this two-party system.

We are both frustrated by how hard it is to challenge orthodoxies in your own party and the pressure to conform within a political party.