“We'll give the
owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., this grace: She certainly
engendered a national discussion about civility in our overly acrimonious
world.
We aren't going
to run down the motives that led the owner to ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the
White House press secretary, to leave the establishment before her party could
have dinner. But there's a larger point we'd like to draw about the continuing
coarsening of our civil discourse. In short, it's not very civil.
The issues and
the passions among the people of this country are only more heightened with
each passing episode.
At this moment,
we are just coming off of a news cycle where Americans were treated to the
facts of a very tough story about President Donald Trump's policy of separating
children from parents who attempt to illegally enter the country. Now filling
the news are reports of parents who are unable to locate children who have been
whisked off to far-off facilities.
Nor is this the
first issue that has elicited a visceral reaction from Americans concerned
about, on basic humanitarian grounds, how people are treated rhetorically or
through policies promulgated by the chief executive. In fact, looking over the
past 18 months of the Trump administration, it is easy to find comments that
appear to castigate people of color, people from other countries, or just
people who oppose the president.”
From that
escalator Trump used to descend onto the scene and launch his bid for the
presidency to this month's still-unfolding border tragedy, there are more
examples than one can reasonably list in a short article that drew
widespread condemnation. This doesn't serve the president or the country well.
To us, this is
an issue that stands apart from the president's policies, many of which we
support and others we'll oppose vigorously. Rather it is an issue about public
leadership. When the president of the United States uses words that assail the
personal character of others or that cast large groups of people into a
negative light, he is similarly giving license to others to engage in
rhetorical roughness. He is making it more likely that others treat their
fellow Americans with a level of incivility that's unbecoming of a great
nation.”
