Is it possible to bring civility back into political discourse?

To quote Al Franken "We on the left have just been taking it" for years as the Limbo's, O'Really's, Coulter's and Hannity's of the world have dragged political discourse into the gutter. Lately, we on the left have started fighting back, but we are resorting to their methods. This can, at least in the short term lead to dragging everything even further into the sewer, but is there a light at the end of the tunnel? If we succeed in making these idiots and their vitriol irrelevant, can we come back from the precipice? Or are we doomed to spend the rest of eternity mired in the filth of repuke tactics?

and then peace returns to the forest. I have discovered that the last thing a blowtorch conservative wants in his face is a blowtorch liberal. They have not been used to being confronted with facts and logic and they will not accept such things unless it is presented in an overbearing, loud, forceful manner. Otherwise, they think they have "won." I, for one, am happy to oblige them in a shout fest. After they get a good ass whupping by someone who wants to play by "their" rules and who won't back down they become the docile little sheep they were prior to being introduced to those who could not hold down a job unless it involved hating others. People who don't depend on limbaugh and faux for their information are usually rational. Good point Thom1102, I think, this hostility also shall pass, but when is the question.

You can't fight Nazis using civility.

The Confederate Broederbund (or the Busheviks or the VRWC or whatever you want to call them) have toyed with Nazi propaganda strategy and crossed the Rubicon.

I don't believe there can be any turning back.

Adolf builds a bonfire, Rush Limbaugh plays with it.

We are going to get mean. They are going to get meaner, and probably violent. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientists to see the inevitable end.

They're wrong, and they need to hear it repeatedly. They truly think that they can bludgeon all opposition.

I like to point out Enron: it proves that Republican economics simply don't work. If you take away all regulation, thievery and greed will run rampant and implode.

I also like to play upon the fundy/conservative assumption that man is a mean nasty little creature who, without the Damoclean sword of god over its head, would just run willy-nilly. Yet, in the next breath, they say that voluntary standards and no regulation are the way to go. Huh?

Republicanism just doesn't work. Fair schmare, nice schmice, it JUST DOESN'T WORK. That's the most valuable and enduring argument.

Look at World War 2: a tiny group of individuals personally convinced of their own brilliance fought against a series of groups of very large organizations that used the power of cooperation against them. Bletchley Park and the Manhattan Project were huge; Doenitz's operations staff was tiny. Think about it.

with your post. I hope you realize that America is a constitutional Republic. Hence, saying republicanism doesn't work is a bit...well ignorant. Since we have the oldest constitution and we are the oldest limited democracy and most successful one at that.


What would you have as a substitution?


Yes, let's make it harder and harder with lots of red tape and bureaucracy for start ups to develop and compete with the incumbents. Let's just have a big cartel instead.


P.S. I'm not flaming or spamming. Economics is a hobby of mine and I hate it when people who don't know much about it shoot their mouths off.

I recommend: Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/046508138X/qid=1060295741/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/103-7174061-9915064


Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0609610708/qid=1060295800/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7174061-9915064?v=glance&s=books

BarbariansAtTheGate
>>>Economics is a hobby of mine and I hate it when people who don't know much about it shoot their mouths off.<<<


you do have a little problem when you claim to know something about
economics, and then recommend a lying piece of shit like thomas sowell.:wtf:



---=- IRAQ IS INNOCENT of 911---

-bush $hit his pants on 911-

-------------- bluecoller-the grumpy old kraut ----:mad:

Anyone recommending Sowell on this forum has an instant loss of credibility. Now if one were to quote him over at Free Republic, one would feel much more at home.

I'm fully aware that this is a constituent republic and not a democracy.

The "Republicanism" to which I refer is the current economic and social philosophy of the the Republican Party. Laissez faire Capitalism reverts to feudal mercantile monopoly in very short order. This simply doesn't work over the long or even medium run.

Take away controls and regulation, and too many people will just Enron themselves silly. Workers will be crushed under debt and wage-slavery and they will opt out of the process and/or openly revolt. Their system no more works than "trickle down economics" does.

What made this country successful was that some people actually got the carrot. By regulating ownership so workers could make a decent living, we got a vast majority to go along with the game. Without worker protections, there never would have been as much production, and there absolutely never could have been as much consumption.

All you have to do to see the undeniable failure of their fantasy is to accept that 2/3rds of the GNP is consumer spending. "Cheap Labor Conservatives" will dry that all up. In Communism, many people won't get out of bed or do more than just phone it in because they're not going to starve and there's really no advancement possible. In Fascism, many people are just going to do the bare minimum to not starve, since they know there's no real chance for advancement.

We are increasingly held captive by rapacious capitalism in this country: if you don't dedicate every fiber of your being to making money and managing it, you are doomed to utter failure. Great. That will make us a society of cockroaches, with no art, no beauty, no love, no joy with our children and nothing the least bit spiritual. Fine by the current Fascists: they'll provide packaged religion and LCD entertainment to stub out those desires, and if you don't get back to work, you will be instantly fired with no resourse. Fear is their god, and they love using it.

