Welcome To The New Rudeness

(National Review Online)  Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal

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It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) to scream, "You lie!" at his commander-in-chief in the middle of Barack Obama's recent health-care speech before a joint session of Congress.

And others who keep insisting that the president doesn't have an authentic U.S. birth certificate clearly come off as unhinged - much like just-resigned White House green-jobs czar Van Jones does for having signed his name to a petition stating that the Bush administration may have allowed the 9/11 murders of 3,000 people to happen.

During his speech the other night, the president calmly called for a new civility - although he had just accused his opponents of dissimulation in their attack on his health-care plan, while himself presenting many dubious suppositions as fact.

Over the last three decades, we saw vicious attacks on Ronald Reagan and on Bill Clinton, and their tough replies in turn. But recently the vicious rhetoric has escalated far beyond anything in the past. The smears seem reminiscent more of the brawling on the eve of the Civil War, or the nastiness during the 1960s that took decades to heal.

No one knows what the rules of engagement are now. Republicans have not forgotten that Democratic legislators loudly booed Bush during his 2005 State of the Union. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic party, not long ago boasted, "I hate Republicans!" Around the same time, The New Republic magazine published an article entitled "Why I Hate George W. Bush."

Major politicians such as former vice president Al Gore, Sen. Robert Byrd (D., W.Va.), and former senator John Glenn (D., Ohio), have compared George W. Bush or his supporters to Nazis or the brown shirts. A major publishing house released a novel about killing President Bush; a movie won a prize at the Toronto Film Festival with the same theme. Bush Derangement Syndrome was no joke.

What exactly has gone wrong?

A number of things. For years, liberals were out of power. They became increasingly shrill in their frustration at George W. Bush - who seemed to set them off like no other Republican in memory.

Now that Democrats control both the Congress and the presidency, they are once more the establishment. Yet suddenly they have become angered that some conservatives, in tit-for-tat fashion, would dare resort to some of the crassness that was used to defame Bush - when any means were felt necessary to achieve the noble ends of opposing his policies.

Commentary, of course, has changed. The need for constant controversy on 24/7 cable television, nonstop blogging, and ratings-driven talk radio ensure first thoughts are aired - before more sober second ones can rein in the emotion. News is entertainment. Anger sells. Slurs, not reflection, win ratings.

Many political hit men and talking heads are also baby boomers. They cut their teeth on coarse, anything-goes Vietnam War protests. These aging children of protest still haven't quite figured out that they are now supposed to be sober seniors teaching younger generations the vital rules of decorum. Instead, our teachers themselves still need to be taught manners.

Another cause of the new rudeness is that the country is fragmenting. Almost every issue is dissected by its effect not on the American people as a whole, but rather on a particular constituency defined by race, class, or gender. The louder and more melodramatic the accusation, the more attention and federal money follow.

Yet, just as even the gory gladiators at Rome, in their blood-soaked arena, followed a few rules, perhaps we can at least do the same:

Don't call anyone a Nazi or brown shirt. Avoid shouting down a public official. Remember that there usually aren't clear good and bad political choices, just bad and worse ones. Don't get outraged at a slur against your team if you once made the same sort of one against the opposition.

And, most of all, remember that while we're shouting at each other, the country is at war and piling up debt at the rate of $2 trillion a year - while plenty of rivals and enemies abroad are smiling as never before.



By Victor Davis Hanson
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online

[barbaram99]

The new Ruseness..Has the ols rudeness ever went away..I son't think so. They asy America is more rude and more so than any other nation..They brought manners up in the article. I never protested. I hate war. I am appalled bush lied to us and the world. Is America rude.Yrp. But there nice well manned folks.

[pigsinlipstick]

another mess we can thank the idiots in the republicon,conservative party for,

the party of the 'kkk'

[ava_martin]

Please, do something about this now!
To Leadership re: Responsibility - It is YOUR house too and it is incumbent of YOU to keep order in it!

[ava_martin]

What has been perpetrated against us created critical mass.
Uh, what was that which came next?

Oh, that was Rome.

Memory short, blame long.

