A cause for our time

Alright, America. Perhaps it is time we started discussing the idea of what it means to have rights in a democratic country.

Rights are important. Indeed, they are vital - the Constitution was amended specifically to accommodate a host of civil liberties necessary to the smooth function of a representative system of government accountable to its citizens. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of conscience are absolutely necessary to the workings of our society. But, contrary to the popular mythology, these political rights are not given to us from on high. Nor do they appear spontaneously from nature - they are born only out of social struggle, and perpetuated only through common intellectual and spiritual effort, communication and self-examination. As Norman Mailer put it as he was protesting the Bush Administration's foreign policy, 'democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it'.

We are approaching an apocalyptic moment in our nation, one which will test the very fibre of our great Republic. We must decide for ourselves what sort of nation we wish to become - a nation in which people use their rights to come together civilly, in good faith to discuss ideas and policies on which they disagree, or a nation in which mobs and street thugs abuse their rights to shout each other down, hang their representatives in effigy, make death threats against minorities and joke about murdering elected officials. As a nation, we are currently on a familiar and unfortunate trajectory. We must decide whether we are a civil nation who band together in good will and solidarity in stressful times, or whether we continue to slide from incivility toward factionalism, street violence and fascism - ultimately losing the rights we had been taking for granted.

Civility is the cause for our time. We have come to a point at which our society is so polarised and fragmented that even such a basic and mundane issue as health-care reform is managing to generate these destructive, hate-filled protests and counter-protests, fuelled by corporate media which feed that anger with innuendo and misinformation wrapped up in a neat package of 'entertainment' and passed off as 'news'. In no sane, civil society would Sarah Palin's resentful and exploitative (not to mention near-incoherent) rhetoric be considered acceptable in a serious politician on the national stage. Our national dialogue more closely resembles the McLaughlin Group than Washington Week in Review - and this is not a good sign. We need to start holding each other accountable for what we say and do, and the way we say and do it.

(On this topic, I realise that I am as prone as anyone else to incivility. Not two weeks ago on this very blog I posted a snarky 'shorter' caricature of Nick Kristof's opinion column as something a neoconservative like William Kristol would write in bad faith. I stand by my criticism of his column - I believe it is laughable that he would write on the efficaciousness of diplomatic efforts - even with a rogue state like North Korea - by uncritically citing for evidence two Bush Administration appointees with clear ideological agendas and only half-critically citing the hearsay of defectors who have a vested interest in the claim that Myanmar is buying nuclear technology from North Korea. However, there can be no excuse for the needlessly dismissive form my criticism took, and for that I apologise to Mr Kristof.)

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