Chapter 5/8

Compromise

Compromise, for all its dangers, risks, and the warnings against it, makes human society possible. Marriage, the home, economics, and politics—whether local, state, national, or international— all live by compromise. It is the glue that holds social structures in place. It is not optional. It is a necessity, a daily necessity. Few things are as risky as compromise, but few are as essential.

One day, my wife and I were filling in and signing some legal forms. One question asked how long we had been married. The answer was fifty-eight years. The notary public who was assisting said, “Wow. That’s impressive. You don’t hear that much anymore. What is your secret?”
“Compromise,” I answered. “Daily compromise. A marriage cannot last, in fact, I don’t think it can exist, without compromise.” Those who study the causes of divorce commonly list—and link—a lack of communication, compromise, and commitment. Marriage is a daily OTOH, BOTOH. It is a complex of countless theses and antitheses, with a constant commitment to finding some degree of synthesis or compromise.

Yes, there are situations where we cannot compromise. When dealing with a state of affairs where the other entity is committed to upholding a single principle, we cannot compromise unless we are willing to subjugate everything else to their one principle. Abraham Lincoln said he was afraid of a “man of principle.” He found them very dangerous. He noted that although we could work with men of principles, with the man of a single principle, we waste our time offering any concessions. They would be taken as signs of weakness, and would change the other side not in the least.

Compromise is the law of life together. It is so necessary and so potentially dangerous, we need to be always prepared to make some concessions, except in those cases where compromise would be disastrous. There is one basic criterion for making a decision in these cases: our values. We need to know what we value, that is, what would we be willing to give up in order to hold on to the things we value. For Patrick Henry, liberty was the highest value. He would not compromise with anything that might cost him his freedom: “Give me liberty or give me death.” We should always be ready to consider making concessions unless we find ourselves in the place where we are unwilling to give at all, where we are prepared to say, “You can kill me, but on this point I will not change. I am prepared to die on this hill.”