[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Thank you kindly sir! I do very much believe that his greatest speaking weakness was extemporaneous politics. I think that is generally one of the shortcomings of decent people: the relative inability to disguise, semantically joust, and/or maneuver in the face of something they believe. Whether they believe it rightly or wrongly–or even whether what they believe is true or not–is generally immaterial to their handicap in dissimulation. As I alluded to elsewhere, this is one primary reason I would never have made a good debater in high school or college, and certainly never a good lawyer.
Decency is something I’ve longed for in the political arena ever since Clinton. I became politically aware during his first term, but having mined the history of the last few Presidents I really think it started to dive then. And then it took on a new level with the 2000 chad bitterness and just exponentially increased from there.
The name escapes me at the moment but one of the great statesmen of centuries past has been recorded as saying “I’ve never dissolved a friendship over a political opinion” (roughly paraphrased). I think that we are in a new and significantly lower quality era of political life. To be sure there have always been fights both figuratively and literally over political stances, and to be sure there have always been extremists. It may be my relative young age but I see this as much more pervasive now. True Believerism to be sure.[/quote]
“True believerism” is a natural reaction to a government that no longer recognizes any limits on its power. All citizens now have to fear those with opposing viewpoints, because those viewpoints will be rammed down their opponents’ throats if the majority accepts them. Just take a look at the private businesses that are forced to do things with which they don’t agree. There are no longer legal constraints on the power of the United States, so opposing views can no longer be safely accepted.
