It’s a long weekend read. At American Greatness, Michael Anton takes a deep dive into the personal dynamics of political disagreement:
The Dishonest and Dishonorable
Disagreements
of Former Friends
Most of us, at some point or
another, fall out with friends. It’s a painful and, perhaps, inevitable part of
life. It’s especially disquieting when former friends turn on you suddenly and
publicly, devoid of any goodwill, charity, or benefit of the doubt that one
might think were warranted by years of amity. All this, however disagreeable,
is at least “normal” in the sense that it has been going on forever—though it
massively intensified in the Trump Derangement Era. . . .
Mr Anton’s concluding thoughts are not encouraging.
Opinion is the element or medium of
society. These people, and many others like them, work to constrain opinion in
order to rule society, to mark off what can and cannot be said or thought.
Their education should have taught them that this is a disaster for human
freedom. The books they claim to love make this point forcefully.
But more prosaically, they are
incapable of any honest disagreement. It will be their way or the highway, and
woe unto him who dissents. These are the same people who speak of unity and
democracy, but their unity is Xerxes’
unity of the lash, and their “democracy” is them getting their way on every
issue while telling you how evil you are for disagreeing.
Just as I find it astonishing to be
accused of anti-Americanism by longtime denigrators of America, I find it even
more astonishing to be accused of divisiveness by people who casually throw
around the term “Nazi.” Is the cause an utter lack of self-awareness? When I
encounter genuine surprise that their hate is not reciprocated with love, I am
tempted to think so.
Or is it deliberate, intended to provoke,
so that those provoked can be more effectively identified and crushed? This
explanation also fits the observable facts.
When even former friends of decades
standing can’t civilly disagree, where are we as a country? Where are we
heading?
Nowhere good.
The full article is here. I posted this for the same reason I’ve been linking to some of Dr Robert Malone’s columns: you are not alone.
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