Our Society

During my recent trip to Texas, I was the victim of a hit-and-run driver. Because the person who caused the accident did not stop, I am going to have to pay my insurance deductible, so I am victimized two ways. As a result his item from Instapundit yesterday really hit home:

In his new book, “In Pursuit of Civility”, British historian Keith Thomas tells the story of the most benign developments of the past 500 years: the spread of civilised manners. In the 16th and 17th centuries many people behaved like barbarians. They delighted in public hangings and torture. They stank to high heaven. Samuel Pepys defecated in a chimney. Josiah Pullen, vice-principal of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, urinated while showing a lady around his college, “still holding the lady fast by the hand”. It took centuries of painstaking effort – sermons, etiquette manuals and stern lectures – to convert them into civilised human beings.

Reading Thomas’s book on a train recently I was gripped by a terrible realisation: everything our forebears worked so hard to achieve is now reversing. A process that took centuries has been undone in just a few decades.

Regardless of whether you believed Brett Kavanaugh should have been confirmed and whether you like Ted Cruz or not, the recent incivility is more than am embarrassment for our nation. Recall last year Republican congressmen were shot and Steve Scalise was nearly killed. Rand Paul was attacked and seriously injured in his front yard.

It is fine to disagree about politics or anything else. But, do it in a civil and respectful manner.

Also from Instapundit:
“So let’s all appreciate Elizabeth Warren’s contribution to the demolition of America’s corrupt affirmative action regime. It is long past time that we stopped classifying each other by race and bestowing benefits on that basis. Warren’s message is liberating: we are pretty much all Indians, or Hispanics, or African-Americans now. So let’s move on.”

We are all children of God which means we are worthy of love and respect. Let's stop worrying about color, heritage, etc., etc.