{"id":27169,"date":"2019-04-06T12:21:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T17:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=27169"},"modified":"2019-06-06T12:06:38","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T17:06:38","slug":"civil-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=27169","title":{"rendered":"Civil Discourse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=27161\">chat with &#8220;Juan Percent&#8221; <\/a>reminds me that I view all debate as an opportunity to share points of view to blow off the cloud of confusion. Here are some of my thoughts on this and some evidence:<\/p>\n<p>All of us have a pretty wide latitude to say what we think. Even the Prince of Peace, in an era long before the First Amendment, could say alarming things like this: &#8220;If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters&#8211;yes, even their own life&#8211;such a person cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26 But that does not prevent me from biting my tongue when I find someone else&#8217;s ideas infuriating, stupid, or worse. <\/p>\n<p>My preferred reply to such a statement would be something to make them reconsider their statement. There are at least three overlapping reasons why I would want to reply thoughtfully. <\/p>\n<p><strong>1st.<\/strong> A smartass reply by me would only close their mind to any counterarguments of mine and thus confirm their opinions.<br \/>\n<strong>2nd.<\/strong> I suspect most people who offer a smart ass comment know full well its not a satisfactory argument.<br \/>\n<strong>3rd.<\/strong> I always liked Will Roger&#8217;s maxim &#8220;I never me a man I didn&#8217;t like.&#8221; Just because someone says something I object to doesn&#8217;t mean I shouldn&#8217;t be prepared to like him despite it. <\/p>\n<p>None of this means that I will curb a sharp tongue when I think something needs to be addressed plainly. Jesus didn&#8217;t hesitate to use the cult-like ridicule of family loyalty to make his point either. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I have in recent weeks attempted to confront objectionable Facebook comments with something other then smart ass replies. In a couple cases I&#8217;ve been rewarded with serious chats. But I understand. Undertaking serious chats with an unending number of people is not practical. In one case an old friend of mine greeted my comments with the line &#8220;I used to think you were smart Harry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I patiently explained myself further and then suggested that we just remember the good old days fondly. He let me know he thought that made sense to him too.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve received hundreds of critical emails and letters in my 12 years as a member of the Duluth School Board and more when I fought the Red Plan for several years. I&#8217;ve tried to rely more on patience and evidence than spite to make my views clear if not palatable. I submit the following as proof:<\/p>\n<p>First email exchanges.. I searched this blog for  examples of email exchanges I&#8217;ve posted. First I searched for the word email in my blog and it showed up in about <a href=\"http:\/\/<a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?s=email\">http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?s=email<\/a>&#8220;>1,200 posts<\/a> far more than I think actually contained actual email exchanges. <\/p>\n<p>Then it occurred to me that I often post critical emails followed by <a href=\"http:\/\/<a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?s=%22my+reply%22\">http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?s=%22my+reply%22<\/a>&#8220;>&#8221;my reply&#8221; <\/a>. There were about 140 of those. My eight loyal readers are welcome to mine these examples to see if I have maintained my composure and my rationality.<\/p>\n<p>Even before the Trump era there have been calls (mostly by people who detest &#8220;Talk Radio&#8221;) for &#8220;civility&#8221; in public discourse. I don&#8217;t disagree but I&#8217;ve blogged about that too . I found <a href=\"http:\/\/<a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?s=civility\">http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?s=civility<\/a>&#8220;>about 80 emails<\/a> that contained the word civility. In fact Duluth is the source of one of the most dedicated organizations promoting Civility. As a School Board member I was repeatedly asked to reaffirm the civility oath this organization presented to my School Board.<\/p>\n<p>During the longest most controversial part of the Red Plan fight I heard a few people complain that my blog was an abomination or words to that effect. Attorney&#8217;s for the Duluth School District even submitted reams of printouts of my blog to the Court. The Court took no notice of them. Only <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2457\">one particularly disputatious local<\/a> took me to task for anything I wrote in the 1000 plus emails I also submitted to the the School District&#8217;s attorneys in Discovery. These emails were never meant for public disclosure but I was a meticulously fair-minded in private as I was in public.<\/p>\n<p>I also try to be fair minded in public settings as I was when I vociferously disparaged the attorney for the School Board who frankly viewed himself as the Superintendent&#8217;s protector rather than the defender of the elected officials for whom he was supposed to provide legal advice. I mention this because last night as I was picking out examples of my communications I ran across a column of Loren Martell&#8217;s that was mistakenly inserted in a collection of my columns for the Duluth Reader.<br \/>\nLoren was fastidious about quoting school board members relying on recordings to make sure our every tick was included in his quotes. My critique of Attorney Rupp begins in about t<a href=\"http:\/\/duluthreader.com\/articles\/2015\/01\/15\/4655_meet_the_new_boss\">he 13th paragraph<\/a> of Mr. Martell&#8217;s coverage of our organizational meeting. I think I&#8217;m pretty eloquent off the cuff even as I roast our attorney.<\/p>\n<p>My critique of the School District&#8217;s attorney begins on about Loren&#8217;s 15th paragraph and begins:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. Welty was first to make the case against this attorney and his firm\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think before we ok a contract with this law firm, we\u2026need to have the utmost confidence in their capacity for giving the district good advice. I have had a year\u2019s experience with the leading member of the Rupp law firm&#8211;Mr. Rupp&#8211;and I have to say that I\u2019ve found his legal advice to be wanting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My chat with &#8220;Juan Percent&#8221; reminds me that I view all debate as an opportunity to share points of view to blow off the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,134],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27169"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27482,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27169\/revisions\/27482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}