There may have been decorum as a standard, but the stakes have been raised as the bar has been lowered.

One must remember what one is trying to do in a policital discussion; if one is trying to sway someone, one should be pleasant and not deride the poor mistaken person. In open discourse with a hater, let 'em have it. Republicans are haters, greedheads, poseurs and the varying shades of incorrect. The world would be in much better shape if people deliberately attacked the selfishness and ugliness of the extreme wingers. Remember that some are actually just timid and scared and believe in the credo of personal responsibility, so make sure you've got a hater before responding.

Sure, rise above the fray and don't play into their hand by being a wild-eyed savage, but you can also hold your ground and be pretty damning in the process. Conservatism IS bad: it doesn't work, it's cruel and it brooks no dissent. That latter part is their strength and their weakness: they are anti-democratic; democracy is the interplay and coexistence of competing ideas, with the free-market resolve that the "best" will prevail. To not tolerate dissent is to hate democracy, while tacitly admitting that people might not go for your brand of folly.

It depends on who you're speaking with. I'm not even going to bother with hardcore right-wingers, who needs 'em?

My job is to convince Dems, Independents, Greens, nonvoters, and middle-of-the-road Repubs to vote Dem in 2004. I think for the most part, they're damned tired of all the vitriol.

So far, civility is winning them over! At least, it works down south...

The bar was lowereed over eight years. It can never again be raised and liberals have no choice but to bring themselves down o the apish level of conservatives.

in the past, when we have been on the verge of descending into chaos, humanity has pulled itself together, and established new rules of behaving (the establishment of the Chivalric Code, Roberts Rules of Order etc). Are we going to get to the point in public discourse where it is so rancorous, and so uncivil, that both sides will sit down and say "look, this is helping no one, and we haven't been able to get anything accomplished. We have to do something to change the tone."

Newt Gingrich openly declared "civil war" against us over a a decade ago. Perhaps after a period of de-Republicanization, we could let them out of the camps or back into the country.

That's about where my point of view is getting to. There is a significant part of the population that is so dangerously deluded, we have to consider how to we save the body politic without literally rounding them up and putting them in camps or deporting them? What does one do with hundreds of thousands if not millions of Sean Hannitys and Ann Counters?

At some point, the GOP as it is currently constituted needs to be marginalized to the point where no would admit membership in it to a stranger. Think KKK.

But to break the rule of the KKK many people died, and their were many ugly days in the South.

I think we are getting to a point where things are going to start to look a lot like the early 60s. Some people will die. I mean, think just how close Ann Coulter is mentally to picking up a gun and shooting people. How can someone with that much anger not snap at some point?

Then take the entire listening audience of all of the AM idiots. How many Ann Coulters are there out there? How many of them own guns.

I fear there are dark days ahead, and I just have to hope that the model is the Civil Right years and not 1930s Europe.

No political discourse is not civil, and I for one am damn tired of these screamers who believe if they're loud enough they'll cow any opposition to their hairbrained schemes.

I'm committed to being just as loud, just as vocal, but using truth and fact not some spoonfed ideology. We are moving to synthesis, and it's going to be painful getting there.

The only slight chance to bring it back is the same chance we have of winning. The Democrats must learn to fight as hard and dirty as the Republicans.

The only way the recall rule in California will be thrown out is if the right wingers fear that it will be used against them. The way they got rid of the independent council law is because right wingers feared it might be used against them.

Fighting harder and meaner than right wingers is the only hope.

They will not quit until they have taken it all. They will become more dirty, increase their hatred and their ill will and then will start to eat their own. How do you fight this?

Funnily, censorship was the rule in the "free press" until the internet became popular. Many of the points of view we express on this site were repressed by the american press completely. Suddenly, the flood gates are open, and all of us can express our views... some of whom have been SOOOOOOOO disenfranchised from the political spectrum, that we must disagree intensely... or to counter what appears to be a cultural norm towards insanity, we speak out intensely.

What? Legallize all drugs and end the drugs war. Addiction is a medical problem, and 85% of all violent crime is drugs-supply related... there is not a sane person who can argue with FACTS that the 50 years old drugs war has had ANY impact on reducing addiction. The war is a total failure, yet the press censorship has been soooo complicit for sooo many years, that insanity is the policy... no matter for little things like facts, or what works.

The ability to call for a complete end to the stupid taxpayer funded war is NEW. People that advocate the war are STUPID and cannot put two words together to defend their ignorance. More than that, they are complicit in murdering 1000's of children through the negative influences of unregulated, untreated drugs addiction. The negligent homicidal fuck who wants to lecture the oppressed on how the WOD is progressing is welcome to speak up on this site. That is new, and i'm sure i would be more than vitriolic in opposing tyranny and evil.... without being personal. Many who've been disenfranchised do not bother depersonalizing, and i respect that as a lashback after a long period of political censorship.

