Brownwood Civility & Respect ?

Oh, now we need civility
Re: "A Little Respect, Please – When debate gets this ugly, democracy suffers," Friday Editorials. (read editorial below)
It is telling that when every poll shows Republicans way out of the mainstream on issues like Social Security and Terri Schiavo – and GOP leaders like Tom DeLay, Bill Frist and President Bush are finally seen for the extremists they are – The Dallas Morning News feels the need to ask for respect and civility in public discourse.
I don't remember The News bemoaning the lack of respect and civility when the Republicans impeached a twice-elected president for lying about sex or when Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn called for the execution of doctors who perform abortions.
What's the matter, afraid the right can't take it?
Ferris Whitney, Dallas
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/stories/032905dnedilet.9abd4.html
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A Little Respect, Please: When debate gets this ugly, democracy suffers
10:08 PM CST on Thursday, March 24, 2005
A situation as emotionally charged as the Terri Schiavo saga can be expected to bring out the very worst in people. But some of the public commentary – a sliver of which we present here – has been simply jaw-dropping in its self-righteousness, viciousness and vulgarity. What we're seeing in the Schiavo tragedy, as in so many other instances of public controversy, is a repugnant practice becoming all too common in our (un)civil life: the strident assertion that the other side is not only wrong, but evil.
"This is a struggle of good and evil. And we are the good," Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean told a rally of the faithful earlier this year. Republicans say the same thing all the time. When you convince yourself that you and your tribe are avatars of moral rectitude, you quit checking your own behavior and your own arguments. Critics do not have to be taken seriously, for they are Evil. Thus do we arrive at the perfectly ridiculous moment when a besieged Republican politician rages against – wait for it – a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.
We Americans are losing the habit of the mind and heart required to make pluralist democracy work: namely, the conviction that the other guy, however mistaken, is to be taken as a worthy opponent until proved otherwise. A politics that binds people together by evoking hatred of the Other amounts to a cheap, rancid populism, one ripe for exploitation by demagogues. Where are the prominent figures of the left and the right who have the decency, the foresight and, dare we say, the patriotism, to say, "Enough!"?
“One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America. … This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others.”
House Majority leader Tom DeLay, March 18
“Terri Schiavo lives so that others, notably [Senate Majority leader Bill] Frist, can run for higher office.”
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, March 22
“Stalinism at the N.Y. Times and Washington Post: Leftist editors call for Terri Schiavo’s murder”
Headline on conservative Web site MichNews.com
“I think [Terri Schiavo’s parents] want to keep her around as an animated meat-sack to assuage their guilt and their grief at her loss.”
Anonymous blogger on DemocraticUnderground.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/032505dnedicivility.a8c40.html