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> Anger Online Undermines Public Discourse By Ken Connor Sunday, July 15,
2007http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KenConnor/2007/07/15/anger_online_...
>
> "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control." --Proverbs 29:11
>
> I call them "meanies," those men and women who spend their days spreading vitriol on the internet. Nameless, faceless, they lurk in
> the shadows of many websites and blogs, waiting for any opportunity to tear those with whom they disagree to shreds. With a toolbox
> full of putdowns and vulgarities, they work hard at trying to show that their opponents are not only wrong, not only stupid, but
> actually evil. Mean-spiritedness is not a new problem, but never before have "meanies" had such a public platform from which to spew
> their venom, and rarely has society been so willing to celebrate meanness and odium. The problem is so widespread that political
> parties and major policy organizations rely on meanness and anger in promoting their message.
>
> (American soldier Colby Buzzell poses at an undisclosed location in this undated handout photograph made available May 14, 2007. An
> American soldier's account of fighting in Iraq's Sunni triangle has won the "Blooker prize" for best book that began as a blog on
> the Internet. Colby Buzzell, whose Internet diary from Iraq became the book "My War", says he started posting his experiences online
> from a frontline Internet tent as a way to "kill time". The book won the second annual $10,000 prize. REUTERS/Handout (UNITED
> KINGDOM). EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. Related Media: VIDEO: IT Voices - Simon Melaniphy
> of Refreshed Media. Michelle Malkin Views from Power Line Blog VIDEO: Caught on Tape: Suspect's Dad Hits Reporter)
>
> Peter Wood, in his recent book A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now, says there is a difference between New Anger, which is
> everywhere today, and Old Anger. There has never been a time when men and women did not get angry. Yet, at one point, anger was seen
> as a passion to be restrained whenever possible. Self-control and self-mastery were considered virtues; a man who was quick to anger
> was seen as weak and unstable. For a political leader to burn with anger in public on a regular basis was certainly considered a red
> flag.
>
> In his review of Wood's book, Howard Kurtz says this about New Anger:
>
> New Anger is everything that Old Anger was not: flamboyant, self-righteous, and proud. As a way to "empowerment" for ethnic
> groups, women, political parties, and children, New Anger serves as a mark of identity and a badge of authenticity. The Civil War,
> and America's past political campaigns, may have witnessed plenty of anger, yet not until recently, says Wood, have Americans
> actually congratulated themselves for getting angry. Anger has turned into a coping mechanism, something to get in touch with, a
> prize to exhibit in public, and a proof of righteous sincerity.
>
> New Anger has certainly found a home on cable news channels and on the blogosphere. This unhealthy anger is coupled with what legal
> scholar Cass Sunstein calls "ideological amplification." According to Sunstein, ideological amplification is a process whereby one's
> ideological opinions become more extreme as they encounter fewer opposing viewpoints. This is an especially big problem on the
> blogosphere, where men and women self-select the sites they visit. As Alan Jacobs points out in his article, Amplifying Charity, a
> conservative is unlikely to defend President Bush on a liberal blog like the DailyKos when "her views-along with her personality,
> her character, her intelligence, and her friends, family members, and pets-[are] instantly subjected to a barrage of, shall we say,
> critical scrutiny." A liberal is equally disinclined to dialogue with conservatives on extreme conservative blogs.
>
> The end result is the creation of "echo chambers" or "information cocoons" in which New Anger boils over into utter hatred and
> malice. Jacobs has also noticed this trend: "Among the ideas that get amplified [on monolithic blogs], one of the most pernicious
> and (alas) common is the idea that people who are not among the Faithful deviate from the True Path not just because they make
> different political judgments, or have different beliefs about how best to form a just political order, but because they are, well,
> evil."
>
> The antidote to the rising heat in political debate today, according to Sunstein and Jacobs, is "political charity." When men and
> women exhibit political charity they do not automatically assume that their opponents have evil motives, but they try to see their
> opponents' motives in the best possible light. Those with political charity also try to identify the positive moral principle at the
> heart of their opponents' views and endorse those principles whenever possible. In other words, political charity should drive those
> on either side of the aisle to see political counterparts as real people who mean well, not as the diabolical monsters that some
> people self-righteously create in their own minds. While it is true that there is real evil in the world, and that we should never
> be shy about identifying true evil, it has also become clear that in the blogosphere, on talk radio, and on some cable TV shows, we
> are allowing New Anger to destroy mature political discourse.
>
> In the final analysis, self-government requires self-control. It requires from us the ability to patiently and rationally discuss
> our varying viewpoints as we work together for the common good. If passions like anger and hatred take over, we will completely lose
> the ability to reason together as a people, meaning we will have become incapable of governing ourselves. Democracy itself is on the
> line. As we move toward the 2008 presidential elections, there is little doubt that some blogs, liberal and conservative, will be
> cauldrons of animosity and acrimony. Rest assured that both of the major political parties will try to tap into these searing
> emotions to their own benefit. One can also predict that some supposedly Christian groups will try to take advantage of these unholy
> passions to mobilize voters. Despite all of this, we will do well to remember that Christ himself called us to love our
> neighbors...and even our enemies. The survival of democracy itself may depend on our ability to show true political charity.
>
> Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC and a nationally recognized trial lawyer who represented
> Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case.
> --
> Frederick Martin McNeill
> Poway, California, United States of America
> mmcne...@
fuzzysys.comhttp://www.fuzzysys.comhttp://members.cox.net/fmmcneill
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> "Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly."
> -Ann Coulter
> "Maybe Bohr and Heisenberg were right after
> all, physics doesn't tell us how nature is,
> it only tells us what we can say about nature."
> - Markus Aspelmeyer
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