Noam Chomsky once observed, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion that allows a very lively debate within that spectrum.” Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic and political activist.
Never in my lifetime have I seen such a lack of civility, credibility, coherence and consistency in all of us. What a sad state of affairs — and it has to change. We could go on and on about political correctness, diversity, safe zones at colleges and cultural evanescence. History tells us that if we don’t stop this rhetoric, nothing will get done to improve people’s life.
When I was a child my parents taught me to listen to other people and to try understand their point of view. They taught me to always ask a lot of questions. They also said it was all right to debate with other people, but to make sure my facts were right.
In order to train me in the above, my mother took me to every different type of religious service in the city and made me listen to their views. When we finished the tour, both my mother and father sat me down and we discussed the different religions. They then let me make my own decision on which church I wanted to go to.
Daniel Henninger wrote a fine column in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 2 titled “The White House C-Words.” According to Henninger, “If he (Trump) lets his new chief of staff install credibility, coherency and consistency as standard operating procedures for this White House, he will never have to sign another sanction bill.” Note: Trump reluctantly signed a bill to sanction Russia. Please read Henninger’s column.
James Damore, a 31-year-old software engineer at Google, wrote a memo that went viral throughout the company. “Those most zealously committed to the diversity creed — that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatments and all people are inherently the same — could not let this public offense go unpunished.”
All Damore wanted was to start a good- faith discussion of the differences between men and women in technology companies. His 10-page memo to his fellow workers at Google laid out the biological differences between men and women — for example, men are normally taller than women.
Damore was fired by Google for just raising the issue. The Wall Street Journal in an Aug. 13 column “The Poison of Identity Politics” said in essence that equal opportunity and color-blind justice has been abandoned in favor of a new identity politics that again serves to divide America by race, ethnicity, gender and even religion.
This is a classic example of people not even wanting to discuss issues that are different than their own. Another way to describe this is the silencing of non-conforming views. As Pres. Trump would say, “This is a big, big problem.”
Bill Maher, on Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday morning show, said the lack of civility, coherence, credibility and conscience is because of poor parenting. I was not allowed to talk back to my parents. Instead I was taught to listen and ask a lot of questions. This is what made me a pretty good salesperson.
Maher did express optimism in the generation following the millennials. Like any generation that follows another, this generation rebels against the previous generation’s ideas. This is good for America.
“As citizens we have to be more thoughtful, more educated and more informed. I turn on the TV and I see these grown people screaming at each other and I think, ‘Well, if we don’t get our civility back we are in trouble.’” - Emmylou Harris.
Robert Pembroke is chairman of Pembroke Inc. and considers himself on a permanent sabbatical. He can be reached at pembroke894@gmail.com.