Every day on social media and cable TV in newspapers and magazines, we're told we live in a red versus blue world of rigid divides.

On this episode we consider whether we're a lot less divided than that.

This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Melntite.

I'm Richard Davies. When it comes to politics most of us are neither hard left nor hard right but fall somewhere in the middle.

Says our podcast guest. We have a complicated mix of views from both sides of the aisle.

We hear from Tony Woodleaf, author of the book Eye Citizen.

He makes the case that political elites from members of Congress to pundits on cable and partisans who post on Twitter promote a false narrative about politics.

Tony says the national political establishment is invested in conflict and wants to weaken our ability to govern ourselves and find common ground.

He says this notion of red versus blue on everything weakens our democracy. Richard you get the first question.

Let's start at the beginning with a story that goes back to when you were nine. The dog gets out of the yard and you end up reading the US Constitution.

This goes to the heart of what we're talking about so tell us more.

The dog got loose and I'm the one who got punished I guess because the dogs running around through the neighborhood and this is sort of a rural part of Florida.

There's a dog catcher with his little truck you know and the cages in the back and he's after my dog and I don't want him to get my dog so I'm running as fast as I can and it's a race to see who can get to my dog.

Because she's very friendly and she's just excited that two different people want to meet her and I get there first and I wrap my arms around her and then the guy comes up.

He's not going to physically pull me off the dog so he gets out of clipboard and he starts asking me questions like you know what are my parents names and where do I live and you know how long we live there.

And so then I see out of the corner of my eye this really angry maybe a little crazy looking red headed woman storming up to us and that that red headed woman is my mother.

And she lays into this fellow with you know a lot of language it's a cross between cursing and legal language which I didn't quite understand.

So I was excited my mother rescued me this was turning out to be very good day and this fellow put his clipboard away and gotten his truck and drove off as fast as he could.

So then we go home and I'm thinking well we stood down the dog catcher maybe we celebrate with ice cream or something and instead my mother turns on me and starts yelling at me that you know I should never give information to an agent of the state he had no right to question us I should understand our rights as citizens.

And then she pulls open like a cutlery drawer and pulls out a little pocket constitution I mean what kind of woman keeps a constitution in her silverware drawer well my mother and she sent me to my room and said read it all and don't come out until you do so that was the first time I read the constitution.

What did you start to learn about the constitution as a result of what you did that day.

What I took from it was it was a fascinating idea for a child you know in a public school system where you're you're supposed to obey everyone.

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