In all my years, living through good times and bad, war, recession,
periods of great advancement, social upheaval, the eradication of
catastrophic diseases and the myriad of forward leaps and backward
slides in this United States of America, I have never seen a time when
our population was on such adversarial footing.
The problem is not just disagreement, that always has and always will exist, but it seems that in the past we were always able to find some common ground, with reasonable people on each side of an issue. Through civil discourse, and give and take, negotiations found a path both sides could live with.
I think our forefathers designed our government to make it possible for both sides of an issue to be heard, but look how far that concept has fallen, with congressional leaders not even allowing legislation they disagree with to even get to the floor for debate.
It seems, today, instead of engaging in two-sided conversations and attempts to understand each other, we tend to label and lump all those who disagree with us into categories we consider to be mentally inferior to us, considering anything they say to be out of step, off the wall or just plain stupid.
http://www.cnsnews.com/print/430648
The problem is not just disagreement, that always has and always will exist, but it seems that in the past we were always able to find some common ground, with reasonable people on each side of an issue. Through civil discourse, and give and take, negotiations found a path both sides could live with.
I think our forefathers designed our government to make it possible for both sides of an issue to be heard, but look how far that concept has fallen, with congressional leaders not even allowing legislation they disagree with to even get to the floor for debate.
It seems, today, instead of engaging in two-sided conversations and attempts to understand each other, we tend to label and lump all those who disagree with us into categories we consider to be mentally inferior to us, considering anything they say to be out of step, off the wall or just plain stupid.
http://www.cnsnews.com/print/430648
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