Reply #34: How important is civility?

[hfojvt]

An LTTE I wrote responding to a newspaper column.

The Apostle Paul exhorted the Phillipians to think about "whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable." So I probably should ignore Joseph Perkins latest piece of scurrilous slanderous screed, but since it is an insult to every right thinking American it deserves a robust rebuke.
America is supposed to be a country where people are free to disagree with each other and with their President and elected representatives. Americans agree to disagree, and a big part of that agreement is some measure of respect for those with opposing viewpoints no matter how ignorant or foolish you consider them to be. You can attack ideas, but you should respect the people holding those ideas.
Perkins column is not a reasoned discussion of ideas, but a vitriolic attack against people who oppose the Iraq war and/or oppose Bush. Look at the words he uses to describe us (Americans like me who exercise our constitutional right to oppose Bush and all his insidious ideas) - "ugliest, decayed, degraded, miserable creature, unworthy, perverse, absurd, and knee-jerk critics". We are motivated, he says, by politics, not by principle. The principled people marching to oppose war are "useful idiots" according to Perkins.
He is talking not only about war protestors and "Bush-bashing opinion writers," but also "those stumping for the Democratic presidential nomination".
Finally, he ends his hate-filled column by once again insinuating that we are traitors - "Their opposition, their criticism is fuel not so much by reason, but by hatred - toward their president or toward their country."
That would be an interesting test. If Bush tried to: raise the minimum wage, help the unemployed and working poor, protect the environment, prosecute corporate crimes, appoint moderates as judges and cabinet members, enhance civil liberties, raise taxes on the top 5%, tell the truth and admit his mistakes, call for more cooperation and less vitriol, or try to create peace - if he did some of that, would we still hate him? Please try it, Mr. President.
Could Perkins point to some of Bush's positive accomplishments instead of bashing Bush's critics? Does Perkins think it is wrong to hate a President who lies to us? Is it wrong to write: "And it is because of the sum total of his transgressions ... that is no longer fit to occupy this nation's highest office." or "And your man, the president, is a scoundrel of historic rank."
Certainly that is what we believe when we read David Corn's "The Lies of George W. Bush", but those two quotes were written on 9-18-98 and 8-18-98 as part of the odious oeuvre of Joseph Perkins - an apostle of a gospel of hate.


As a fan of Henry Carter Adams, I like to see the plane of competition raised. Is our political discourse going to be a reasoned discussion of facts and values, or is it going to be a brawl of lies and name-calling? Hopefully, nobody is going to be "disappeared" which means that we need to try to live together - atheist and fundamentalist, bicyclist and SUV driver, socialist and libertarian, etc. Perkins suggestion that we are the "ugliest, unworthy, decayed, degraded, absurd and perverse miserable creatures" seems to me one very small step away from calling us "sub-human" or "demons in human form" or some such. By gosh, we are 99 and 44/100ths evil, aren't we?
Of course, Bush and Cheney and Thompson really are evil, but many of their deluded supporters, some of whom I will have lunch with tomorrow, are not. Of course, the local Republican women leader does not seem to understand that I would be deeply offended by their donation of the book "Treason" to the local public library.
Still, I like to think that my ruthless criticism of Bush and Perkins is an amalgam of facts seasoned with clever invective rather than a potion of mean-spirited invective seasoned with lies and slanted statistics and double-standards.