Posted by llrrrpp on June 28, 2006, at 7:36:33
In reply to Re: clarification, posted by teejay on June 28, 2006, at 7:22:19
Regardless of the scandal surrounding the majority and the electoral college system, one cannot deny that a lot of people voted for Bush.
In parliamentary systems it's even more complicated, because one votes for a party, with the understanding that the party will support a certain candidate. But regardless of whether the candidate wins or barely wins or barely loses, political leaders in democratic governments are leaders by vitue of having popular support. And popular support suggests that real people might take it personally if we criticize their decision to support a particular candidate.
I think that this is an important distinction, in terms of the application of civility. Criticizing a political leader (who is only one person, kind of like me criticizing my T, or my pdoc, or my unruly neighbor- getting some steam off, in the interests of getting some support from p-babble community) vs. criticizing the choices of people who support a political leader (for example a statement like: everyone who voted for ____ must be ___[insert uncivil word]). I'm not sure that the former is equivalent to the latter. It's possible to support a candidate for political office without thinking that everything they do is 100% golden and peachy.
To the extent that political figures make decisions which affect us personally, we DO need to have the opportunity to rant about them a bit, and it would be great if we could do so without offending the people who happened to vote for them in the last election.
-ll
poster:llrrrpp
thread:661433
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060622/msgs/662147.html