"My father's vision of civic compassion was premised on rejecting the language of unity, as too "contaminated by propagandistic usage." If anything, his solution was the opposite—to engage respectfully, to imaginatively stand in the places of others, to inhabit worlds that initially seem strange and even threatening, to acknowledge one's inability to be as wise, as generous, or as open as pluralistic democracy requires. To resist the slide into cruelty is perhaps the most important educational goal of a people."