Civility

 "There is a river whose streams make glad...."

For anyone who has been frustrated the past few years with ultra-conservatives in the political arena whose only purpose seems to be to incite and inflame, it is heartening to note that the tide of public sentiment has turned against their hate-filled invective.

Compare the soaring strains of President Obama's Tucson memorial speech, the truths of which resonate more deeply with the passing of time, to the hollowness of the rhetoric advanced at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, summed up tartly in Frank Rich's NYT opinion piece this past weekend.

The qualities of hope and confidence in the human spirit which reside at the heart of his presidency are embodied in his lyrical quotation from Psalm 46 which opened this speech: 

"There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day."

For we are, he ultimately reminded us, people of hope -- whether we see ourselves as that in religious terms or not: 

"The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better. To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents.  And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud. 

"We should be civil because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American Dream to future generations. 

"They believed -- they believed, and I believe that we can be better.  Those who died here, those who saved life here – they help me believe.  We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that’s entirely up to us." 

Contrast this with Sarah Palin's comments on a recent radio show where she charged that Obama is "hell-bent on weakening America" (she went on to employ highly undignified language in support of this accusation), and to the right-wing columnist on the American Thinker web site who claimed earlier this month that Obama is "eagerly promoting Islamic power in the world while diminishing the West."