When I was young, my parents taught me to say ma’am and sir, pardon me, thank you and you’re welcome. They taught me to share and to play fair, and to help both my neighbors and strangers when either of them needed help. They taught me to respect authority, but to never to let a person in authority lead me to do wrong. They were not trying to mold good children; they were trying to model responsible adulthood.

When I became a man and assumed the role my parents once had played, I remembered those lessons. I also realized how they pertained to my new station in life. “Sir” and “ma’am” are not formalities, but rather are acknowledgements of the dignity inherent in every individual. “Pardon me,” “thank you” and “you’re welcome” recognize our dependence on one another and the need to establish and maintain relationships. Helping others instills a sense of self-worth and creates a desire to improve my ability to contribute to those around me. Recognizing both the need for authority and its limits defines how I should relate to my government.

When I afford others the rights to which our constitution and a universal understanding of justice entitles them, I am not signaling my agreement with their beliefs, condoning their actions or supporting their values. When I criticize police overreach, I am not rebuking their authority. Rather, I am remembering the wise lessons two loving people taught me in my youth.

We become different people through generations of learning. Equality, justice and democracy, what our parents were really teaching us about, do not erase our differences, homogenize our values or stifle our emotions. They do something much more important: they teach us how to behave in the presence of those differences. Without that, the America we have strived to create cannot survive.

Ken Hines

Athens