A Republic—If You Can Keep It 

The Case for American Pluralism

by Devin Scanlon 

Volume 7 // Issue 2 // Fall 2025 // Conservation

We are losing our capacity for productive disagreement.

Political opponents increasingly view each other not as rivals who deserve equal standing, but as existential threats. Universities struggle to host speakers across ideological divides, with increasing numbers of college students reporting that they think violence is justified to counter speech. Communities fracture along partisan lines, sorting ourselves across ideological lines to live only around others who think like “us.” We sort ourselves into ever-narrower tribes—geographic, digital, cultural, political—where dissent feels dangerous and difference feels threatening.

This matters for everything the idea of conservation asks us to consider: Adapting to climate change requires coordinating across competing interests and value systems; raising living standards while protecting our planet demands tradeoffs that no single worldview can dictate overriding rules about; handling rapid technological and cultural change without fracturing our own minds—let alone greater society—requires institutions and ethics that turn conflict away from its violent forms into the peaceful varieties that allow us to learn, evolve, and adapt in the face of changing ecosystems.   The question isn’t whether we need more progressive or conservative policies, it’s whether we still possess the civic capacity to argue in good faith, listen with charity, and retain the hope that we can solve problems across deep differences. //

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ESSAY // DEVON SCANLON // WHAT WE KEEP