Hear no evil

One of the pleasures of reading history is discovering that people in other times were just as mean, petty and vindictive as modern representatives of the race.  I found this passage in American Lion, Jon Meacham's new biography of Andrew Jackson. It came from a speech by Edward Livingston, a congressman from Louisiana in 1830, but it put me in mind of Rush Limbaugh and the other hate preachers on the radio and Internet today.

“The spirit of which I speak creates imaginary and magnifies real causes of complaints; arrogates to itself every virtue – denies every merit to its opponents; secretly entertains the worst designs . . . mounts the pulpit, and in the name of a God of mercy and peace, preaches discord and vengance; invokes the worst scourges of Heaven: war pestilence and famine, as preferable alternatives to party defeat; blind, vindictive, cruel, remorseless, unprincipled, and at last frantic, it communicates its madness to friends as well as foes; respects nothing, fears nothing.”

On Tuesday, Americans put that spirit away. But for how long? That is not up to the hate shouters to determine, but to the American people; if we don't listen, they won't continue to talk for long.