Beyond the Town Square: What the Lincoln-Douglas Debates Can Teach Us About Civil Discourse Online
The Art to Listen.
We speak often of the "digital town square," a phrase that evokes a noble, democratic ideal of open debate and shared community. Yet the reality of our online discourse feels less like a town square and more like a chaotic bazaar, filled with shouting merchants of outrage, drive-by hecklers, and arguments that flare and vanish in an instant. We are saturated with opinions but starved of understanding.
To find a better model, we must look to a different square; the dusty, crowded debate platforms of 1858 Illinois. Here, before thousands of citizens who stood for hours in the sun and rain, Stephen Douglas and a lanky lawyer named Abraham Lincoln held a series of seven debates.
They were not perfect examples of civility; they were fiercely partisan and deeply flawed by the prejudices of their era. But their structure contained a set of powerful, forgotten principles for how a divided people can seriously engage with a world-defining issue.
