Pastor Moore: Fight Objectification, Restore Civil Discourse

Tipping my hat to South DaCola, I yield the floor to Pastor Jesse Moore, who writes an open note on Facebook inspired by his experience at the "Love Is Bigger Than Hate" counterprotests yesterday in Sioux Falls:

Our country is in a dangerous place right now. We have lost the art of civil discourse and the ability to agree to disagree with each other. We have become a nation of people who demand conformity. If “they” are not like us or if “they” do not agree with us then “they” are wrong/bad or evil. If “they” are all those things then the problems in our country are their fault and “they” need to be punished or at least put out from among us.

The process is called objectification and it is a dangerous thing to do. If you listened to the latest election dialogue it was easy to see. Very few people dealt with issues but they made their opponent out to be one of “them”. The tea party leveled those charges at the democrats and the democrats shot back. We raised objectification to an art form and the crew that hit our city today are professionals at it.

When you make a person into an object they lose their humanity and they become easy to abuse or use. Objectification allows us to see people as less than human hence they do not deserve all the things that humans deserve and we are under no obligation to protect of serve them [Jesse Moore, "My Morning at the Counter-Protest Rally," Facebook note, 2010.11.21].

Dang. That probably means I need to be nicer to Kristi Noem. Civil discourse is hard.