Anti Federalist
04-08-2010, 02:18 PM
Political Civility?
Posted by Lew Rockwell on April 8, 2010 09:43 AM
The other day on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the assembled sages were—as usual—praising “political civility” and lamenting its absence. This time they played over and over the statement of senator Tom Coburn (neocon-OK) praising Nancy Pelosi as just a great human being.
Why can’t it be like the good old days, we were told, when all the top congressmen would gather in Speaker Sam Rayburn’s office after a day of looting the public, to get drunk?
Of course, political civility only applies to relationships among the politicians, not their or their media’s relations with us. MSNBC is a hotbed of political hate against anyone who disagrees with the regime, with such merchants of hate as Matthews, Todd, Olbermann, and Maddow spewing intolerance every day.
I couldn’t care less whether the pols hate or love each other, no more than I care whether Bonnie and Clyde did.
Nor do I think the government gang of thieves, in Rothbard’s phrase, is owed civility by the victims. But let’s have some civility towards private Americans exercising their free speech rights. Refute, by all means, people who have a different view of Obama’s background or healthcare or wars or police state, or of the JFK-RFK-MLK murders or 9/11/01, but show some respect for those not on the public payroll. And please, it is not a refutation to say that someone is an “extremist,” i.e., disagrees with the approved mainstream. Make an argument, not a just a DC smear.
UPDATE: Murray Rothbard once asked about the charge of anti-[whateverism], so common among neocons, leftists, and “libertarians,” and said that the libertarian as libertarian can only condemn the threat or use of aggression, public or private, not the peaceful use of private property. Anyone who seeks to call in the state to outlaw private anti-’ism, or joins the state in any of its thought and speech-control crusades, is no libertarian.
Posted by Lew Rockwell on April 8, 2010 09:43 AM
The other day on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the assembled sages were—as usual—praising “political civility” and lamenting its absence. This time they played over and over the statement of senator Tom Coburn (neocon-OK) praising Nancy Pelosi as just a great human being.
Why can’t it be like the good old days, we were told, when all the top congressmen would gather in Speaker Sam Rayburn’s office after a day of looting the public, to get drunk?
Of course, political civility only applies to relationships among the politicians, not their or their media’s relations with us. MSNBC is a hotbed of political hate against anyone who disagrees with the regime, with such merchants of hate as Matthews, Todd, Olbermann, and Maddow spewing intolerance every day.
I couldn’t care less whether the pols hate or love each other, no more than I care whether Bonnie and Clyde did.
Nor do I think the government gang of thieves, in Rothbard’s phrase, is owed civility by the victims. But let’s have some civility towards private Americans exercising their free speech rights. Refute, by all means, people who have a different view of Obama’s background or healthcare or wars or police state, or of the JFK-RFK-MLK murders or 9/11/01, but show some respect for those not on the public payroll. And please, it is not a refutation to say that someone is an “extremist,” i.e., disagrees with the approved mainstream. Make an argument, not a just a DC smear.
UPDATE: Murray Rothbard once asked about the charge of anti-[whateverism], so common among neocons, leftists, and “libertarians,” and said that the libertarian as libertarian can only condemn the threat or use of aggression, public or private, not the peaceful use of private property. Anyone who seeks to call in the state to outlaw private anti-’ism, or joins the state in any of its thought and speech-control crusades, is no libertarian.