Very well put (especially about the founding fathers).
Also, I agree the Internet has caused a lack of civility in discussions. It is a shame, but I know I’ve been on both sides of that lack of civility with my lack of tact in responses. I’ve also had my opinion change by a couple of people, that’s a part of being open minded (not due to my intelligence). I’ve run into some that were far more intelligent and that’s the beauty of FR.
Thanks for the nice reply.
Yes, it is a shame. Not having face to face conversations, and hearing the inflections of the voice, also make misunderstandings more common too. I read somewhere awhile ago that when it came to communicating with others, 70% was visual (face/body language), 20% was auditory, and 10% was what was said. We only get 10% of the info reading the written response, we have to assume and imagine the rest of the context. I think a lot of times when we’re kind of torqued about something we assume the worst and take a defensive posture a lot quicker.
I have had to actually sometimes just log off and do something else. I probably need to walk away more. Or at least just say “I guess we will disagree” and leave it at that. One of my rules of thumb here is if after I’ve been posting awhile if I feel I’m getting more agitated and frustrated, it’s time to step back awhile.
You know, I was thinking also about one other thing you mentioned about people reacting to Obama in such negative ways (not love). I think part of the response besides not liking socialists in general who have always planned the destruction of this country, I also think part of it is an attempt to balance off the press’ obvious pro-bias they have in reporting on every aspect of Obama’s ANYTHING he does. They are such excuse-makers and enablers for him, I think there is a natural backlash against the obvious, blatant bias of most of the media - and even more so when they lecture US about how objective they are and that WE’RE the ones that aren’t ‘professional journalists’.
I just read story by the media offering sympathy for Obama because his vacation is ending yet he looks tired. Have we ever seen any concern like that for Bush, or any Republican president? If so it would have been offered in the context of “well if he isn’t up to the job physically, he needs to resign, we can’t have him on vacation all the time”.
I can tell you I spent high school and college on the papers in various editor positions and had a lot of friends in the college of journalism, while I was in the college of engineering. They had a hell of a lot more free time and partying than I did. Journalism wasn’t a hard place to get a degree.