The Long Crisis

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This has been a brutal Summer for the civility of American Politics. Last night, during President Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress, with millions of Americans watching on TV, thanks to Rep. Joe Wilson, R-SC, the nation’s rapidly deteriorating discourse hit yet another low.

Immediately after the president vowed to lawmakers that his health-care reform proposals would not provide benefits to illegal immigrants, as millions of Americans watched from home, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted at the president from his fifth-row seat: “You lie!”

This lack of respect is not just about President Barack Obama. Joe Wilson’s misconduct shows a lack of respect for the office of the president as well as disrespect for American style government. Unfortunately, during the president’s speech Rep. Wilson’s rude behavior was not the only instance of bad manners shown by members of congress. Several congressmen displayed crude banners asking “what bill?” and “what plan?” as well as rudely laughing and shouting out throughout the speech.

Rep. Wilson was only the most flagrant. There was booing from House Republicans when the president caricatured a conservative argument by saying they would “leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.” They hissed when he protested their “scare tactics.” They grumbled as they do in Britain’s House of Commons when Obama spoke of the “blizzard of charges and countercharges.”

Bringing the bad manners of the national debate over health care reform, already raw for years, and which had coarsened over the summer as town hall meetings across the country dissolved into protests about “death panels” and granny-killing, into the chambers of congress truly represents a new low in national politics.

As President Obama stated near the end of his speech “When we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.”

While by his outburst Joe Wilson became the new poster boy for a nation in decline the sad truth is that there are many in the nation who thought Wilson’s misconduct a bold statement of their position on health care. When the United States is the only developed nation in the Western world that doesn’t offer a universal health care plan to its citizens, and ranks far down the list as to the quality of its health care system for the average citizen, such discord over health care is disgraceful.

Americans should be ashamed about a nation that can find billions to feed the war machine but can not even have a civil discussion about reforming a broken health care system. And bad manners Joe Wilson should be the most ashamed of all. Should be. Unfortunately, Joe Wilson is probably too ignorant to even realize how shameful his behavior is and what it says about the decline of the United States as a civilized nation.

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