As Benjamin Franklin is often (mis)quoted: “democracy is three wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.” Political diagnosticians of every bent are frequently in agreement about at least one thing: our distrust of each other is creating a system in which the concerns of the sheep are overruled. The sheep do not know what is best, the wolves say. The sheep is conspiring against the nation, the wolves say. The unique danger of the position we find ourselves in is that all of us have cause to believe we are the sheep.

It’s fashionable lately to speak in terms of a “culture war.” That phrase in itself adds to the trouble, but certainly, the members of either major faction in U.S. politics seem to see themselves as embittered warriors, last holdouts against a tide of immorality, fully prepared to die defending this hill. In some ways the comparison to warfare is apt. It is also extraordinarily dangerous.

To begin with, the comparison is apt because of the siege mentality that has been adopted by both sides. Both find themselves to be victims of wicked majoritarian aggression against their ways of life and their values, both see themselves as opposed to a grand coalition of sinners and scoundrels of all stripes, and both have elements that claim the stakes of the conflict are life and death. In other words, both sides see themselves as innocent sheep defending their way of life against the encroaching wolves.

But there is one important reason to refuse the label of “culture war." War is only declared when other methods of solving a conflict have failed. To admit that we are at war is to admit the defeat of compassion, reason and tolerance.

To even speak of “both sides” is to invite the worsening of the conflict. We are all, by and large, on the same side: the side of seeing our loved ones on holidays, the side of comfort and familiarity, the side of peace. We do not have a struggle for the fate of the nation between good and evil, right and wrong, tolerance and oppression. What we are now is a nation grappling with its history and its future, and with the question of what kind of nation we would like to be.

That is not to say that everything is going perfectly well and there is no danger that the nation may make further decisions that will land it on the wrong side of history. Indeed, the danger that in our desire for safety, security, and familiarity we sacrifice those who are different from us is acuter than it has been in many decades. But if that happens, it will not be because the valiant fighters for good were defeated in cultural combat by evil. It will be a failure of communication, and like all such failures, the fault is both on the speaker and the listener.

This period in our nation’s history must not be framed as a war. Wars have winners and losers, and the conquerors vanquish the conquered and plunder their homes and livelihoods. Losers of wars rarely lose gracefully. We must not reduce the crucial step towards tolerance and acceptance into an act of undignified surrender. To call this a culture war would guarantee that we never see the end of it.