I figure that most of the readers of this blog--both of you--are also readers of Something to Think About. Since I don't have any fresh blog-fodder, and on the off chance that someone unfamiliar with STTA will wander this way, I'm posting two reeent STTAs. Both of them are about some recent very uncivil actions that have been in news.

Are people less polite than they used to be?
I’m not sure. I figure that athletes have argued with officials as long as there have been games—“Are you blind? That discus was clearly in bounds!” Politicians are well known for spouting off, and much worse. Julius Caesar would have been glad to merely have his veracity challenged. When have you not known rich spoiled entertainers to act like—well—rich spoiled entertainers?
The essence of good manners is not snootily looking down one’s nose at people who don’t know which fork to use to eat their escargot. The Lord Jesus Christ gave the standard of civilized behavior in a compact statement: “. . . treat people the same way you want them to treat you.” (Matthew 7:12) The news the last couple of days are but the tip of the impolite iceberg. Way too many people turn the Lord’s maxim upside-down, “I demand that you treat me the way I want to be treated; I don’t care how it makes you feel.”
I’m not sure if folk are less polite than they used to be. I am confident that we are less considerate than we ought to be.
It’s STTA.

Joe Wilson, Serena Williams, and Kanye West have actually done us a favor. In case you haven’t seen the news lately, these three have been in the spotlight for their outbursts of impolite activity. I’m not saying their outbursts are entertaining, but the coverage of their antics has diverted part of the news from the decidedly non-entertaining subjects of healthcare and the economy.
Could it be, though, that the lack of polite behavior and our nation’s economic woes come from a common source?
If you look below the surface you find the common denominator of selfishness—whatever it costs, however it may affect you, I want what I want.
And there are people who say the Bible is irrelevant to our culture today.
It’s STTA.

Here is an interesting website dealing with this issue:
http://www.civilityproject.org/