Justice.  Equality.  Democracy.  Liberty.

Single words, powerful words.  Each represents a standard by which we guide and judge ourselves.   The sum of them is even greater.  They define who we are, give us pride in being the United States of America.

And they do not stand alone as values that are important to us.  Though few reduce themselves to a single word, other bedrock principles that are bred into us include building a better life, law and order, individual rights, working toward the common good.  There’s a fairly long list.

We have what academics who work in the realm of political theory call values pluralism.

The father of this line of thinking is a fellow by the name of Isaiah Berlin, a Brit who did his most important work in the 1950s.  Berlin was never a household name but his contributions to political theory hold tremendous sway among his academic disciples.

There are values on which we tend to agree.  There are other values that are more contested.  But this is where it starts to get interesting.  Berlin and others point out that these values do not exist in isolation.  Inevitably they come into conflict with each other.

The most noted of these conflicts is the tension between equality and liberty.  If everyone had absolute liberty, then equality couldn’t and wouldn’t exist.  Conversely if we had total equality, then liberty would be obliterated.  This is but one example of the many, many such conflicts among our values.

The role that these conflicts play in our political discourse – and discord – is totally under-recognized and under-appreciated.  Our political debate focuses on the surface issues and fails to identify – or address – the underlying conflicts in our values that are causing these issues to materialize.

For instance when it comes to immigration, one frame for discussion is the logistical one of deciding what to do with the wave of humanity that has overwhelmed our southern border.  But at another level, we should be talking about the values smash-up between law and order and compassion.  We can’t have all of one and all of the other.  So which is it going to be?  All of one and none of the other?  Or what portion of one are we willing to sacrifice in order to have what portion of the other?

The pluralism of our values is the focus of the latest work by Our Common Purpose.  It was the primary subject of a nationwide public opinion survey done in September.  This article is the introduction to a series of reports on the results.

Our values unite us, and divide us.  The conflicts that erupt are inevitable.  We would be well served though to find a better way of addressing them.  And that begins with a better understanding of the underlying role they play in most any issue.

Next: We deem some values to be more important than others.