Civil Discourse in Short Supply Today

Elective politics, at any level, is not for the faint of heart; it is face-to-face, hand-to-hand combat.

We’ve seen that truism played out on national television in recent weeks as powerful interests, corporate and political, have ginned up their respective grassroot bases for the fight over health care reform.

It has been an ugly sight to behold.

Opponents of health care reform from the Democrats have resorted to all sorts of lies and distortions to fire up their supporters.

The way the elderly have been targeted has been especially despicable. They’ve been told, for example, that Medicare will wind up being gutted to pay for “Obamacare” and that they’ll wind up out on the street, medically speaking. And one small item in the reform package — that doctors regularly discuss with their elderly patients what their wishes are for end-of-life measures they want and don’t want — has been turned into “the liberals want your grandma to sign up for euthanasia.”

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(Many of these folks are the same ones who swear on a stack of Bibles that President Barack Obama isn’t even a citizen of the United States, that he’s not the legitimate president and that the liberal establishment has used him to usurp power from the people.)

What a load of garbage ... every single word of it.

Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and others — cable TV entertainers masquerading as newsmen — have been front and center, poisoning the well of civil public discourse.

Liberals, on the other hand, haven’t been much better.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, has accused protesters against health care reform of carrying signs with “swastikas and symbols like that” in a rather crude attempt to equate American citizens exercising their constitutional rights with Nazis.

Political hacks, on the payroll of the Democratic National Committee (and its chairman, Virginia’s own Gov. Timothy M. Kaine), are labelling private citizens concerned about the course of reform efforts as “mobs” and “right-wing extremists.”

And they’ve got their own TV screaming-heads to spew their brand of hatred and extremism, the Keith Olbermanns and Rachel Maddows of the world.

We’ve seen the result of these little political games play out in communities across the country, as members of Congress have returned during the August recess to hold town-hall meetings and meet with their constituents.

Many of those meetings have become nothing more than shouting matches between opponents and proponents of the president’s agenda — the economic stimulus, the energy bill, health reform ... all of it. At some meetings, congressmen have even been hanged in effigy, all for daring to cast votes in favor of legislation proposed by President Obama.

What is so disturbing to us is the apparent death of civil public discourse in the nation. Ever since Republicans and their attack dogs lit into Bill Clinton from the first day of his administration through their ill-advised impeachment efforts, from the days of MoveOn.org villifying any and every non-liberal on the public stage on through to today’s rabid “birthers” who believe Obama’s a presidential usurper ... civil discourse has died a death of a thousand cuts.

It’s frightening to see the destruction of public discourse right before our eyes because with it dies the keystone concept of democracy: respect for our fellow citizens, even those we may disagree with.