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June 06, 2007
Let's Take It Outside - It's time to end the "culture war" (one way or the other)
This is going to be a long, hot summer. It is also going to be an exceptionally loud one. Above the usual din of car stereos, motorcycles, personal watercraft and landscaping equipment will rise the roar of public discourse. We’ll be stepping out from behind our televisions, telephones, and computer keyboards, and meeting in person to get a few important things accomplished. The end result will hopefully seem worth the temporary inconvenience.
We need to rediscover the mutual respect most of us felt in the days after September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, however, I don’t believe that we can get there by merely smiling and brushing smooth our deeply different philosophical accessories. We’re going to have to have it out at some point. Like a bartender who encourages the boys (and/or girls) to go ahead and take it outside, lest his property be damaged by an involuntary eruption involving every patron, I call for a season of discussion in the open air — the sweatier and stickier, the better, so Chattanooga’s a perfect place to start — a verbal showdown in the public square over the issues that keep us from feeling unified.
What would be the harm? We think and write far more insulting, damaging things when we’re safely removed from each other’s company than we would (and do) say in person. I am not advocating that we let things escalate to blows, but I somehow think that a healthy tête-à-tête, like the act of perspiring itself, will purge a lot of bile from the system. We have the right to speak freely and to assemble peacefully. We don’t use those rights enough, and there’s no requirement that the two taken together assumes that we’re all saying the same thing. We can show other nations how it’s done and learn from our own tragic past mistakes.
The so-called culture war—except on the outermost fringes—is a cold war. It’s time for us to quit the callous, biting whiner mode, and to look each other squarely in the eye and speak deliberately to what is on our minds. If we get this out of the way, then the process of choosing a national leadership team next year will be far less painless. Line up, spray on your sunscreen, bring an extra reusable bottle for water (but leave the Kool-Aid at home), and let’s go.
(This entry is cross-posted from the Pulse, June 6, 2007.)
Pulsations | By joe lance | 08:28 AM