Ex Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is now involved with High School students in Phoenix, in a call for all of us adults to act, well, to act like adults and not yell at each other when talking politics. Sandra is hoping that the insights of our youngsters, can set us on the correct course, when it comes to civil discourse. I beg to differ.
Sandra thinks that if only we had been more civil, then Jared Loughner would not have shot Gabby Giffords, as well as the other vicitms. The Pima County sheriff said as much last January. There is no doubt, this was a tragedy, but the tragedy started well before a psychotic young man altered history. His acts had nothing to do with the current political climate and everything to do with rage of a mad psychotic. Yet his actions, are somehow now all our collective fault, and now we have a call to "return to a time and place, when political discourse was civil and respectful", to prevent a tragedy like this, from occuring again.
My question is simple: how do you "return" to something that has never existed?
Political discourse has never been civil. By it's nature and with the stakes involved, it can't be civil. The debate on slavery in the 1850's was far from civil. The debate on Civll Rights in the 60's was not civil. The debate on the Vietnam War turned into a a cultural civil war...if you don't think so ask the kids at Kent State or the servicemen returning from Vietnam, who got spit on, if it was civil. The debate on American Independence in the 1760's was far from civil. The debate on "giving women the vote" over 100 years ago, was far from civil. The debate between Protestants and Catholics in the 1600's, well, that was not civil. The fact of the matter is that in most places in the world and throughout history, speaking out carries a real cost, and in many instances, the act of speaking out cost you your life. Pick the wrong side in politics, and you can lose everything. Ask all those men who signed the Declaration of Independence how they fared? Almost all of them lost everything they had. Many were killed for their conviction. Not exactly civil was it? Ask a Jew in Germany what the cost was for speaking out in 1939? We are fortunate in that our leaders may get mocked for their foibles, but unlike the leaders in LIbya and Egypt in 2011, they aren't jailed or killed, once they are "voted out". Peacefully passing the torch from leader to leader is the true miracle of American Politics. That is our testament to what true civiliity is and is our gift to the world.
The notion of ciivility in political discourse has only existed for a brief period of US history, and that was after WWII, when we saw a society that had a cultural uniformity that couldn't exist in 2011. Mom was home, vacuuming while wearing pearls, and Dad in the barcalounger, reading the paper and smoking his pipe and everyone was white. It was a fiction even then. It wasn't really civil, but as others here allude to, you can impose censorship and then paint a picture that isn't real. This is called propaganda. This is exaclty what we had....self imposed and government imposed censorship all through society...which brought you the fiction that everyone was on the same page and that most of the politicians agreed and discourse was, well,respectful and civil. This is what the press reported...except everrything wasn't so great, especially if you were black or brown or some other group that wasn't on the approved list at the country club. It was a Potempkin Village of civility. On the outside, all seemed calm and civil. Behind the facade, were ugly forces that were being suppressed, and finally broke through with violence and vengegance in the next decade. It was a world that was ephemeral in it's existence and was the outlier. The discourse of today is the norm. My self, I am so happy that the founding fathers didn't kowtow to this assinine push for political correctness in public debate. I really don't fancy eating scones or putting milk in my tea.
If you want to teach our kids somelthing of value, it is this: free speech is never free. There is a real cost to speaking out. Evil, in all it's forms, deserves no respect. Anger is a tool of change in the face of the venal. Our kids are the leaders of tomorrow. It is our job, as the adults, to leave them a world worth inheriting. Our greatest gift we can give, is we can teach them to speak, without hesitation, and without fear of reprisal. That is true civiiity.
Don't think so, ask the kids in Syria, and Lybia, and N.Korea, and China, and Tunisia, and the Maldives, and Iran, and Cuba, and Venezuela, and Egypt and ..............
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/giffords/our-future/#comments#ixzz1iHJTIhQc
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