by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n American Stasis<\/strong><\/p>\n The historian Thucydides warned about the escalating violent language and behavior that we are witnessing. More on that later.<\/p>\n For now, yes, I thought Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) was a boor to scream out at the President during a joint session. If everyone were to do that, we\u2019d descend into some sort of Third World Parliament in short order, or end up caning each other, as on the eve of the Civil War. He apologized to the President, and should have.<\/p>\n Tit-for-Tat?<\/strong><\/p>\n But sadly, I put no credence in liberal outrage. Dozens of Democrats booed Bush during his State of the Union address in 2005; an unhinged Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) called him a liar from the House floor. The currently outraged, like Maureen Down and E.J. Dionne, said little about the 2005 interruption of the President of the United States with catcalls. Congressional efforts at censure failed. Stark, for all I know, remains not an albatross, but an icon of the Left.<\/p>\n Do As I Say, Not As I Do<\/strong><\/p>\n President Obama called for more civility on\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>\u00a0the other night. A noble effort, all would agree. But he has himself been serially accusing his opponents of disinformation and lying about his healthcare plan \u2014 even as his own accounts of how many are currently uninsured, the status of illegal aliens under his plan, or the nature of his end of life counseling programs seem to change weekly.<\/p>\n The President in his calls for moderation, of course, said nothing about Van Jones\u2019s profanity and racism \u2014 or his czar\u2019s charging Bush with planning the deaths of 3,000, charging whites with being mass killers in the schools, and polluters, and on and on.<\/p>\n Wasn\u2019t There Someone Once Upon a Time Called Van Jones?<\/strong><\/p>\n Any President devoted to the notion of restoring civility would have never nominated such a boor. Imagine instead a contrite Obama saying: \u201cWe have got to do better in the way we talk to each other. My own White House green jobs advisor should never have said the things he did, and that\u2019s why he had to go.\u201d Instead, Jones got out of town, screaming about smears at midnight. Obama voted present as the Left charged racism at Jones\u2019s departure \u2014 although the President warned school children not to post things on the Internet, the implication being you too can be a poor Jones done in by Google.<\/p>\n The Wages of the Sixties<\/strong><\/p>\n The truth is that a new generation of boors has come of age without sober wise people to teach them how to act. A Stark or a Wilson, whether left or right, were Sixties people, a generation known for its hip crassness and uncouthness. The baby boomers themselves abdicated the role of elder statesmen, and instead need in their dotage to be taught before they can teach anyone. The proper censors are in the graveyards, a better mannered generation used to hardship and war, whose legacy of standards we have squandered.<\/p>\n Boors Everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n The result? Turn to tennis and we see this week a pathetic Serena Williams in a profanity-ridden rant, because she is being beaten badly on the court and apparently cannot handle the self-induced humiliation, and so goes ballistic over a bad call. I am sure she would have preferred, as in the past, the racist- to the profanity-card, had not the targeted umpire herself been a person of color. Of course, John McEnroe, Ilie Natase and Jimmy Connors set the present low standards in tennis. Ms. Williams is only following in their ends-justify-the-means footsteps. In about a week, her father will weigh in with his customary slurs on spec. Who knows, maybe even McEnroe will claim, \u201cEven I would never do that!\u201d<\/p>\n Steal the Show<\/strong><\/p>\n Then a buffoonish rapper Kanye hijacks a music awards show, to scream out that he prefers the loser to the poor embarrassed winner, standing mute before him with the trophy. But how can the audience that honors the violence and degradation of hip-hop\/rap, then be outraged that they get a live version before them of the crude behavior they buy on CDs? Had Kanye only put in a plug for green jobs, he might have escaped without the boos. So we need a Juvenal (\u2018Who will police the police\u201d) to note the irony of a crass music industry being out-crassed on its formal night out.<\/p>\n Not So Long Ago<\/strong><\/p>\n The Left is now furious that, as the new establishment, the rules of discourse are not more polite. But from 2002-8, they (Who are \u201cthey\u201d? Try everyone from Al Gore to John Glen to Robert Byrd to Sen. Durbin) employed every Nazi\/brown shirt slur they could conjure up. NPR\u2019s folksy old Garrison Keiler was indistinguishable from mean-spirited Michael Moore in that regard. So What?<\/strong><\/p>\n No one objected. A Dan Rather said nothing \u2014 but tried to pass off forged documents to alter the election. A Bill Moyers piled on. There was no voice of \u201cNow, wait a minute, this is going too far.