On January 8th, a tragedy occurred that sparked a debate regarding civility in our political discourse. We promised to be more respectful of one another, and that we don't condone political violence.
But the truth is, vowing to kiss and make up lest someone gets hurt isn't truly enough. Something needs to fundamentally change within our political dynamic in order for us to get anywhere near something resembling respect and civility.
In order for there to be grounds for mutual respect, our politics must be based upon reason, and I don't see this happening. The healthcare debate this month in the House was a catastrophe, with Republicans claiming that it was a "job-killing bill," a point upon which FactCheck.org presented their evidence to the contrary, only for Eric Cantor's office to repeat its claim, stating that, "Anyone who argues otherwise is ignoring the construct of the health care law and the widely accepted facts1."
"Widely-accepted facts?" Widely-accepted by who? Manufactured by whom?
Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing healthcare reform would add $130-230 billion to the deficit2. So what did the Republican establishment do? They went after the CBO itself3. This kind of self-deception is not enabling of civil discourse. How can we treat someone with respect when they are operating on deliberate lies? It is quite interesting to watch the Republican House of Representatives at once lament the expanding deficit and at the same time add to it, only to attempt to discredit those who point out this tragic discrepancy.
Is it considered civil discourse to insinuate that the President of the United States is illegitimate, or even an enemy of the country which he was elected to represent? Is terrifying your audience and manipulating them into betraying their own economic interests fostering of civil discourse?
Last week, Glenn Beck launched a campaign against a 78-year-old sociology professor at CUNY for an article she wrote in 1966 for The Nation, in which which she suggested that in order to enact real change, the unemployed should overwhelm the welfare system4. According to the NYTimes, the Center for Constitutional Rights claims that Glenn Beck's tirade has resulted in his followers sending Prof Piven death threats: "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 rounds ready and I’ll give My life to take Our freedom back."
It would be perfectly reasonable to say that you disagree with her, but to suggest that a sociology professor wants to cause the country to collapse is nothing short of utter nonsense, and betrays a complete lack of understanding of academia. Not only that, but one is actually trampling on the Constitution itself by indirectly attempting to suppress freedom of speech by way of attacking her for expressing herself. The goal often of academics and philosophers is simply to present a different perspective of society in a way that forces one to consider how it operates and how it can be improved for the greatest number of people.
"COMMUNISM!!!!" No, it's not Communism. We're talking ideally about about a democracy, in which the majority governs (with certain exception, often to counteract the effects of mob rule. Minority rights, for example), so it would follow that as a democracy, we should be interested in helping the maximum number of people possible so that our democracy is preserved, otherwise we disenfranchise what is essentially our government (the people) by withholding opportunity and it collapses into an oligarchy or dictatorship because the number of people who are able to participate as educated citizens diminishes. Thus, as a democratic society, we have an interest in preserving opportunity and passing along our knowledge in order for others to succeed.
The task of academics such as Prof Piven is to point out where our society fails to meet this obligation, why it fails, and what can be done to correct it. Often these inequalities are so deeply rooted in our institutions that the only way to rectify them is through monumental action such as the solution Beck is currently having a conniption over. I am not going to debate the possible impact Prof Piven's proposition, but I am going to say that she absolutely has a right to present her ideas, and I am going to venture to suggest that we are better for it.
The irony of Beck and the Tea Party is that while they so worship the Constitution, they are swift to attack anyone they disagree with on a personal level with the goal of shutting them up. A few months ago, Glenn Beck attacked George Soros because Soros had suggested that gold was liable to collapse. Glenn Beck, as a "conservative libertarian" (who, ironically, knows absolutely nothing about liberty and thinks Thomas Paine was a conservative...), wishes to return to the Gold Standard because of some strange insecurity inherent in paper currency. But the truth is that Beck attacked Soros because he was a spokesperson for GoldLine, and had an immediate vested interest in people being scared of an impending apocalypse and buying gold(5&6).
Representative Gregg Harper of Mississippi stated in an interview with Politico that he "hunt[s] liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition7." Rush Limbaugh's latest feat was to mock Chinese President Hu Jintao by pretending to speak Chinese8.
