Civility, Sensationalism, or Ignorance?

I've had about enough of this. A FB friend posted a CNN article this morning criticizing a religious leader for nixing a civility campaign due to lack of interest. Now, I see no problem with putting a stop to a program that has gotten little to no traction. Seems like it makes sense to me. Of course the secular community see it as a way to criticize religious leaders yet once more. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to criticize religious leaders about; hypocrisy, racism, hate-mongering, and the list goes on. Does this action really deserve any scrutiny? Simply, no. In fact, the people in this situation that deserve a swift verbal kick in the ass are the members of the secular community trying to make a big deal out of this.

So two weeks ago in Arizona, some crazy kid shoots up a political rally, killed six people and wounded a dozen more. This is a tragedy, and my thoughts are with the people that it has immediately affected. The 24 hour political brainwashing machine has gone into full effect to try to make this into a political issue, and I fear that it may be leading toward a further limiting of freedom. We'll get to that later though... What they've been talking about is the tone of the political discourse in America, and how it led to this tragedy.

Well, lets take a look at this. I've heard people say that the political tone now is worse than it's ever been. Machiavelli wrote in The Prince and The Discourses about the tendency that we have as people to idealize the past, to look back at the 'good ol days' where things were better than they are now, and how to then politically capitalize on that natural tendency. Realizing this tendency, we should consider political rhetoric of the past, and see if it's really better, worse, or the same as what it used to be.

Here's something from the first truly contested election in America's history from Thomas Jefferson's people: "John Adams is a blind, bald, toothless old man who wants to start a war with France... while he's not busy importing mistresses from Europe, he's trying to marry one of his sons to a daughter of King George." The Adams campaign responded that the election of Jefferson would result in mass rape, murder, incest, and so on. Our third vice president shot and killed our first treasury secretary in a duel. Stephen Douglas called Abe Lincoln a "hatchet faced nutmeg dealer." Of course that election was the ugliest election in our nation's history, before Lincoln was inaugurated Southern states began to secede from the Union, and the Civil War had begun. Could you imagine a presidential election leading to an all out war between two parts of America today?

So Sarah Palin put cross-hairs on Giffords' district, Obama said we should bring a gun to a knife fight, and other ugly rhetoric has been thrown about on both sides. Critics are correct in their assertion that it is ugly. They are correct that civility is nice. They may be correct in their claim that our country could be better if the rhetoric is a bit nicer. But they are wrong to say that it is worse now than it has ever been. They are wrong to desire some sort of legislation to assure civility. And they are wrong to want to piss all over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to make the political system a little more rosy.

Here's the deal people, democratic politics is an ugly game. It always has been, and it always will be. For what it's worth, it's more tame now than at any point in history. Is it annoying when a moderately informed citizen tries to peel through the nonsense to get to some real truth and real solutions? Yeah it is! But in no way does this mean that we should take actions to limit our own freedom because the people in power can't talk nicely to each other. What makes America great is not the niceness of our politics, it is not the civility in our newspapers or political campaigns or rallies. What makes America great is our freedom to speak out against the things we disagree with. What makes America great is that only once in over two hundred years of our spiteful and ugly version of political discourse has it come to blows between two factions. Lets hope that it doesn't happen again. My fear is that once we voluntarily limit our own freedom of speech in terms of political discourse, the lid on that pressure cooker will not hold long, and when it boils to the point of bursting things will be ugly.

Thanks,
Sean



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI&feature=player_embedded
http://history1800s.about.com/od/leaders/a/electionof1828.htm
http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/served/burr.html
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/11/leading-evangelical-halts-effort-to-increase-political-civility/