Eugene Robinson: Healer in Chief

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/healer_in_chief_20110113/

Healer in Chief

By Eugene Robinson


The powerful elegy that President Obama delivered in Tucson was a big step toward his long-held goal of transforming the nation’s choleric and dysfunctional political culture. Subsequent steps will be harder—but no longer seem impossible.

snip//

As I said, the next steps will be hard. There are genuine, legitimate disagreements on a host of issues, and some look almost impossible to reconcile.

The Tucson tragedy presents an example. I believe passionately that the slayings illustrate, once again, the urgent need for sensible gun control laws that get assault weapons out of the stores and off the streets. There are those who believe with equal passion, however, that tough gun control measures would amount to trading away an unacceptable measure of freedom in exchange for more security.

I don’t see it this way at all. But I do recall making a similar freedom-vs.-security argument in opposing some of the anti-terrorism measures that were enacted by the George W. Bush administration. Perhaps acknowledging that we at least share the same thinking process is a beginning, even as we argue our different opinions.

And argue them we must. President Obama’s call for civility in our public discourse should not preclude vigorous debate, often in strong language. But if we can “question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country,” as Obama asked us to do, we’ll have taken another step along a newly promising road.

[bullimiami]

1. The right-wing found they werent getting enough support that way.

so they took a message of division and demonization and headed out to the churches and rural america.

it was a strategy to get where they have today.