What's So "Civil" about Civil Wars?

Civility was a form of social "lubricant" that reduced friction between people so that they could function smoothly together to get things done without heat and subsequent breakdown. "Manners" and etiquette were not empty forms of ritual to "flatter" people. They were the slick cartilage between bones in joints so they could bend and flex and not grind each other down while working.

As the literacy of modern peoples deteriorates arguments become more heated, and in the absence of rational proposals and "evidence," heated vocabulary and sensational expression crops up.

This leads to such divisiveness that, in the 2000 elections, half the voters of America moved to reject one side and another half the other side. The vast majority of voters wanted to oust their opponents, and both sides have remained bitter about the results to this day.

I don't partake of the Rush Limbaughs and Molly Ivins. They do not limit themselves to ridiculing ideas they disagree with. They ridicule individuals.

Laura Ingraham, on her radio program, cracks wise about Michael Moore's weight. Well, if someone called Ms. Ingraham a scrawny (ahem) bench how inclined would she be to listen to the speaker's opinion?

I don't speak or write to impress myself or others. I don't speak or write to reinforce already-held ideologies. I communicate my thoughts to provoke others to reconsider their own positions and, perhaps, improve upon them. Also, people may respond to my opinions with insights and information that help ME to refine my OWN thoughts.

If I get into name-calling and sarcasm I unplug the modem cable between myself and the people I want to reach, and to be reached by.

If my concepts do not stand on intellectual merits, emotional rhetoric will not save them, others, or me.

What was the old saying? "Divide, and conquer?"

Without civility, and reason based on broad experience and thought, America is doomed to fall in a "civil" war of words.