Thursday, August 16, 2012

On Civility

A scant week ago, the Presidential Campaign was being hyped as an almighty clash of ideas, a pseudo intellectual pundit's dream in other words.
That was before the Vice President cracked that the banks wanna put us all in chains and then Mitt Romney started howling that the President is a hate monger...
Didn't take long for the usual unseemly slanging match to kick in now did it?
Of course, incivility is a relative thing, political passions tore the nation in two back in 1861 and the state of civility in public discourse has hardly improved since then.
The basic legitimacy of one's captioned opponents seems to have always been debatable in this country,hard thing to admit but it's true.
Moreover lets put aside this farcical self image that we have of American's being "nice people"
We aren't, we really never have been.
Yuu don't rise to our current international eminence and prosperity, without a certain degree of callousness and insensitivity.
Which is not to say we are brutal or sadistic or authoritarian, but purely civil....no.
A civil polity does not stage a revolution, create a democracy, survive a civil war or become great prosperous or most of all, keep it's freedom.
And unfortunately, rhetorically rampant politicians is a tax we pay to that freedom.

Have a Nice Day....



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