\u201d Did the Left assume that they were going to be perpetually bomb-tossers, forever on the outside of Karl Rove\u2019s ballyhooed three-decades of Republican supremacy to come?<\/p>\n What Comes Around, Goes\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n And then something strange and quite unexpected happened. The Democrats nominated a charismatic African-American, won the presidency, after obtaining large majorities in Congress, and suddenly became the Establishment, demanding respect for the Commander in Chief in direct proportion to their efforts to deny respect to his predecessor. Then just as suddenly two tropes appeared after January 20th of this year:<\/p>\n One \u2014 cannot we all get along? We deplore this resort to barbarism and crudity.<\/p>\n Two \u2014 if you dare sound off like we just did, then you are now a racist.<\/p>\n Not So Fast<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem is that the public is not really stupid and has a long memory. It hates hypocrisy as much as it does crudity. Part of Obama\u2019s decline is precisely because of this sudden disingenuousness in which one rises to the top on hardball, Chicago politics and playing identity politics (remember Rev. Wright, Ayers, \u201ctypical white people\u201d, clingers, etc.), and then of course wants an end to the crudity (like hoping the music stops only when you have grabbed that last chair).<\/p>\n Or so Obama said that he wanted a sort of end to the acrimony. But once he was elected, we got Eric Holder slurring the nation, the President slurring the police, the environmental jobs czar slurring almost everyone, and a host of satellites like Charles Rangel and Diane Watson leveling charges of racism.<\/p>\n So Where Do We Go from Here?<\/strong><\/p>\n The standards of civilly, torn down during the 1960s, were obliterated completely after 9\/11 (hours after, actually, when Michael Moore (Jimmy Carter\u2019s hero) wished a red-state had been hit instead). We have no more \u201cWise Men\u201d in Washington and New York, but rather graying children of the Sixties, aging badly. A large segment of the left \u2014 from Code Pink and Moveon.org to Acorn and the unions \u2014 believe that they really can smear and defame and then retreat to mythical standards of decency when they are now on the receiving end. Does anyone believe that the amateur hit journalists who caught Acorn red-handed used tactics any different from Mike Wallace and the 60 Minutes team?<\/p>\n Back to Corfu<\/strong><\/p>\n The historian Thucydides has a wonderful chapter in his third book on the stasis at Corcyra on all this. In short, he says when rules, decorum, respect, and commonly accepted behaviors are jettisoned for short-term advantage, then the thin veneer of civilization, in other words the law, is scratched away and we peer at our natural Rousseauian selves below. And quite a scary sight that is, natural man without civilization.<\/p>\n Even more brilliant is the historian\u2019s irony. When those on the outs, who excel through seeking the ends by any means, soon find themselves as the establishment, they want no more like themselves. (I don\u2019t think First Lady Michelle now wishes anyone to charge her nation with being a mean country, or would want any guest to her White House to tell her that he is not proud of suddenly liberal America; cf. Obama\u2019s sudden distrust of the community-organizing Tea Partiers and Town Hallers who are out-organizing Acorn).<\/p>\n But too late. Once the walls are stormed, and ramparts of decency in rubble, it is very hard to rebuild the stones to fend off the barbarians, given the power of natural coarseness, and the problem of legitimacy and irony (Why should we believe that you are shocked at Joe Wilson now, when you booed George Bush not long ago?)<\/p>\n Enough?<\/strong><\/p>\n The solution, of course, is for the majority to simply say enough is enough, and declare a personal code of decency: \u201cI will not stoop to smear and slur, won\u2019t interrupt a speaker, won\u2019t call anyone a Nazi, won\u2019t do to others what they\u2019ve done to me.\u201d Only that sort of code will end the craziness.<\/p>\n In the short-term it is a losing political formula for conservatives, but in the long term it is the only way to restore sanity and a winning strategy. The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0is moribund for reasons other than the Internet. Most (I have not bought a copy in 5 years) won\u2019t read it because of the vitriol of a Maureen Dowd or Frank Rich, and the crass editorials disguised as news accounts on the front page. Obama\u2019s ratings have dived because of the Gates mess, Van Jones, and the Chicago political style. Even Oprah is having problems, once America\u2019s sweetheart went out in a fury on the campaign trail, and used her stature to play on identity politics.