To be at least partially fair, Eric Fuller, one of the survivors of the Tuscon Tragedy two weeks ago, attended a town hall meeting and made threatening remarks toward a Republican representative and a Tea Party activist: "Fuller then swiveled in his chair, raised his camera and took a photo of the pro-gun speaker, muttering, 'You're dead,' according to Joel Tranter, who was sitting behind him9." However, this man is understood to be traumatized after the shooting, and in my opinion should not have placed himself in such a position in which he would knowingly get so agitated. Fuller is now under psychiatric care10.
The irony is that while Fuller did make this threat and was probably serious, the Tea Party's gun fetish remains the larger problem. For Humphries himself to be worried by Mr Fuller is rather silly, given the frightening rhetoric employed by the GOP/Tea Party establishment on a regular basis. No Democratic commentator had put Fuller up to this or suggested to Fuller that he should threaten Mr Humphries, while such suggestions remain a systemic problem in the Tea Party and GOP at large.
Let's talk about the Second Amendment, from which much of the rhetoric employed by those on the right stems. The Second Amendment stems from the needs of a fledgling society seeking to break away from foreign control. As such, it was enacted because of the cruel nature of the time and a guard against a repeat of history (much like the Establishment Clause, which guarded against theocratic tyranny). But the problem now is that the government created and legitimized by the Constitution itself cannot be justly overthrown because its legitimacy is inextricably tied to the Constitution. If you lose the government, you lose the Constitution. It is the duty of the judiciary to keep the government in line with the Constitution.
The open-carry policies enacted by several states do not make us any safer. We do not live in the 19th century Midwest, and the people arguing for open-carry do not appear to be of rational disposition and cannot be guaranteed to use it responsibly. It only takes one bullet to ruin everything. We have a military and police force, which are both sufficient to maintain order, and have in place procedures by which they can lawfully operate, and many protections for when they do not. I would not begin to argue that these protections are always guaranteed in a court of law, but the kind of protections most of us require are present on a sufficient basis at least enough for a reasonable person to not feel immediately oppressed.
The gun rhetoric has thus been used to incite paranoia and hark back to the Old West or even the War for Independence, ages which passed and are vastly different from today, in which the United States was a fledgling nation and could not support the massive expansion across the continent by way of a police force or military. The rhetoric draws on a theme of oppression, which seems strange given the relative health of our society, in which law and order are respected enough so that we are not rioting or abusing one another at a terrifying rate, nor has this present government sought to oppress those who currently feel oppressed. There are no FEMA concentration camps, no one is taking away citizens' guns, no one is trying to destroy society economically (at least not the people whom the Tea Party accuses of trying to destroy society), and Obama is not a Muslim Communist.
All of these ideas aim chiefly to scare people, and that is the problem. The people employing this revolutionary rhetoric are doing it in order to terrify people, and a terrified citizenry does not understand civil discourse. When people are scared, the ability to reason is eradicated, and democracy cannot happen. Fear and the loss of rational faculties always leads to violence.
The political environment in which one entire party finds itself is not only toxic, it is downright delusional and therefore far more dangerous than professional commentators are willing to state. Attacking the CBO for its estimations because they hinder the GOP's talking points warrants disgust, not respect. We will never have anything resembling civil discourse, nor will the option even be open to us, so long as the GOP/Tea Party continues to operate under delusion and vitriol.
1) http://factcheck.org/2011/01/a-job-killing-law/
2 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010606159.html
3) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/column_the_republican_war_on_t.html
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html
5) http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-13/opinion/wolraich.beck.soros_1_george-soros-billionaire-drug-cartel?_s=PM:OPINION
6) http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/glenn-beck-fox-hosts-golden-advertiser-goldline-investigation/story?id=11197000
7) http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/get_to_know_a_congressman4.html
8) http://gawker.com/5738044/rush-limbaugh-shows-off-his-chinese-voice (with audio)
9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/15/eric-fuller-arrested-tea-party-arizona-shooting_n_809584.html
10) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20028762-504083.html
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