On a very blue and metropolitan Democratic congressperson's reasons for going everywhere, including rural America

Ro Khanna, the California congressperson (D) representing Silicon Valley, wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago: 

A robust defense of First Amendment principles online is more important than ever. Citizens in our polarized country need to have conversations with each other based on mutual respect. Suppressing speech we don’t like leaves us blind to alternative perspectives that help us see the whole, complex truth.

My belief in a marketplace of ideas is why I do interviews on media channels across the political spectrum. It’s why I engage perspectives different from mine, why I visit factory towns, rural areas and Republican-dominated congressional districts. Imagine if Democratic lawmakers were required to have town halls in deep red areas and Republicans in deep blue ones.  (emphasis added)

There will always be extremists and partisan media outlets that increase polarization and make conversations more difficult. But we would be wise to remember the teaching of the great liberal political philosopher John Rawls: “It is extremely unwise to conceive of the ideal political society as moved by scarce supererogatory moral motives alone. That leads to hating other persons and taking pleasure in condemning them as falling short.” Rawls believed we should be humble about our own certitude of truth and not rush to condemn others who we think don’t measure up. Robust public debate is the first step in America’s healing and reconciliation.

I like this philosophy.  By the way, the title for the op ed is "Twitter’s Duty to Protect Free Speech," and its subhead is "Censorship of the Hunter Biden story might have helped my party, but it was bad for our democracy."  Khanna no doubt had the opportunity to publish this high-profile piece because of comments he made some time ago about Twitter's prior censorship of a story about President Joe Biden's son.  Those comments were revealed in a story that grabbed big headlines earlier this week.  

Here's some other coverage of Khanna's outreach to surprising places like Indiana and Iowa.  His recent book, Dignity in a Digital Age, takes up the need to spread high tech opportunities to rural America.