"You have offended my honor, Sir"

By now, you’ve all heard about the ruckus caused by Joe Wilson (whose given name is Addison Graves Wilson), the congressman from South Carolina who called the President of the United States a liar to his face in public. The public place was the United States Congress which eventually included the entire world via television and the Internet.

No one is perfect and people can make major mistakes, like insulting someone. The usual procedure in a civilized society is to own up to the mistake and make a heartfelt apology. This is exactly what Joe Wilson did when he admited his behavior was wrong. Soon after the President’s speech the White House received a call from Joe. He apologized for his "inappropriate and regrettable" comments. Administration officials who took the call expressed appreciation for the apology and commented that this country needs "a civil discussion" to which Joe Wilson agreed.

This is the way we are supposed to handle human peccadillos. That exchange should have been the end of the matter — a regrettable incident put on the shelf and forgotten. Just the opposite has happened. Unfortunately, the apology was not the end of the story but the introduction to a larger story.

Our country once again displayed its amazing propensity for polarization. On one side the majority of people think Joe Wilson had crossed the line. His behavior was unacceptable and a poor model for this country's children. Others believe that Joe Wilson did the right thing. After all, freedom of speech is what makes this country great. In fact, Joe has become a folk hero to some people in this country for his courage in speaking out and representing the thoughts and beliefs of people who are afraid. Not only has he become a hero to some but they have used their pocketbooks to affirm their support. Soon after calling the President a liar, Joe received over one million dollars for his upcoming election.

Maureen Down, columnist for the New York Times, reported that supporters began wearing T-shirts and waving signs with brave slogans such as "Stand with Joe," "Joe 2012," and "Joe was right." What a lovely democratic display of free speech. Other more powerful people joined the applause. A congresswoman from Minnesota publicly declared, "Thank God for Joe Wilson." The executive of the American Liberty Alliance was thankful that finally someone had become brave enough to openly display "a defiant attitude."

These displays of bravado emboldened others to voice their well thought out opinions at an anti-Obama rally in Washington recently. Placards emphasizing civil discussions made such statements as "Trade Obama back to Kenya;" "We came unarmed (this time)" and "Bury Obama with Kennedy." At least we don’t need to be concerned that all this rancor might be tinged with racism.

Predictably, popular Obama-haters quickly became soloists in the choir. Rush Limbaugh threw more fuel on the flames of national loathing and bitterness when he said, "Every sentence out of the president’s mouth is a lie and what’s he [meaning Joe Wilson] supposed to do?" So now we know what the civil discussion looks like that Joe Wilson agreed was needed for our nation.

A disciple of Michelle Malkin’s blog threw his mouth into this civil discussion when he left a post reading, "I’d far rather be in Joe’s company than the presence of gutter-mouth Obama and his thugs." At least it’s nice to finally understand what the new definition of civil discourse means.

It seems this groundswell of support for Joe has given him a slight springiness to his step. He talked with reporters a few days after his heroic behavior and when he was done talking with them, he happily signed his autograph on a picture of his heroic outburst. Some of Joe's Congressional colleagues suggested that he also needs to apologize to them because he not only insulted POTUS but denigrated the dignity and decorum of the Congressional chambers.

Well, this was to much for someone who now believed in his heroic status. Here is what Joe said when asked on Fox news if he would apologize to his colleagues. "I apologized one time. The apology was accepted by the president and the vice president. I’m not apologizing again." Sounds like a hero to me.

Actually, Joe Wilson is carrying on a time-honored tradition in South Carolina politics. For a century and a half, lawmakers from South Carolina have displayed their own version of civil discussion. Historian Lewis L. Gould has written countless books including The Most Exclusive Club: A History of the Modern United States Senate. He says that Congress has seen these special civil gifts over the years from South Carolina members of this exclusive club in the form of "beatings, fistfights and wrestling matches."

This section of the country began its special contribution to Congressional decorum in 1856. Preston Brooks was a Democratic congressman from South Carolina who took umbrage at a speech made by a colleague, Senator Charles Sumner. Brooks went to the Senate chamber in what onlookers must have thought would be a verbal confrontation. Instead Brooks beat the living daylights of Sumner. Sumner tried to hide under a desk. Brooks attacked Sumner so violently that he ripped the bolted desk from the floor. He continued the attack with his stout wooden cane until Sumner, blinded by his own blood, staggered up the aisle, then collapsed and fell into unconsciousness. Did this stop Brooks? Nope. He continued beating Sumner until he busted his cane. Only then did he stop and walk out of the chamber.

