As they aged that started to change over the next 20 years. To survive, a society needs an amount of goodwill—people willing to treat others with respect and to give of themselves to the community. Civility is the lifeblood of a society. And we move naturally from being self-absorbed and self-interested to being rude and uncivil? The Internet has depersonalized our relationships. We e-mail, instant-message and make anonymous comments online.
We live in a time when anyone can say anything about anybody. The shrillest voices are the ones that get the most attention. Pundits screaming at one another—this is part of our everyday life. We see this as normal and acceptable.
A number of studies prove we are at an all-time low when it comes to being civil, to caring about what others think of our actions. They are detached, self-interested. In fact, civility has become a real issue in America. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush have spoken about the importance of restoring civility, as has President Obama. And yet bipartisan conflict is part of democracy. And you must argue civilly. Wilson did not attack the presidential plan, he attacked the president. Today some politicians use nothing but tactics of attack or obstruction.
Too often we have rigid adherence to a party line. Common sense, compromise and goodwill are vanishing. If we cannot be civil, our quality of life deteriorates, society itself begins to fray and democracy is weakened. We get to the point where incivility escalates and crosses into violence. We have to be willing to step into someone else's shoes in order to have constructive dialogue on some very serious issues facing our country now, and others that are sure to occur in the future.
The late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan said, "What the people want is very simple — they want an America as good as its promise. Thomas Jefferson defined it as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Ronald Reagan described it as "a shining city upon a hill. One of the great things about our democracy is that every four years we have the opportunity to unite and renew our journey toward the promise of America.
While campaigns, by their very nature, focus on the things that divide us, to govern effectively we must focus on achieving the shared goals that unite us. At AARP, our experience in talking with our members is that they care deeply about important issues facing them and their families, especially those related to their health and financial security.
And they want our leaders to address them. But partisanship has reached such an uncivil extreme that it is dividing our nation and prohibiting leaders from both political parties from coming together to do the people's work. Far too often the politician's goal is not practical solutions but political advantage.
When policy is debated only in terms of political gains and defeats, the American people lose. Instead of solutions, we get stalemate. And, as this election showed, the American people are tired of it. Member Discounts! House of Representatives. Republican leaders were outraged and demanded he apologize for his behavior, which he did. Fast forward to June 22, , a mere nine years later, when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service at a Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, VA, presumably because the owners didn't agree with her politics.
Sanders simply left. But her boss, President Donald Trump, took to his usual social media outlet and tweeted "The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows badly needs a paint job rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Three days later, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, said crowds should create a demonstration and protest the policies of this administration any time any Trump Cabinet members were in a public place. Trump responded by that same day tweeting her to inform her she was "low IQ.
This is the level of interaction in our country these days, the depths to which our civility has sunk. Today's America is a constant barrage of insults, interrupting, talking over people and demeaning everyone from women to minorities to the disabled.
Good question, indeed. But I think morality is such a judgment call when it comes to certain touchy issues that we should just start with civility for now. They are the basic moral principals on which all civilised societies are founded. We the general public accept the need to negotiate in a peaceful and voluntary way in our personal relationships, business transactions and in public.
We understand that if we all used force, violence and coercion to get what we wanted society would break down immediately. This is why It is not just immoral to initiate force or violence to get your way, it is not preferable either.
How then can we possibly NOT extend these same basic moral principals to the state? If the state represent the people they must be on the same page in terms of basic morality!
And if these most basic moral principals are universal, then the need to be applied universally! We would never accept the idea of allowing one neighbourhood in a city to break this basic morality and be given the right to use fore or even violence against us.
So why do we allow the state to do just this? Is this black hole in our reasoning a result of the fact that the state educates us for at least the first sixteen years of our lives? If we expect and desire this standard of moral behaviour for ourselves we must surely demand AT LEAST least the same level of moral virtue from the agency we charge with administrating and protecting society?! To NOT do so would create a massive power unbalance and by all logic put the general public in the most vulnerable position.
If you were designing a society from scratch would you ever in your wildest dreams consider allowing just one agency to be legally exempt from adhering to these most basic moral principals and then place that agency at the very centre of society and in charge of just about everything?!
What is civility without morality? It is the charm of a crooked salesman. It is the very definition of psychopathy. How can you argue with any of these pieces of advice? All are the result of rational thought. Ah, if we could just get the world to go along. You are commenting using your WordPress.
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