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United States News Title: Civility…or Servitude? In the wake of the Tucson shootings, there has been a new call to "tone down" political rhetoric. Of course, much of the call to "civility" has come from the left – accompanied by hateful, uncivil rhetoric – which seeks to both politically exploit the situation as well as shut down its opposition. One of the loudest voices for "civility" comes from Jim Wallis and the Sojourners group, which seek to espouse a "Progressive Gospel" in which Christianity is melded with the Welfare State. After the shooting, Wallis wrote that it was "an attack on the soul of the nation," which is nothing less than a declaration that the only Gospel is a political gospel. (I give credit to Wallis for not joining in with the New York Times in blaming Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin for the shooting, and the rhetoric on his own "God’s Politics" blog has been more conciliatory than what one sees elsewhere from the Left. I also support Wallis’ criticism of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his condemnation of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.) Nonetheless, I do find the latest "call to civility" from Wallis and his group to be interesting, given the history of Sojourners and the political viewpoints that have come from the magazine Sojourners over the years. What I find is not that they support civility for its own sake; rather, "civility" is a political tool by which people accept the worst of what the state does, and do it quietly. In 1979, the government of Vietnam was attempting to impose its communist "vision" upon unwilling people, and the government used summary executions, concentration camps, and other acts of coercion. The result was grinding poverty, starvation, and an exodus of refugees, called "the boat people." Many people saw this refugee crisis as a natural outgrowth of tyranny, but Wallis saw things differently. The "boat people," you see, were nothing more than slaves to capitalism. He wrote: "Many of today's [Vietnamese] refugees were inoculated with a taste for a Western lifestyle during the war and are fleeing to support their consumer habit in other lands." (Sojourners, September 1979, signed editorial) To be honest, the idea that people would put their very lives at risk to take rickety boats onto the open seas, to be possibly murdered by pirates, and to live for years in squalid refugee camps so that they might have the opportunity to shop at Wal-Mart (which Wallis also hates) is an obscenity. However, his statement, as well as events that have occurred since then, also provides a window into his view of political "civility." One does not have to look to Vietnam to understand that Wallis openly endorses predations by "Progressive" governments against its citizens. After the Waco massacre in 1993, I scoured a number of issues of Sojourners, trying to find any mention of the worst government-caused domestic bloodbath since Wounded Knee of a century before. There was nothing; it is as though Waco and its aftermath never happened. The political left supported Janet Reno and her assault on the Branch Davidians, so in the view of Wallis and others, they got what they deserved. Likewise, I have read nothing in Sojourners that deals with the police excesses of the Drug War. (The latest issue deals with the racial disparities of the Drug War as well as the issue of mass incarceration, but it does not go to the heart of the problem: the expansion of the power of the state itself. Instead, Sojourners calls for restraint upon whom the government arrests to be accompanied by the growth of state power to control what people eat, think, and do. No one there seems to notice the irony.) Although the magazine and Wallis have condemned any kind of violent rhetoric that is aimed at expansion of the U.S. welfare state apparatus (even if that expansion is accompanied by state-sponsored violence), nonetheless they also have given almost uncritical support to some of the most violent and murderous regimes in history. Pol Pot wiped out a quarter of the population of Cambodia in the name of establishing communism? This act of genocide totally was ignored by Sojourners while taking place. For that matter, Wallis openly supported the worst excesses of Mao’s China (while endorsing the same kind of economic program imposed by Mao in his "Great Leap Forward" that led to the slaughter of millions), and he has had no problem with both violent rhetoric and violent revolution in the name of imposing communism. "Civility" applies only to silence people who believe that the "Progressive" state also is a violent state. Wallis was not even willing to apply the rules of civility to himself and Marvin Olasky from World magazine when Olasky found that Wallis’ organization was receiving money from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, which pushes atheism and abortion on demand. In return, Wallis publicly called Olasky a "liar" until Olasky published the tax records and other official statements that proved beyond a doubt that Wallis had received $325,000 from Soros, not a trifling sum. (After being fully exposed, Wallis apologized.) So, in seeing Wallis and his organization through the years, we come to understand that if the state seems to impose a "Progressive" vision through expansion of the welfare-security state, any opposition to such a vision is illegitimate. If one speaks against the "death panels" that always seem to accompany state-controlled medical care, then one is lying. If one objects to the massive new influx of criminal penalties that will be used to enforce the worst provisions of "ObamaCare," then one is both a liar and also an "uncivil" person. In other words, "civility" is a one-way concept. The state – and especially the state that imposes a "welfare" vision upon others – is free to engage in violence, use violent rhetoric, and kill or imprison anyone who stands in the way of such a "vision." One is not "uncivil" unless he or she opposes such a regime, even if the opposition is only in the form of words. Wallis does not want a "civil" society in which people respect one another and serve each other. Instead he agitates for a society in which the state is a master and everyone else is to be subservient to the implementation of raw state power. "Civility" and mutual respect for each other does not come from such a political and social arrangement, but I think that Wallis understands that point perfectly. And like the poor boat people, if we don’t like this kind of regime, then it is our own fault. However, we are not free to leave, and we certainly should not be free to say publicly (or privately) that we don’t like it. Instead, we must learn to love Big Brother.
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#1. To: Capitalist Eric (#0)
So you are telling us your side can't make a point without showing up at a rally with a gun and threatening the other side with hints armed violence? In other words, take away the kook anger factor and you have nothing? Is this an admission that your politics are based on generating anger and hatred and can not survive without that crutch?
One need only look at the side bar article titles for conformation that certain members of the radical right are incapable of civility.
I am still waiting for the right wingers to tell us on here why they feel its wrong to profile them when they are showing up at political rallies with weapons and signs threatening armed insurrection? Why ar ethey upset when we take them at their word they are - according to their own rhetoric - just one straw away from their back breaking from the tyrannical federal govt? It's like they are telling us, yes some time in the near future we will kill Americans who work for the federal govt but not yet so don't blame us for the current violence! There were plenty of signs that said that the "Tea Party came unarmed...this time". OK let me know when you Tea Party revolutionaries do come armed so I can blame you without you feeling upset about it.
I don't know. I think its what happens when one embraces slogans and abandons thought.
#5. To: lucysmom (#4)
(Edited)
I agree - but why are they so tone deaf to their own slogans - unless in their minds this display of weapons at rallies is just not real - deep down inside they know they are wussies who would not act like revolutionaries and this is just a phallic symbol for them?
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