Civility And Tolerance

Civility, where has it gone?  According to conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby in his Sunday Boston Globe op-ed piece (Ideas) entitled “F-bombing the president?:” “… civility has been stripped away from vast swaths of our social and political culture, with the result that everything has become a battlefield. For adherents of clashing world views and partisan loyalties, finding common ground has grown nearly impossible. Divergent opinions are treated as deadly threats that must be opposed not with grace and a willingness to hear each other out, but with uncompromising rhetorical ferocity.”

He began his piece by saying: "Pro-Trump Republicans have been deploying the F-word to convey their dislike for the president of the United States, and The Washington Post is appalled. I’m appalled too, but with a difference.

In a recent story headlined “Biden’s critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts,” the paper rounded up a slew of examples of people chanting “F*** Joe Biden” in venues ranging “from football stadiums to concert arenas to local bars.” It recounted how anti-Biden protesters have turned out in public to hold signs or fly banners with the same crude message. It noted that Donald Trump’s political action committee is selling a T-shirt bearing Biden’s image above the hashtag #FJB. (my emphasis). It described the viral explosion of the MAGA meme “Let’s go, Brandon” — a snarky way of communicating “F*** Joe Biden” without actually using the F-bomb. [Note: I witnessed the loud and continuous chant outside Fenway Park after the Red Sox defeated the Yankees in the playoff game.  Despicable!]

The Post acknowledges that “boos, jeers, and insults are nothing new for politicians” and that “former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as Trump, were all heckled.” But this is different, it claimed: “The current eruption of anti-Biden signs and chants . . . is on another level, far more vulgar and widespread.”

Seriously? Anyone who didn’t spend the last several years in a sensory deprivation tank knows that Trump inspired such loathing that many of his opponents could scarcely mention his name without attaching it to the F-word…”

Jacoby continued: “Now we’re in the third decade of the century, and the vicious crassness with which political disagreements are communicated is uglier and more toxic than ever.

On the subject of offensive speech, I am about as libertarian as they come. The First Amendment protects your freedom to vent the crudest insults you can think of and to drench politicians (or anyone else you despise) with noisome, potty-mouthed contempt.

But freedom of expression isn’t the only value a healthy civic environment requires. Tolerance, courtesy, and temperate standards of public conduct — in a word, civility — matter too. They matter a lot."

He ended his column with the following warning we all should heed: “We must not be enemies,” Abraham Lincoln pleaded in his first inaugural address. “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” His words fell on deaf ears. The bonds of affection did break, with catastrophic and bloody consequences.

Now as then, the issues that divide Americans are profound and urgent. The stakes are high; emotions run deep. All the more reason, then, not to let every dispute become an occasion of rage, not to dehumanize anyone who holds views we don’t share. A capacity for civil disagreement is indispensable to the survival of a self-governing republic. If we no longer have that capacity, we are in more trouble than we know."

Tolerance and civility are desperately needed.  Jesus would agree.  Will we?  #WWJD

Deacon David Pierce