"For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. As God’s slaves, live as free people, but don’t use your freedom as a way to conceal evil. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the Emperor." ~ 1 Peter 2:15-17
Perhaps I am naive or maybe I live in some alternate universe but I am honestly disgusted by the lack of civility in society. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone thinks it is OK to be rude, boorish, and so narcissistic that you believe it is acceptable to be disrespectful and downright ugly to someone because you disagree with their stance on something. When did we as a society decide that our personal opinions are so important that we can bulldoze someone with disagree with? What is worse is that those who seek the limelight in showing just how rude they can be are also cowards.
Over the weekend a woman decided to ambush Sean Spicer in an Apple Store where he was shopping. She was rude and nasty and posted it online for all to see. Her narcissistic need to show the world how much more important her rights and thoughts were overrode any semblance of civility. Sean Spicer (who I would not have chosen as Press Secretary, I would have picked Rush) gets up and does his job daily, his job is to present the White House's point of view regardless of his own opinions. He also has the right to shop, eat, take down time, and exercise his rights in peace without being ambushed by nastiness. I have to hand it to him he was polite I might not have been and I seriously believe the staff at the Apple Store should have had this lady leave. After showing off her narcissism on social media the lady disabled her social media accounts because she did not like being criticized for her rudeness, this is cowardly behavior.
Please note your 1st Amendment right to free speech is there to protect the government from shutting you up ONLY. The Constitution is to restrain the Government from impeding on your rights, the Constitution does not give you the right to impede or ambush other people. Your rights DO NOT trump other people's rights.
We are seeing a lack of civility become the norm. We see it on College Campuses where if you disagree with someone we seem to believe we can shout that person down and become violent to get our point across. See Middlebury College protesters from several days ago.
We saw it when the unhinged guy verbally attacked Ivanka Trump and her three small children on an airplane before inauguration day. After this happened the couple that perpetrated this in front of their small child by the way shut down their social media accounts, again cowardly. They also refused to answer questions about their behavior when asked by reporters on the street. They hid.
We see a lack of civility in people who choose to protest some perceived social injustice or political issue and then turn into a rioting mob or block traffic or create havoc and then as a society we are told we must understand the anger. If you want to protest, great you have the right to free assembly if you get the proper permits and act with civility and clean up after yourself. Protesting and Rioting are two completely different things.
We see a lack of civility in the media when someone who is famous is ambushed by a photographer just to get a picture. It doesn't matter if they are out with their family or on their way to the hospital or on the way to a funeral and we as a society cheer this on. We as a society have decided if you are wealthy or famous you don't have the same rights as the rest of us. This is nonsense.
It seems we are descending into a society that resembles the one in the Lord of the Flies. We are tossing out courtesy and respect and civility because we believe our rights matter the most. We are cheering on this behavior by not condemning it as a society. Disagreeing with someone is normal and debate is healthy, but we are way past that because we are actually elevating those who act the most outrageously and nasty.
It is time we as a society reflect on what we are willing to give a platform to.
Today pray for our military that are in Syria stomping out ISIS and pray for their families.
Today pray for those in the midst of the blizzard.
Blessings,
Mel
