Caling Miss Manners: SOS!

Is civility dead and gone? It would certainly seem so. As citizens of the U. S., we have a constitutional right to assemble, to speak freely, and to petition our government. We have the right to protest government actions with which we disagree, even a duty to do so. But there are lines that we should not cross lest we diminish our message or the reputation of the group with which we associate. Few of us learn the lessons history teaches us, mostly because we think that message does not pertain to us. We do not learn from history because we are not the same people who learned it the last time.

As we listen to the hatred and vitriol being spewed in some protests today, I am reminded of a lesson I did learn from history because I am one of the people learned it last time. Some on the left lost both credibility and respect when peaceful anti-war protest became laced with hateful epithets hurled at soldiers who had honorably answered their country’s call. Environmental protest that had effectively called attention to our disregard of nature’s fragility lost support and credibility when words were replaced with violence. The honor and dignity of the Civil Rights nonviolent protest showed the ugliness of racism and yielded positive change through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But when the non-violent protest was replaced by the armed anger of the Black Panthers, some of the progress made by people like John Lewis and Dr. King was overshadowed by the by the rage of others like Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale

Today, some on the right have forgotten the lesson history learned by some of us on the left. We remember what happened when some in our groups became so extreme that they engendered fear and hate. They did not persuade anyone. If anything, they caused a backlash, and liberal became an epithet equated with rage and unreasonable nastiness. Progressive ideals were largely regarded as naïve or more like Don Quixote’s swatting at windmills: unrealistic or even unreasonable. Those allied with the Tea Party movement have every right to express their disapproval of legislative acts that they do not like. But all must remember one immutable fact. There are philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans. That’s what elections are about. Those out of power will always march against the winners. These protests are at the very heart of what it means to be an engaged American citizen.

But the ugliness of a fringe element—and note that I said fringe—allied with the Tea Party movement has become almost frightening in its intensity. Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D. Missouri), an African-American, was spat upon walking up to the Capitol Building. The face of that enraged man made me recall another face contorted in rage and shouting at Elizabeth Eckford in 1957 when she, as part of the Little Rock Nine, entered newly desegregated Central High School in Arkansas. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, ever. Not when some spat on soldiers in the 1960’s and not when angry whites spat at black students integrating formerly all white schools. Ant not now. Furthermore, it was deplorable and reprehensible to see anti-war protesters call returning G. I.’s “baby killers,” and it is just as deplorable and reprehensible that Representative Randy Neugebauer (R. Texas) called Bart Stupak (D. Michigan.) a baby killer on the floor of Congress. And while I’m at it, it is never all right to call a gay man a “faggot,” and it was obscene for someone in the Tea Party crowd to shout that at Barney Frank (D. Massachusetts), just because the protester did not like Frank’s politics. And, it is abhorrent—beyond comprehension—for another in that crowd to call Representative John Lewis (D. Georgia) a “nigger.” To hurl this kind of racial slur at this man--a man beaten and jailed during non-violent Civil Rights marches, a man who faced hatred, clubs, and tear gas as he crossed the Pettus Bridge during the first march from Selma to Montgomery—is beyond the pale.

It is anyone’s right to express a contrary point of view of any policy. I applaud and cherish that right and use it myself, frequently. But it is never all right to level personal epithets when it is a policy with which you disagree. Grow up, people. Try to take your political discussions beyond playground taunts and behavior.

Finally, there are some facts that seem to have been lost in the shuffle in some of these protests:

1). The original Tea Party in Boston was a protest against Britain’s taxation of the colonists without colonial representation in Parliament; i. e., “taxation without representation.” We had an election in 2008, and voters chose their representatives. The protesters are represented, whether or not they like their representatives. That’s what the next election is about.

2). To those carrying placards reading: Keep the government out of my Medicare. It is the government that provides your Medicare. Medicare is a single-payer government-run program that most seniors love. Either don’t use it or get over it.

3). None of the cable news programs gives fair and balanced anything. I as liberal-leaning, watch CNN and MSNBC because I like to have my sentiments supported. I feel the same way about Fox News as some Glenn Beck lovers feel about Keith Oberman. And guess what? Not everything you read on the internet or in a forwarded e-mail is true. If you want to know what is going on, you must dig a bit deeper and read multiple sources. Don’t be lazy and take anyone’s word for anything.

4). Do not let someone else tell you what is or is not in a bill or what a politician did or did not say. Read the bill yourself. Listen to or read the transcript of the politician’s speech or broadcast yourself. I know you must have played gossip or telephone in elementary school. I know you know what happened to “So and so told someone who heard it from his cousin who knew….” Distortion of any resemblance to the truth is the result. Do your homework before you yell. Had some done this, no one would have shouted about a health care bill that advocated Death Panels much less believed it.

5). I voted for President Obama, but I fully understand that some, or even half, the American citizenry may not agree with me. You and I should be free to agree to disagree in a civil manner. And yet some of the Tea Party fringe elements feel no shame holding up a sign with Obama wearing African aboriginal attire and sporting a bone in his nose. If others standing next to those people don’t distance themselves from these sign-carriers, why should I not assume that they agree with this message? Ditto the protestors carrying signs of the president as Hitler or in white face. And to the birthers and all the cowardly GOP Congress members who are afraid to call them out, I have to wonder what you really mean.

All of us—left, right, and middle—have to find a way to work together to solve the problems facing us today and to do so in a civil manner. Very little constructive was ever accomplished by hysterics. Hissy fits rarely produce positive outcomes, and the fit-thrower is never respected. This country has some problems, but none that cannot be mitigated or solved if everyone sits down and discusses issues reasonably. Neither the left nor the right can ever have 100% of their issues enacted. Compromise is how this country was formed, and compromise is the only way it can survive. We have to rediscover civility and ways to have polite discourse, and soon.