What Medved and the other consolers of the left are doing these days in their engagement with this strawest of dogs is elevating the left’s fallacious premise that the right is most uncivil to an infallible argument. That argument is that the Right really has been (without really knowing it) most uncivil and needs to clean up its act if “our politics” are to return to a level and “civil” playing field.
I try to be civil. I try to be civil in the comments area.
I try to be civil on other blogs and discussion forums.
I try to be the change that I want to bring to people.
There are right-wing loons who spout off ridiculous non-sense.
But there are left-wing loons who do the same.
That is the thing we must not let the left forget. They're no better than anyone.
I don't think the uncivil discourse had anything to do with the shootings in Tucson, Arizona.
But I do think continual incivility and coarseness is bad for the soul.
That's all. Reading in it and engaging in it just tends to make one more subject to the passions, or in Catholic-speak: concupiscence.
But the blogger has a point: trying to be nice, just to placate the general population or maybe stop the next shooter is stupid.
It does give the left the idea that they are right, that it's all our fault.
So should we not be civil? Should we continue to treat every leftist as a potential minion of the anti-Christ?
Here's an idea: just choose civility for oneself, and if it works, people will copy it.
No doubt, not everyone will. And that's okay. Not everyone has to.
But you will be the oasis of polite dissent and debate. You will engage those people who are attracted to arguments and discussions based on facts and ideas, not ad hominem.
And other people will follow.
That's all.
You don't have to make it look like you're putting the left on a higher moral plane. Because they're not.
And political discourse will be elevated, focusing on truth instead of peronalities.
Via: Free Canuckistan