Gould goes on to list other incidents by congressmen from South Carolina. In 1902 a Senator by the nickname of Pitchfork Ben Tillman decided to move debate to another level. He wanted to teach another senator a lesson in civility so he began a brawl by jumping over four chairs and starting a fistfight. In 1964, favorite son, Strom Thurmond initiated a shoving match which quickly turned into a wrestling match that lasted a full ten minutes. More civil discussion.

Those of us who have been parents of young children have dealt with trying to teach our children that violence is not the format for dealing with conflict. I can’t imagine how much harder this is now that our elected leaders, media people, and the rabid rank and file have decided that getting in someone’s face is now the accepted method for managing disagreements. "But Dad, Congressman Wilson called President Obama a liar and became a hero."

Parenting is going to get harder as long as attention and support is given to people in this country for being belligerent, lying, demonizing anyone who disagrees, and accepting uncritically everything they hear. We now have a large segment of our population that is governed and motivated by fear. It takes only a minute or two on the Internet to see and listen to a flag-waver who says, in all seriousness, "I’m so scared because our President is a Muslim and they are taking over our country." When I was growing up, Joe McCarthy (another fine example of an elected official) spread similar rumors and fears through the populace except it was the Communist devil that was spooking everyone.

In one of her columns, conservative writer Kathleen Parker reminded us that congressmen and other men of integrity in the nineteenth century had a specific, civil and honorable method for ending acrimony. In 1882, a gentleman by the name of Mr. John Goode insulted another gentleman, Mr. Bailey by calling him "a liar." Ahhh — such biting language. Ms. Parker then relates what a writer for the New York Times described as the ultimate solution for personal insults among men of honor — a duel. The writer declared that "Nothing but blood can wipe out this insult."

What a great idea. A method to settle disagreements once and for all. President Obama could approach Joe Wilson telling him he demanded satisfaction from Joe for being dishonored. The President would then signal this demand with a time-honored insulting gesture such as slapping Joe across the face with a glove.

Next, the President would pick his weapon and choose the field of honor. The only problem here is that dueling is illegal. Being a clever species, humans in the last hundred years have devised substitutes for dueling and it’s called sports. Can anyone deny that football or soccer are just duels without swords or bullets? Even a baseball thrown at a batter’s head is a form of a duel.

However, one of the more violent sports is basketball. Some commentators believe the NBA is more violent than other sports because the players are in continual contact. To make matters worse basketball players wear no padding or equipment to protect themselves. Some NBA coaches are convinced that basketball is as much of a contact sport as football.

After President Obama slaps Joe Wilson with a glove, he could declare the weapon of choice is a basketball and the field of honor would be the White House basketball court.

So let’s begin a new tradition. We could start it at the highest levels of our nation and use the Trickle Down Theory of Sport Economics to eventually move it to grade schools and kindergarten. It could be used to corral the craziness that has begun to grip our nation. Violence would be short-lived with the results being unequivocal.

The duel between the President and the Congressman would be a game of one-on-one basketball and could be televised nationally. Special uniforms would be designed for the participants with taxpayer’s money. On one side of the gym would be bleachers for the Obama haters while everyone else would be in the opposite bleachers. Naturally, all fans would be screened for other kinds of weapons.

Who would we have for referees? The Supreme Court, of course. All of these smart people would be given a written test on basketball rules and probably all of them would pass. Those who got a perfect score on the rules test would have to shoot free throws. The justice who hit three straight ones from the foul line would be eligible for the referee job. In case more than one justice mastered this heroic feat, they would keep shooting (not dueling) until the one with the most successive sinkers would win. Of course, the referee would not wear stripes but rather a distinguished jet black outfit.

We could hold tryouts for members of Congress to become cheerleaders. They could develop their own cheers that would represent their constituency. One side would have cheers like, "Kill him, he’s a liar." The other side might have a cheer along the lines of, "Money solves all social problems." This new political spectacle might even be bigger than world soccer. Las Vegas could contribute a significant percentage of gambling winnings to help ease the national deficit.

The loser of this faux duel would have to leave his job. Either Joe Biden would be president or South Carolina would be out a congressman (although Joe Wilson could keep all the money he made from being a hero). Does anyone know if Obama or Wilson have played basketball before?

Let the Game Begin.

Inauguration Day

We are so fortunate to be able to personally witness this day that will end up in history books centuries from now. This day is momentous on so many dimensions. We are finally being told by our new President that we are one nation with one purpose for one people. Divisions have divided our country for too long. We have had a decade of bickering and polarized ideology undergirded with fear.