[ava_martin]

Dear Sir,
Thank you for telling it like it is! Nothing like good clear vision to see what others refuse to see, eh?
Sincerely,
Ava

[jjreding-2009]

As for the public - many people said they hated Bush II for his policies and the way he handled this country and starting his 'war of choice', but at no point during his entire presidency was the tone and vitriol anywhere near the level that has been aimed at Obama in less than one year in office. People blame him for huge deficits, but they forget that it was BUSH who gave the billions to the banking industry to keep those that were 'too big to fail' solvent. Now those same banks are spitting in our faces by still handing out huge bonuses and still not buying up the toxic assets they were originally mandated to do. Bush was also responsible for a net LOSS of jobs during his two terms in office, to the tune of more than 4 million people.

Meanwhile, since Obama has been in office, the money he's spent to spur the economy HAS. Yes, people are still being laid off, but only a third of what happened under Bush. Yes, he gave money to GM and Chrysler to keep them from collapsing and taking down the rest of the country with them, and they went into bankruptcy for a few months and have both emerged with streamlined companies. Yes, he has grand plans for health care that will add less than $100 billion to the deficit each year.

Bush gave out $1.6 TRILLION in unpaid tax cuts (mostly to the upper 1%) and spent TRILLIONS more for two unpaid wars. Every time he signed a budget he had to ask for hundreds of billions in additional funds, particularly for Iraq. Republicans in Congress never questioned a single bill and signed everything that came their way in the early part of this decade, regardless of the amount of pork (Ted Stevens anybody?) that those bills were laden with. UNTIL 2006 when the Democrats took over Congress. Then, Bush suddenly found his veto pen and the Republicans suddenly started finding fiscal responsibility.

When the Bush administration left office, the stock market was below 6000 and people were afraid that it would sink below 4000. Under Obama and his stimulus packages, it's back over 9500 and holding fairly steady. Millions of people lost millions of dollars in retirement funds as a result of Bush's irresponsible handling of the economy that they have begun to recoup under Obama. Meanwhile, Republicans fought tooth and nail to defeat an increase in minimum wage while the top 1% of the country saw their wealth increase by hundreds of percent. There is now more of a gap between rich and poor than at any time since the 1920s.

Health care costs continue to rise at rates much higher than wages, while people continue to lose their homes and find themselves in bankruptcy. Not just poor people, but also those in the middle class who always thought they were safe from financial hardship.

Now, all of a sudden, the tone in this country has become not just nasty, but downright ugly. We seem to be careening toward violence at every 'teaparty' event. All of a sudden, the right wing seems to be up in arms at spending in the government, but they had nothing to say while Bush was spending money like a drunken fool. They had nothing to say while Bush was lying his way into a war in Iraq while, at the same time, ignoring Afghanistan and letting bin Laden and his cronies off the hook.

Now, we hear that there was an FBI agent who had infiltrated a major terrorist cell in Miami and was on the track of some of those who plotted and carried out the 9/11 attacks and was told TO LEAVE THEM ALONE and was reassigned to infiltrate another cell of wannabes that ultimately worked out to be nothing. This is another reason I believe very strongly that Bush and his cabal knew ahead of time that there was going to be an attack and did nothing to stop it. Did they facilitate the attack or do anything to bring those buildings down like some claim? Probably not, but I'm not going to rule that out either, as there have been some suspicious findings in the analysis of the remains of the buildings - and why did that other building (No. 7) come down when it was not connected to the other two? Yes, there ARE questions.

What this all boils down to is that this country has become scary. The right wing is as paranoid as the McCarthy and John Birch Society days, and they continue to whip up the anger and hatred of people who don't seem to be able to look at REAL facts and rationalise reality from falsity. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly have a free hand in fomenting fear and hatred in this country. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the First Amendment protects free speech but NOT inciteful speech. Nobody ever brought a gun to a Bush event and nobody ever got thrown out of an Obama event for wearing an opposition t-shirt.

What has happened to my country?????

