The town hall was the building where the argument was the architecture. The building existed so that people who disagreed could disagree in the same room and the room was the democracy. The room did not require agreement. The room required presence. You had to show up. The showing up was the vote before the vote. The town hall was the only building in America where a farmer and a banker sat in the same row of chairs and the chairs were the same size and the sameness was the principle. The farmer's chair did not recline. The banker's chair did not have armrests. The chairs were wooden and hard and the hardness was the equality and the equality was uncomfortable because equality is always uncomfortable. Comfort requires hierarchy. The town hall rejected hierarchy for two hours on a Tuesday night and the rejection was the most radical act in American civic life.

The New England town meeting is the oldest continuous democratic institution in the Western hemisphere. The first recorded town meeting took place in Dorchester Massachusetts in sixteen thirty three and the meeting was called because the colonists needed to decide how to divide the common land and the dividing required consent and the consent required a meeting and the meeting required a building. The building came later. The first meetings were held in churches and the holding of civic meetings in churches was not a violation of the separation of church and state because the separation did not exist yet. The separation came a hundred and fifty years later and the separation required the town to build its own building and the building was the town hall. The town hall was the church of democracy. The steeple was replaced by a cupola. The altar was replaced by a podium. The pews were replaced by chairs. But the function was the same. People gathered in a room to hear a voice speak about matters that affected them all and the hearing was the communion.

The town hall meeting followed Robert's Rules of Order and the Rules were published by Henry Martyn Robert in eighteen seventy six and the Rules were a manual for organized disagreement. The Rules said you must be recognized before you speak. The Rules said you must address the chair and not the person you are arguing with. The Rules said a motion must be seconded before it can be discussed and the seconding was the test. If no one seconds your motion then no one thinks your idea is worth discussing and the not discussing is the answer and the answer is delivered without cruelty. The Rules were designed to protect the minority from the majority and the majority from the minority and both from the person who will not stop talking. The person who will not stop talking exists in every town hall in America and the existence of that person is the proof that the system works because a system that silences the person who will not stop talking is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship with better acoustics.

The town hall was the place where the budget became real. The budget was numbers on paper until the town hall meeting and then the budget was a man standing up and saying I cannot afford a tax increase and the standing and the saying made the numbers human. The school board presented the school budget and the school budget was always more than last year because schools always cost more than last year and the costing more was the argument. The argument was not about education. The argument was about property taxes. The property tax is the funding mechanism that ties the quality of a child's education to the value of the house the child lives in and the tying is the original sin of American public education and the sin was debated in every town hall in the country every March and the debate never resolved the sin because the sin cannot be resolved at a town hall meeting. The sin can only be acknowledged and the acknowledging happened when the retired woman on a fixed income stood up and said I believe in schools but I cannot pay more and the believing and the not paying existed in the same sentence and the sentence was America.

The town hall is not gone. The town hall is ignored. The building still stands in the center of most New England towns and the building still hosts meetings and the meetings still follow Robert's Rules and the chairs are still hard. But the attendance has dropped from hundreds to dozens to sometimes single digits and the dropping is the crisis that no one calls a crisis. The town hall was replaced by the comment section and the comment section is not a town hall. The comment section does not require presence. The comment section does not require your name. The comment section does not require you to look at the person you are disagreeing with and the not looking is the corruption. The town hall forced you to be a citizen in the presence of other citizens and the forcing was the education. The comment section allows you to be an opinion in the presence of other opinions and the allowing is the decay. The chairs in the town hall are still there. The chairs are still hard. The chairs are still the same size. The chairs are waiting for you to sit in them and the sitting is the oldest act of democracy in the country and the act costs nothing and the nothing is the most expensive thing America has decided it cannot afford.