Braver Angels and the Pro-Truth Pledge

Eric Brody, Blue Co-Chair Southern Front Range Alliance

This past Sunday saw the confluence of two causes that are very important to me.

It happened at the most recent instance of our Southern Front Range Alliance Civil Discourse series. One of those causes is Braver Angels itself – its mission and the Braver Angels Way. The other is the Pro-Truth Pledge.

The topic of the September 29 session was the 2024 Election.

Participants, roughly evenly distributed between blues and reds, took turns sharing what each considered to be one of the most important issues for the 2024 election. These topics went up on a green board, and then participants wrote questions or comments about individual topics on Post-It Notes and stuck them as appropriate on the board. The group then collectively decided which topics to further pursue in small group discussions.

The small group in which I participated had made its discussion topic a combination of three of the issues on the green board:

Honesty
Governmental/Political Dysfunction
Divisiveness

The Pro-Truth Pledge seemed an excellent means of addressing the challenge represented by these 2024 Election concerns. On its main page, the website of the Pro-Truth Pledge poses the following question and call to action:

Here is the Pro-Truth Pledge:

I Pledge My Earnest Efforts To:

Share truth

Verify: fact-check information to confirm it is true before accepting and sharing it
Balance: share the whole truth, even if some aspects do not support my opinion
Cite: share my sources so that others can verify my information
Clarify: distinguish between my opinion and the facts

Honor truth

Acknowledge: acknowledge when others share true information, even when we disagree otherwise
Reevaluate: reevaluate if my information is challenged, retract it if I cannot verify it
Defend: defend others when they come under attack for sharing true information, even when we disagree otherwise
Align: align my opinions and my actions with true information

Encourage truth

Fix: ask people to retract information that reliable sources have disproved even if they are my allies
Educate: compassionately inform those around me to stop using unreliable sources even if these sources support my opinion
Defer: recognize the opinions of experts as more likely to be accurate when the facts are disputed
Celebrate: celebrate those who retract incorrect statements and update their beliefs toward the truth

I took the pledge seven years ago and encourage all of us who would like to promote honesty, reduce divisiveness, and encourage a healthy political culture to do likewise. This is a general principle highly consonant with the work of Braver Angels.

In the small group discussion, I spoke of the relevance of the Pro-Truth Pledge to the 2024 election (and indeed to all elections and all politics). Wouldn’t it be great were we, as a society, to set a baseline expectation that office holders and candidates would take the pledge? Would it not be enormously constructive for society to hold our political figures accountable for upholding this pledge?

All who agree – members of Braver Angels prominent among them – can help bring this about.

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