By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
Every Sunday, I call close relatives to say hello and ask how they are doing. I began during COVID in 2020, when staying in touch took more effort, and I have kept calling ever since. Some are Democrats, some Republicans, and some independents. They do not always answer. That is OK. They know I care about them, and that counts.
Those calls came to mind when I read a recent essay by historian Lindsay Chervinsky. She revisited a letter written in 1797 by Connecticut Sen. Uriah Tracy, who believed the North and South had become so different that separation might be necessary. Tracy saw disputes over political power, immigration and slavery, among other issues, as reasons to give up on the Union.
I do not think our family conversations are comparable to the conflicts of 1797. Nor would I suggest that a Sunday phone call can settle a national crisis. But Tracy’s letter raises a question that still matters: When people disagree about important things, what keeps them from deciding they no longer belong together?
My answer begins with the fact that none of us belongs to just one group. We are family members, neighbors, volunteers, workers, veterans, members of faith communities, and citizens of cities, states and a nation. These ties are not arranged like boxes inside boxes. They cross one another. Someone who disagrees with me about a candidate may still be the person I trust to help a relative, serve on a neighborhood committee or show up when a community needs volunteers.
That is why I think of our country as a civic web. Its strength does not depend on every thread being identical. It depends on people continuing to make and maintain connections across differences. A phone call is a small thread. A public meeting where neighbors hear one another out is another. So is a volunteer group that gets a job done without first asking how everyone voted.
This is not just wishful thinking about finding a comfortable middle. Pew Research Center surveyed more than 10,000 adults for its 2026 political typology and identified nine groups based on political values, rather than two neat camps. Most Americans fell into five groups with more mixed views. Party loyalty and policy preferences do not always line up as neatly as our political shorthand implies.
Independents belong in this conversation, too. They are not a blank space between Democrats and Republicans, and no one should assume they all think alike. The University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation found support among Democrats, Republicans and independents for some specific proposals. On barring members of Congress from trading individual company stocks, for example, its survey reported support from 75 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of independents.
That finding does not mean everyone agrees on every reform, or that a survey answer writes the final legislation. Details matter. But if people across political labels support a specific proposal, citizens have a fair question for their representatives: What are you doing with that common ground?
There is a necessary counterpoint. Sometimes a call for unity is really a request to stop naming injustice, ignore a broken promise or accept an abuse of power. I reject that version of unity. Being civil does not require us to soften a fact, abandon a principle or stay quiet when government fails. Some disagreements have consequences too serious to smooth over with a pleasant conversation.
Nor does anyone owe contact to a relative who is hurtful or unsafe. I can describe the choice I make in my own family without prescribing it for someone else’s. The point is not that every relationship can be repaired. It is that where a connection can be maintained honestly, we need not cut it merely because a party label differs from ours.
For those of us who can, civic responsibility starts with a few manageable habits. Keep a connection across a political difference. Before passing along a claim, check where it came from. At a local meeting or in an election, ask candidates what problem they intend to solve, what their plan would do and how we would know whether it worked. Those habits will not produce agreement on command. They can, however, help us argue as citizens who must still share a community afterward.
I will keep making my Sunday calls. Sometimes my relatives answer, and sometimes they do not. The call is not a vote, a compromise or a cure for our divisions. It is a reminder that the person on the other end matters to me whether we agree or not. We can hold our convictions, demand accountability and still leave that line open.
Be nice.
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Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel, a federal civil servant, and a retired consultant who writes on civic education. He lives in Fredericksburg.
