The Annual Symposium has convened each December since well before this archive begins in 2010. It is ordinary people around a table: a port logistics manager, an accountant, an engineer, an insurance agent, arguing about the country they share. A moderator puts the questions. Who answers is sometimes decided by lot, and each speaker has five minutes. Nobody is there to win a news cycle. The point is to hear the other side out and answer it on the merits. There are no cameras at our roundtables, and correspondents are identified only by their towns. [Here’s why →]

What we publish is each correspondent’s opening remarks, as delivered. The cross-examination that follows is not part of the record. That is the price of a room where people will say what they think, and we consider it worth paying.

America needs more rooms like this one: people who disagree, seated close enough to hear each other, arguing hard and staying civil. Washington could take a lesson.