Monday, March 12, 2012

Paging Civility: A Problem of American Political Discourse and Life

I’ve always said never rely on the media to give the complete story. Still I couldn’t ignore the debate that occurred on Meet the Press yesterday morning on the seeming loss of civility among our political leaders in Washington D.C.
What does it say about our society as a whole when our political leaders can’t even disagree without someone being branded a socialist, communist, economic terrorist, Taliban, slut, or countless other derogatory terms? These are our politicians…what conclusion can we draw about the rest of society?
Yet, this problem doesn’t just exist in D.C. It is a nationwide pandemic of the word. One simply can’t say anything anymore without causing an emotional upheaval among some person or segment of society.
This is a problem because it leads people to become silent out of fear of offending people. Anytime that we silence ideas and opinions, we become the very society that we fought for two hundred years not to become.
We can and should disagree, but we don’t have to make demons of the other side in the process.

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