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The date was April 13. The location was prime-time television. The event turned out to be a travesty of a
press conference. Instead of trying to
elicit from the President information about aspects of the Iraq conflict or
clarify policy issues, the questions predominantly sought to discredit the
President and wring from him admissions of faulty judgment and oversight. There was a time when a Press Conference
involved the news media represented by reporters. Now the participants are egos servicing a political agenda, and
trying to enhance their own reputations by cutting the President down to size.
Rational analysis and
measured judgment are being smothered by the slash and burn tactics of modern
political advocacy. Two centuries ago,
Edmund Burke, the British statesman and champion of the American Republic, asserted,
“Manners are more important then laws… Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt
or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us.”
The long transition from the
raw jungle wherein cunning, deception and brute force determine who gets what,
to a civilized order in which the savage passions are subdued and disagreements
and conflicts are resolved peaceably, requires the development of standards of
behavior. In the free society, those
standards consist of informal codes of conduct voluntarily observed, rather
than rules enforced by a government. In
order to be effective, the informal norms must be bolstered by public approval of
the people who conform to the norms and public scorn and ostracism of those who
don’t.
In America this voluntary support of civilized
behavior was still operating effectively before World War II as David Galernter
discovered in his research for a book about New York City’s 1939 World’s
Fair. “An American of this era,” he
wrote, “freely accepts certain obligations…,
Thirties America is a rules-following society, an ‘ought culture,’
versus our own culture of desire, not obligation.”
The great cultural upheaval of the Sixties
brought about by radical student activism, transformed America’s traditional
“ought” culture into the “desire” culture in an astonishingly brief
period. As Tom Brokaw wrote in his
introduction to Life Magazine’s book on the Sixties, “A new form of
popular religion flourished, the rock-and-roll church with its nocturnal,
narcissistic, mischievous anti-authoritarian creed.” The radicals’ aggressive challenge to authority took aim at the
whole spectrum of the informal standards of behavior.
Many were the casualties. Patriotism was harpooned by defiance of the
draft, courtesy by in-your-face rudeness, civil language by filthy speech,
modesty and sexual morality by sexual liberation, neatness of appearance by
slovenly dress and unkempt hair, lawfulness by the widespread overt use of
illegal marijuana and the amicable resolution of conflict by allegations contrived
to arouse fear and hatred of an opponent, and upstage any rational discussion
of issues.
Sober observers of today’s reality must be
deeply concerned about the nation’s future as innumerable partisan journalists
and news commentators join candidates in playing the fear and hatred card in
the impassioned game of presidential politics.
In the days when religion was taken
seriously, virtually no person in a position of authority publicly called
someone a liar. In order to do so, one
needed to have certain knowledge that what the other person said was untrue,
and certain knowledge that his statement was intended to deceive. Without sure knowledge of both, the
allegation itself is a lie.
Duties, responsibilities, courtesy and
kindness had been woven into the American way of living before D-Day. The anti-authoritarian creed of the Sixties
radicals has cut a deep swath into the ancient civil order of the nation. The November election will determine whether
that process of corruption and barbarization of the American society will
continue unabated, or whether the Voters will heed the warning of Edmund Burke.
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