If our nation were a family, psychologists would look upon us as a highly dysfunctional family. We have been encouraged to take sides and demonize those who disagree with us. We tryed to expel family members whose opinions differ from ours. We have believed that we are so weak that we need the strong hand of government to tell us what to think and believe. We were supposed to accept with reservation any outrageous policy or idea put before us. Fighting and quarreling among us has reduced us, as a nation family, to our lowest common human denominator.

Highly effective families have problems and tensions just because all people are different — even those who are genetically similar. Families who do well listen to one another and encourage disagreement and different points of view. However, underneath all the emotional maneuvering is an underlying sense that inclusiveness trumps fear and judgment.

Becoming a healthy national family will not be easy. From eons of development, the human brain has learned that fear can be a powerful survival mechanism. The attack on 9/11 instilled a fear in the nation that few had yet experienced. Our survival mechanism began to determine who we were and we began to splinter as a nation.

Harnessing fear by knowing the difference between rational and irrational fear is one of the hallmarks of emotional stability. Dysfunctional families and nations begin to fall apart when they let fear be the guiding principle for action.

Our nation has had many fears from our very beginning. One of the rational fears that exploded into the drive for independence was our fear of being a world empire vassal. The Enlightenment, more than any other concept, drove our founders to respect the dignity of each individual and the importance of freedom from tyranny by others.

As we became a nation, irrational fears began to be added to our original rational fear of dominance by a nation that did not have our best interests at heart. The early colonies began to experience and display fear of anyone who had a different religious viewpoint. Some Christians think that only one religion (conservative Christianity) settled on our shores. Actually, many different religions came here in order to be free to practice their religion: Quakers, Dutch reformers, Puritans, Anglicans, Catholics, German reformers to name a few.

The irony of this drive for religious freedom was that each religion only wanted freedom for themselves and were highly intolerant of anyone else's religion. Religious freedom had a different meaning to the colonists than it does to us today. Our nation now believes all religions (including atheists) are free to hold and express these beliefs without interference from others. The original settlers only wanted freedom for themselves and no one else.

This can be illustrated by the Maryland Act of Religious Toleration of 1649. This "enlightened" policy offered religious toleration, but only to those whose religion subscribed to a dogma called Christian Trinitarianism. The Act was tolerant of any religion that subscribed to this ideology. Nevertheless, it also excluded many religions such Jews and other non-European religions. The reasonable consequence for violating this act (reasonable only to the signers of the MART) was death to everyone who was not a Trinitarian. This makes us cringe today. Even though this would be highly unconstitutional today, there are those on the ideological fringes of our current society who would not mind reinstating this kind of prohibition.

As we struggled with the principle of religious inclusiveness, we added another irrational fear to our collective psyche, slavery. Many people in our country were afraid of anyone with skin coloration including Native Americans. As early as 1619 we believed that people of color were to be used and treated as animals.

Our first irrational fear, religious toleration, spilled over into this fear of skin color. People who condoned slavery used religion to justify its existence. A Reverend Alexander Campbell, with a straight face and absolute conviction said, "There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral."

Supporting this religious bigotry were many politicians. James Henry Hammond, US Senator in the middle of the 19th century, also used the Bible to declare that "The doom of Ham has been branded on the form and features of his African descendants. The hand of fate has united his color and destiny. Man cannot separate what God hath joined." Everyone who supported slavery believed that the Bible sanctioned it. The Bible taught, we were told, that slave owners were permitted to severely beat their slaves even if doing so killed them. In other words, the holy book condoned all aspects of slavery and the treatment of "Negroes" as property.

As if this were not bad enough. Women were also seen as male property. Gender inequality was strongly supported by, you guessed it, the Bible. Those who came to this country supposedly for religious freedom used their religious beliefs to dehumanize over half the population. The Bible continued to be used to promote personal irrational fears. The underlying fear was that the "other" would somehow undermine the convenient lifestyle of society's barons.

Today we not only have our first African-American president. He is supported by female politicians at every level of society. Women permeate professions that were off limits to them only a few decades ago. Women make up the majority of students in many graduate schools. The message of hope that Barack Obama used for his campaign is meant to help us all dispel remnants of those remaining fears that inhibit our national family from becoming healthy and functional. We have been told that the barriers dividing us are coming down. Divisions based on irrational fear can no longer be tolerated.

In his short speech in Baltimore prior to his final stop in Washington, D.C., Mr. Obama named some of the barriers that must be broken including those between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Sexuality has been our slavery/gender issue far too long.

Some religious people (fortunately a minority) have continued to use the Bible to justify their own homophobic fears. The vision that President Obama has given to we ordinary Americans is that we must do our best to be a productive and stable family. We need to learn out to communicate more effectively, live with our differences, support one another who cause us pain, and become a nation that shows the rest of the world what possibilities exist for everyone.