[jjreding-2009]

Now just wait a minute. During the past four decades, there have only been JFK/LBJ (2 terms), Jimmy Carter (1 term), Bill Clinton (2 terms) and now Barack Obama (8 1/2 months)who are Democrats. In the meantime, there have been Richard Nixon (1+ term), Gerald Ford (1 + term), Ronald Reagan (2 terms), George HW Bush (1 term) and George W Bush (2 terms) who were Republicans. The GOP has been in control of this country for much longer than have Democrats.

Let's look at the record. LBJ increased our involvement in Viet Nam and Nixon finally got us out. That was the last time a Republican president ENDED a war. Reagan was responsible for Granada, Bush I - the Gulf War, Clinton - Bosnia and Bush II - Afghanistan AND Iraq. As for the economy, Deficits first started expanding during the Nixon administration, held kind of stagnant during Carter and exploded during Reagan and Bush I. Clinton left Bush II a surplus in excess of $2 billion and Bush II bankrupted us by squandering nearly FOUR BILLION DOLLARS. The upshot of all this is that under Democrats we have relative peace and prosperity and under Republicans we have war and runaway deficits.

Now let's look at attitudes. During the Clinton years, Republicans did ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING they could to put him away and get him out of office. Ultimately, they ended up having to resort to holding an impeachment hearing over what amounted to stupid sex. They said it was because he 'lied'.

After he left office, we got Bush II, who DEFINITELY lied to this country. I too believe that he let the 9/11 attacks happen so he could have an excuse to go into Iraq to finish what his daddy didn't. Why do I think this? Because he was warned only a couple of months before that there was something going to happen, but never did anything about it. Then, when it DID happen, he sat reading a stupid book to a bunch of little kids with a dumb look on his face when he was informed. Did he rush out and head back to work? NO - he sat there dumbfounded. This is not Michael Moore talking - this is what was on video of the event.

It is well known that Bush's cadre of cohorts (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove and others) had previously come up with a 'Contract for America' that called for almost total control. Even Cheney was upset with Bush at the end of his term when Bush started thinking for himself and realised that what Cheney had advocated all those years was wrong.

Bush II was called a Hitler because of his policies - extraordinary rendition, torture, shredding of the Constitution (he was sworn to uphold and protect) with the Patriot Act's draconian rules (expanded wiretapping, digging into private bank accounts and library records) and by locking up American citizens in secret without recourse to lawyers or even being informed of WHY they were being spirited away to hidden prisons. Bush II broke the law of the land at every opportunity until near the end of his presidency.

This was also the birth of the right wing radio era. Rush Limbaugh ushered in the age of bloated commentary when he started railing against organisations such as MoveOn.org, who were created specifically to counter the right wing's takeover. It was also the Limbaughs of the world who instigated the 'Swift Boating' that is apparently the reason the debate in Washington cannot be held with civility anymore. Right wing pundits and others will stop at nothing anymore to misinform, lie and exaggerate everything that goes against their ideas. This is a new and very disturbing trend.

In Congress, Bush II did get booed during speeches, but nobody ever called him a liar in Chambers. If Republicans had simply booed Obama, nobody would have said a word about it. Calling the president a liar is way out of bounds and not the American way.

[formrusmcsgt]

I remember a day when leaders had style and class.

Wilson, Williams, and their ilk show a total lack thereof.

[jschmidt27]

I think Pelosi can thank herself for the attitude. She said it was all the Republicans fault when she blamed them for the subprime crisis. Or the hold the media responsible when people like Olberman ripped Bush every chance he could get or Matthews essentially campaigning for Obama. The public has had it with the spending ways of the Dems. They didn't bargain for this even though Obama was the most liberal Senator.

[democracy1]

Hmmm, I notice that they make no mention of the talking heads on certain faux news networks. Just sayin'.

[ianlou]

Republicans are less rude when they are in charge and getting their way.
Republicans will tolerate Democrats in charge as long as nothing important changes.

Republicans go beserk when Democrates get close to making a fundamental change in America and the GOP does not have the political power to stop it.

Republicans don't want democrat led change because A) they don't want Democrats succeeding at anything and B) They don't want any change that will cost them even a dime.

Republicans are the party of "Got Mine, Screww You"