The following lines from an opinion piece by Michael Gerson (Washington Post Writers Group, and published in last Sunday's Cleveland Plain Dealer) are worth sharing and considering. They support my decision to block certain links suggested by some of my Facebook friends: as if the posts they tend to "like" are not disrespectful enough in and of themselves, the comments those "likes" generate are worse.
"While the protection of blasphemy is required by democratic values, it does not exhaust those values. Civility is also an important democratic value. Our ideal of democracy is not an endless cable television shouting match. It is a free society in which citizens have a decent regard for the rights and views of others. This requires a measure of self-restraint; something we teach to our children as tolerance and manners. And such self-restraint is not self-censorship; it is respect. A free country should unapologetically defend the right to jeer and taunt. This does not require everyone in a free country to find jeering and taunting admirable."
What do you think?
Now I can comment on Dean's posts and Google knows my name (I hope).
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