<\/p>\n No one needs to become Pollyanna or shocked at occasional tough hits (I\u2019ve been booed and shouted down at a few public lectures by mostly middle-class students parading as \u201cthe people\u201d on the barricades), but instead simply refrain from calling your enemy a Nazi or screaming at an official in the middle of a speech, or, like Maureen Dowd, dreaming of kicking Dick Cheney at a reception. The point is not to ostracize or point fingers at others in moralistic fashion, but just simply say, \u201cThat\u2019s not my way.\u201d<\/p>\n Otherwise?<\/strong><\/p>\n Otherwise, we won\u2019t have a tennis match, an awards ceremony, a Presidential speech, a congressional debate \u2014 much of anything without some hysterical rant from the unhinged.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media American Stasis The historian Thucydides warned about the escalating violent language and behavior that we are witnessing. More on that later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[652],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-AK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2292,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rep-charles-rangel-sign-of-the-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":2278,"position":0},"title":"Rep. Charles Rangel–Sign of the Times","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is becoming a metaphor for almost all the sins of our age. Let us count the ways. How about corruption? Currently, Rangel is under investigation by two House subcommittees for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1689,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-and-the-new-civility\/","url_meta":{"origin":2278,"position":1},"title":"Obama and the New Civility","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The heated rhetoric of the Bush years gone. A new age has dawned. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It was sometime early this year that Americans finally learned the rules of proper political discourse \u2014 another dividend from the Obama administration. We can all be grateful for our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2694,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bush-obsessive-compulsive-disorder\/","url_meta":{"origin":2278,"position":2},"title":"Bush Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama continues to trash Bush in words--but his actions speak louder. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Last July I wrote a column entitled \u201cBarack W. Bush\u201d outlining how candidate Barack Obama was strangely emulating Bush policies \u2014 even as he was trashing the president.\u00a0 Nearly a year later,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2009"","block_context":{"text":"June 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/june-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2268,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/no-rules-in-the-arena\/","url_meta":{"origin":2278,"position":3},"title":"No Rules in the Arena?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., to scream out \"You lie\" at his commander-in-chief in the middle of Barack Obama's recent healthcare speech before a joint session of Congress. And others who keep insisting that the president doesn't have an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4353,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hitler-hitler-everwhere\/","url_meta":{"origin":2278,"position":4},"title":"Hitler, Hitler, Everwhere","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was not alone when he recently compared American behavior at Guantanamo Bay to that of \"Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings.\" Tarring Bush\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2005"","block_context":{"text":"June 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/june-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4388,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/footnote\/","url_meta":{"origin":2278,"position":5},"title":"Footnote","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 18, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Criticism and correction on numbers of protesters in Holland by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Recently, in response to \u201cRemembering World War II,\u201d readers from the Netherlands wrote to suggest that my reference to \"thousands\" of Dutch protesting President Bush's arrival in Holland was in error, and contradicted their own\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2005"","block_context":{"text":"May 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/may-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2279,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions\/2279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0gave a discount for a disgusting \u201cGeneral Betray Us\u201d ad. The Democratic Party head Howard Dean flatly said he \u201chated\u201d Republicans. Hilary Clinton all but called Gen. Petraeus a liar in a congressional hearing. The New Republic ran an essay on hating George Bush (not opposing, not disliking, but \u201chating\u201d the President). Alfred Knopf published a novel about killing Bush. A Guardian op-ed dreamed of Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth coming back to kill Bush. And on and on.<\/p>\n