The best way to end the american rotting of civil society is to bankrupt america and make them form a post chapter 7 economy on something more substantial than totalitarian corporatism. Until then, it is no holds barred melee on all political channels until the felons are out of washington (includes congress too).

if Dems remain civil, they will lose. The only thing repugs understand is fear. they view civility as weakness.

no

have to learn to fight in the streets like gang warfair. It's not my way and hasn't been the Dem postion but until we get legislation to have balance.....we must be guerilla fighters.

I didn't think that even three years ago. But, I realize it's the only way.

How do you have a civil discourse with Ann Coulter or Tom Delay? How do you have it with any of them. You are drowned out....cut off....laughed at.....asked to leave the room.......whatever. We've seen it time and time again.

They own the Media. We are nothing but folks who have to "beg for time" or are put on as "clowns" to have brick bats thrown at us or ridicule.

was the most devastating piece of civil discourse I have ever seen from a politician.

puked... my work computer doesn't like video.
Anyways... I'd like to say it WAS devestating... and done with humor too, not fire. Damn the man is SO smart. But I think overall we have to fight fire with fire.

puked... my work computer doesn't like video.
Anyways... I'd like to say it WAS devestating... and done with humor too, not fire. Damn the man is SO smart. But I think overall we have to fight fire with fire.

A friend of mine is as right as I am left and as Catholic as I am Lutheran, yet we are about to discuss things pretty well, we sometimes bat around angry rhetoric, but it is in fun.
We talked about the war and decided that the war was a horrible thing, but he thought it was a horrible thing that was worth it, I thought it was not.
I think we ended up being pretty civil. On the other hand there is another uber-Catholic uber-right wing fellow who touts the party line no matter what.
So it all depends on who the person is that you are discussing with.

It feels good to trade blow for blow, no doubt about it, if you are a willing participant in debate with someone who is ever willing to escalate the emotional level of the discourse.

But just think of a partisan audience squirming in their seats as they watch their guy, eyeballs popping and veins standing out, shot down by someone whose demeanor shows that they are their opposite, emotionally, and intellectually. No, you don't have to stoop to anger. They don't call it a deadly sin without reason.

The one who's voice remains level, consistent, and fearless while his words alone do the damage deserves and keeps the high ground. It's the best way to show angry ideologues that they cannot hijack the debate by raising the volume. It makes them look like the buffoons they are. Sometimes this is difficult, but the outcome is worth it.

the essence of RW tactics isn't so much impoliteness, it is mostly 'arguing' by means of logical fallacies. the impoliteness is just for decoration.

so, as long as liberals argue logically, some amount of impoliteness on their part isn't that much of a problem.

there have been periods when it was civil but things have been worse than they are now. Some congressman got nearly beat to death on the floor of the house (senate?) by another congressman around the time of the civil war.

What does make it different is the media. They own the shows so they shout you down and if they lose their temper (ala O'Rielley in the "fight" with Franken at the book conference) all they do is cut the parts out where they look bad.

These guys are gonna self destruct. They always do. (Contract on America, impeachment, Bush I) Offer an alternative. Support public radio and television. Do what makes you comfortable. For me its being civil. If you wanna shout 'em down it probably won't make a difference but I don't know. My theory is give 'em enough rope they will hang themselves sooner rather than later.

our so-called "civilization" is seeking it's lowest common denominator.

We are at war. It is a civil war. We fight like it is a cold war. They kill our leaders.

far too many skulls to crack first

..."I just tell them the truth, and they think it is hell."

One of our problems is that no matter what we say, one of the sleazier members of the corporate media or the GOP political machine (and sometimes they're indistinguishable) is going to try to distract by placing labels on the speaker and making everything dissolve into a huge PR campaign. It's not fair and it's deeply fatuous, but there you have it.

Take last week's example of Tom DeLay (R-TX) making a cheap shot at Ted Kennedy about how Ted Kennedy might look in a flight suit (the implication being that Bush looked dashing in a flight suit). Never mind that service members die daily in Iraq, never mind that Ted Kennedy served in the Army and DeLay didn't, and never mind that serving in the military is not about the campaign commercial you will purchase for your next campaign.

Then there was the Washington Post reporter who profiled Hillary Clinton in a magazine and opined that Hill politicians didn't always find HRC gracious enough. The reporter then cited (apparently with no sense of irony) Newt Gingrich's famous "bitch" comment and Trent Lott's suggestion that lightning might kill HRC before she could be sworn in. Who's ungracious here? Who's obtuse?

Folks, this is what we're up against. We're going to have be out there on the streets, online, on the telephone, faxing, writing, and generally raising hell We don't have to sink to their level (and indeed, not all RW people are at that level), but we are up against a whoredom of money and mendacity.

in the most civil way we can. It's too bad that bringing
up Arnold's past does include bodily parts, but apparently
that includes Kobe's future also.

Takes them on each and every week. We do it with facts, humor and determination. The wing-nuts have stopped calling the show because they know they cannot possibly win in an argument against the facts. Fighting fire with fire is what we need to do.