Political debate, Jordanian-style

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OK, this is a few months old, but I thought some might like this - it stunned me a bit!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv6SoVOJufU[/youtube]

maybe they think they'll be received as men of strength and action if they behave this way, televised in front of millions. You would punish in many places by the populace for such showings of incivility, and would not trust a maniac with a short temper as their representative.

As someone who engages in debates quite frequently, I can identify with the notion of wanting to shoot your opponent in the face.

Someone (with an up to date computer-not mine) needs to post that famous picture of the abolitionist Massachusettes Senator Charles Sumner being beaten to death with a cane( right there in the halls of Congress) by the friend of the South Carolina pro slavery senator back in 1856. You know- the bleeding guy in the dark suit holding his quill pen while falling to the floor while the guy in the light suit is standing over him with an upraised cane!

I guess the guy doing the caneing was in touch with his "inner Jordanian"!

This one?

He survived, by the way.

And given Islam's view on slavery, the analogy isn't completely off the mark.

I love how some of the onlookers in that pic are greatly amused. The behavior was uncalled for, no doubt. But Sumner was insane and a troll who left behind a path of senseless destruction everywhere he went. The beatdown he got was inappropriate, but not undeserved.

By that logic, I should probably grab a sturdy cane and beat the crap out of every single representative and senator in the United States Congress.

I'll start with Paul Broun in case the cane breaks...

Thats it!

Thanks.

Like I said, it would be inappropriate and ill-advised.

And I wouldn't say EVERY congressman. There are a few like, in my opinion, Nancy Pelosi who are downright unpleasant, and unashamedly so. And there are occasionally some who forget that they are always under public scrutiny and voice their unwanted opinions at exactly the wrong moments. But for the most part, I don't think of our people as being deliberately inflammatory.

Sumner was a Radical of radicals. Abolition is a no-brainer in a free society. But it takes time to eliminate destructive institutions if you want to avoid needless bloodshed. Sumner would have done better to leave the Civil War as an effort to maintain the integrity of the union rather than pushing an anti-slavery and anti-South agenda. His handling of the W of NA and Reconstruction showed absolutely no compassion or regard for southerners as human beings. You don't go about changing the minds of wrongdoers by hurling insults at them, and you don't avoid conflict by provoking those who disagree with you.

The frightening reality is that today, compared with Sumner's America, is we are almost as highly polarized as they were at the time of the W of NA. Maybe even more polarized. There is virtually no apparent diversity of thought within the two major political parties, nor are we as regionally confined as we were back then. It's enough to prevent a wide-scale war from happening in the near future, but I think the lack of unity is enough to severely weaken our civilization. It's already brought any progress we might otherwise have made to a screeching halt.