The Anti-Manichaeist

My friend Scott, at My Scribblings for his Amusement, has a well written post on verbal violence. He concludes that

In a world where communication is becoming easier daily and publication in electronic media is nearly cost-free, verbal abuse abounds. There are many people who would never strike a man, but would excoriate him verbally without hesitation. I have read those who, while condemning physical violence in the strongest terms, are nonetheless verbally abusive of their opponents. I do not see how this is a morally defensible course of action to anyone, but especially not to Christians. We are warned by James (3:5) that the tongue is “a world of iniquity,” and we ought to be especially careful how we use it.

I know the harm done by verbal violence. I also know of people who were anti-violence and also had an often excoriating tongue. And, God knows that, even though I never got into a fight in high school, I was often the target of such verbal violence and learned to dish it out, as well.

I think it is ethically extremely important as one who writes often about politics to weigh how we write about our opponents. Given that we see but in part and advocate on the behalf of only a subset of the interests involved in an issue, we need to pull our punches and be wary of how we can wound others with our words. We need to be wary that we do more than increase the acrimony between the parties and therein possibly set back or complicate the process of forming inevitable compromises.

dlw
ps, Along these lines, I like Tom Friedman’s idea that the best way president Bush could ameliorate the deep disdain felt for him in Europe is to show respect to europeans by listening to what they have to say. It is important to improve relations so we can work together better in the future. This would be a switch though from his inauguration speech, which my friend Matt characterizes as mainly setting out principles that recapitulate(and defend) his first-term practices.
pps, also of interest is the recapitulation of the ongoing discussion about Bush’s inaugural speech at GetReligion. It seems that Bush borrowed heavily from a Woodrow-Wilson-style Utopian Idealism that derives from Christian liberalism. Maybe his speech-writers thought such idealism was needed to unify the nation, but it certainly ruffled many conservative feathers…