Civil Discourse

That's Outrageous!

"Blow-hards and Buffoons: Their senseless rantings are poisoning political debate"

One of Reader’s Digest’s more popular features is “That’s Outrageous!” by Michael Crowley.

Robert P. Murphy writes,

When the feature spotlights government pork-barrel projects, absurd zoning restrictions on homeowners, or illogical regulations on small business, libertarians can applaud. (Retrieved September 30, 2009)

This following article contains a quote from Larry Sabato, co-author of our text book American Government: Roots and Reform.

Political Blood Sport

Thomas Jefferson must be apoplectic in the Great Beyond. He warned that only people who are "well-informed can be trusted with their own government." Well, look what's become of us.

I met up recently with two old friends in California, Jeff and Mary, who told me they are worried about terrorism. But it's not Osama bin Laden they fear — it's George W. Bush. These are otherwise sensible people: He's a doctor; she owns an antiques store. Which is why I was stunned to hear them predict that Bush will stage a terrorist attack this fall to ensure his reelection.

"Seriously?" I asked. Seriously, they said.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, not after seeing an "ad" on the website of the liberal advocacy group Moveon.org, that compared Bush to Adolf Hitler. That's the sort of vitriol that's "informing" the public today. And it's hardly confined to the Left.

During the Iraq war last spring, some conservatives said that liberals were secretly hoping Saddam Hussein would teach President Bush a lesson in humility. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly growled that "some Americans were rooting against their own country — that their ideology was so ingrained it was better for them if things went badly in Iraq, even though that would have caused more American casualties."

Welcome to the politics of America, 2004. Thoughtful debate has given way to angry, polarized arguments in which there is no compromise and no middle ground. Shades of gray, you ask? Stop being so wishy-washy! When it comes to abortion, you're either a baby-killer or a religious nut. Try to explain that women should have some abortion rights, but that a fetus is also more than just body tissue, and you're likely to get shouted down in midsentence. And good luck talking about affirmative action — whether you're pro or con — without being called a racist.

Politics have become a year-round blood sport — both for the partisan gladiators and for the media that cheers them on. For evidence, just scan the bestseller lists. There you'll find liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, whose book Dude, Where's My Country? hit No. 1 by taking aim at "screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth right-wingers."

Moore also calls George Bush "an appointed President [who] uses the dead of 9/11 as a convenient cover, a justification for permanently altering our American way of life."

From the other side comes conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who sold a half-million copies of her book Treason, arguing that liberals are "either traitors or idiots" who routinely "side with the enemy" and "aim to destroy America ... with their relentless attacks on morality and the truth."

Flip on the TV or radio and you'll find dozens of partisan talking heads in a nonstop shouting match of escalating nastiness. "The only thing that sells is the screamers," laments Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "Twenty years ago, there were a lot more shows with reasonable discussions. Today people just yell sound bites at one another. And if you don't, you're not used again."

Monopolizing the Truth

Communication might be easier if people at least believed one another. But in today's debate, everyone assumes their enemy fights with weapons of mass deception.

Comedian Al Franken's hit book purports to chronicle the Right's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, while another recent book explains The Lies of George W. Bush.

Conservatives, meanwhile, are convinced that a left-leaning media establishment deliberately misinforms the public. Former CBS News producer Bernard Goldberg topped the bestseller list last year with Bias, a book that charges liberal journalists with distorting the news. Ann Coulter was in the thick of the fight again with her book bluntly titled Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right. It's awfully hard to have a constructive debate when everyone thinks they have a monopoly on the truth.

And it's not just journalists and pundits who are stoking all this rage. It's the politicians themselves. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has flatly declared the case for war against Iraq "a fraud," while a fellow Democrat, Rep. Jim McDermott, suggested that the capture of Saddam Hussein was timed for maximum political benefit.

In response, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Republican, called these remarks "moronic" and said that Democrats have "nothing to offer the public debate but rage, resentment and quackery." Even the business of government is being paralyzed. One Congressional committee meeting broke up last summer when an angry Democrat called a Republican "a little fruitcake" and challenged him to a fight; the committee chairman eventually summoned the Capitol Police.

Expect things to only get worse as election day approaches. After all, the media and politicians know that people love to watch a good tussle. But all this debate, with so little intelligence, comes at a steep price. Consider this: Some experts are expecting a big surge in new, young voters that could account for 10 percent of the electorate — and perhaps decide the Presidential contest. Hardcore liberal and conservative groups are spending big money to help bring out the youth vote.

But if young Americans do unplug their iPods and tune into politics, what will they make of a poisonous discourse that insults more than it informs? Some may just pop their headphones back on in disgust. The rest will go to the polls on election day, where they'll join the long lines of uninformed citizens.

