A quiet voice defies  the cacophony

I've been looking for an off-ramp from this cacophonous highway we've been traveling as a nation. But it turns out the local streets are pretty noisy, too.

We yell when we could talk. We criticize one another's character instead of focusing on our philosophies. We fight rather than compromise, attack instead of analyze, assume the worst rather than hope for the best.

And when so many of our elected leaders are more interested in agitating than legislating, performing than governing, it's pretty clear we lack role models for change.

So it was wonderful therapy to listen to Stephen Breyer make his retirement remarks last week. The long-serving Supreme Court justice chose not to use his nationally televised White House appearance to blow his own horn or tear down his ideological opponents. His words were not in service to his own ego or even about himself in any way.

Instead, he was quietly reflective. Imagine that. Not entirely out of character, for sure, given his personality and the fact that he's a judge, but still.

After 27 years on the nation's highest bench, Breyer said he had come to understand that we have a "complicated" country. Of all the adjectives in all the dictionaries, he chose one of the most nonjudgmental that he could find.

And the essence of our complicated nature, he said, is that our people collectively hold "every point of view possible."

He was right, of course. And it was clear that Breyer did not view that as a weakness, but as a strength — which indeed it is, contrary to some of today's blathering that passes as wisdom. It's not the points of view that make us weaker, but our reactions to them.

Breyer marveled that all those people from all those backgrounds with all those views come before the court because every one of them has agreed to resolve their differences under the rule of law.

He called that "a kind of miracle." And it is. It's been a miracle for some 230 years. But it's a miracle that's being frayed by defiance and disbelief. Some among us only seem to want to accept the rule of law when it benefits them, and they try to twist or bend or break it when it does not.

It's part of the perennial push-pull of our democracy whose survival, as we have discovered so vividly, depends on the willingness of those living under its principles to adhere to them. At some times, that survival has seemed more fraught than others.

Breyer channeled presidents Washington and Lincoln in characterizing our nation as an experiment from its inception. He was right on that, too. But we must remind ourselves explicitly about this glorious experiment and that, as in any experiment, nothing is guaranteed.

Breyer nodded to the eternal nature of the challenge by saying that it would be future generations — "my grandchildren and their children" — who would determine whether the experiment will still be working.

"And of course, I am an optimist, and I'm pretty sure it will," he said.

It was a lovely parting thought. Softly bullish, quietly confident.

Breyer is a liberal, yes, but this is not an ode to the left or the right. It's an ode to understated conviction and steady pragmatism of whatever political stripe, the kind of force that's always been our nation's backbone, the kind of force that used to get things done in this country and that we direly need to employ again.

Scream if you must, but understand that nothing good and lasting is ever achieved by screaming.

Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.

By Michael Dobie

michael.dobie1@newsday.commwdobie

Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.