From Reader's Digest - March 2004

(Retrieved September 30, 2009)

Comment by Nate Segal:

I recently heard the verb 'bloviate' to describe the speech of "blow-hards who opinionate."

Speech Is Costly, but Worthwhile

"The Privilege of The Grave"

by Mark Twain

as published in The New Yorker, December 22 & 29, 2008

Comments by Nate Segal

. . . there is hardly one of us but would dearly like to reveal these secrets of ours [certain views not suspected by his little world]; we know we cannot do it in life . . .

Mark Twain

I learned from our late parents to speak my mind freely, but I also learned some prices they paid.

Dad argued out loud, even with those who weren't interested, that the Cuban Revolution was good for the Cuban people. Overall, Cuba's elites – and American elites – exploited ordinary Cubans to the point of grinding poverty, he argued.

Our father was not afraid of Marxism in the third world. He seems to have not anticipated that Fidel Castro’s Cuba would support and promote unrest in Central America and in Southwest Africa (today's Namibia). And Dad spoke about this freely in a solidly Republican Congressional district.

Did our parents pay a price? He and Mom heard from neighbors that a man (or men) in suits visited neighbors and asked questions about our father. He believed that these were FBI men and that the FBI was conducting a low key investigation of our father for their files. Our father, however, only stopped talking about the Cuban Revolution within a few years when it became known that Castro was a vicious dictator.

I think that, overall, our parents didn’t pay much of a price for being outspoken. Mom and Dad grew up in Chicago, and we continued to live in Metropolitan Chicago. Unlike most people in Mark Twain’s time, Dad and our family could cultivate friends some miles away in various communities. Dad didn’t depend on serving only nearby people as their accountant either. America was also changing. Debates about Civil Rights and the Vietnam War were reaching us over the television and the less stuffy newspapers. By stuffy, I mean newspapers that espoused Twain’s idea of policy:

When an entirely new and untried political project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, . . . they are waiting to see which is going to be the popular side.

Our father really paid very little attention to any price he paid by revealing his secret views. Neighbors rolled their eyes and generally considered Dad to be a harmless eccentric.

I believe that when I was growing up I came to believe, as Mark Twain notes, “Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always – when committed.” For a while, I was cautious about voicing opinions about politics and religion – two topics which Mark Twain mentioned in his article. But no longer. I also was and generally remain silent on the subject of money, but not because of what I learned from Dad. I believe that talking about my finances is liable to become embarrassing, either to the other person or to myself.

More or less, Dad let people know how well (or not well) he was doing. I chalk this up to our parents’ having grown up during the Great Depression. It was an expression of tranquility that any of their money concerns paled in the face of their privations during the Depression. It also seems to me that they were saying, to themselves as much as to anyone else, “We survived then; we’ll do fine now.”

Mom and Dad weren’t bashful to say, “We can afford to trade our starter house up to a larger and more expensive one, except that we might find ourselves ‘house poor,’” a hint of suspicion about how our former neighbors were living. Also, Mom and Dad said that they didn’t want to give up our yearly auto trip vacations. Eventually we visited most of the lower forty-eight states from the time I was nine years old until I graduated high school.

Keep in mind that our parents paid cash for everything. Credit cards (not revolving charge cards) were rare and unknown in our circles. Dad went to the bank once a year before the vacation and bought travelers checks, a sum that was immediately withdrawn from their personal bank account – and not a confidential amount, within the family.

So they courageously expressed what Mark Twain called “. . . unpopular convictions which common wisdom forbids . . . to utter.”

However, concerning political parties, Dad and Mom joined the Democrat Party with virtually no ongoing thought. Having lived through the Depression and benefitted from FDR’s New Deal, they expressed undying loyalty to President Roosevelt’s Democrat Party, no matter what policies the party adopted from the time of World War II through the time of Dad’s death in 2006.

In fact, Mom and Dad felt that I betrayed them when I voted for Republican candidates. (We had no sense of a “secret ballot” within or outside the family.) “Republican policies only benefit the rich. Republicans are selfish.” Mom and Dad certainly asserted their privilege of free speech, despite Twain’s maintaining that “[one] possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it . . .”

It was worth it to my sisters and me to hear our parents speak freely and frankly. I believe that it has served us well so we can engage in civil discourse and “agree to disagree.”

Mr. President

by Nate Segal

Out of respect for the officers of our country and the Constitution, I am trying to refer to the president, for example, as President Obama or Mr. Obama.

I am trying to do this in speaking also.

Please don't be bashful to call my attention to any lapses.