{"id":25515,"date":"2012-01-18T07:35:14","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T14:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/18\/keeping-your-own-house-clean.html"},"modified":"2012-01-18T15:23:48","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T22:23:48","slug":"keeping-your-own-house-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/18\/keeping-your-own-house-clean.html","title":{"rendered":"Keeping your own house clean"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Manichean world of modern US politics, the primary impulse is to always frame things as Us vs Them, with Us being the purveyors of all virtue and Them being the dastards of all darkness and evil. Not only is this reflex divisiveness not helpful in the long run, it allows evil (or at least stupidity) to flourish within the ranks of Us.<\/p>\n

It's a balancing act, sometimes, because internal divisiveness before an implacable enemy can seem potentially deadly. But if we don't have the courage to deal with the motes in Our own collective eye, and point out where people who are formally on Our side are doing wrong or committing error, then any pretense we have to being on the side of virtue goes out the door.<\/p>\n

As Teddy Roosevelt says, far less floridly, below. #ddtb<\/p>\n

Reshared post from +T.R. Almanac<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

"When I deal with a crook, I don't care whether he is a Republican crook or a Democratic crook. But I will always tend to hit the Republican crook a little harder because I feel a little responsible for him. It is the duty of all Americans to protest against dishonest public servants."
– T.R., 18 January 1911 speech to Union of American Hebrew Congregations
in New York City<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>c<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Manichean world of modern US politics, the primary impulse is to always frame things as Us vs Them, with Us being the purveyors of all virtue and Them being the dastards of all darkness and evil. Not only is this reflex divisiveness not helpful in the long run, it allows evil (or at … Continue reading “Keeping your own house clean”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,9,8],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-25515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts","category-politics-law","category-zt-pc","tag-ddtb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15715,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/05\/evil-presidential-speechifying-the-response.html","url_meta":{"origin":25515,"position":0},"title":"Evil Presidential Speechifying – The Response","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 5-Sep-09 12:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A letter sent in response to our interim and regular principal (reviewed and approved and CCed to my lovely wife): I am very disappointed in the message you sent regarding plans around President Obama's address to school children. While in general I think the approach of reviewing materials in advance,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3543,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/10\/30\/kettles_pots_th.html","url_meta":{"origin":25515,"position":1},"title":"Kettles, pots, that sort of thing","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 30-Oct-02 10:02am","format":false,"excerpt":"Let me get this straight. According to Ted Rall, George Bush may be behind Paul Wellstone's death, even though Rall admits there's no reason to think that he was, and...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12594,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/03\/14\/maybe_those_atheists_have.html","url_meta":{"origin":25515,"position":2},"title":"Maybe those atheists have something at that","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Mar-08 6:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If there's one lesson coming from this year's presidential campaign, it's beware of the religious nutjobs you have lining up on your side.\u00a0 For John McCain, there's been the, ah,...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12552,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/03\/25\/pat_buchanan_on_the_obama.html","url_meta":{"origin":25515,"position":3},"title":"Pat Buchanan on the Obama speech","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 25-Mar-08 9:50pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, if there's any justice and sensibility in America, the idiocy that Buchanan is driveling about the Obama speech on race ought to propel its orator into the White House....","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6119,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/17\/running_interfe.html","url_meta":{"origin":25515,"position":4},"title":"Running interference","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 17-May-04 7:07am","format":false,"excerpt":"Since the brouhaha broke open at our parish, I've been scanning the paper daily to see any further articles have come out on it. Fortunately, there have been far more...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17451,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/05\/24\/dont-be-a-sucker.html","url_meta":{"origin":25515,"position":5},"title":"Don’t be a sucker","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 24-May-10 5:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A great War Department film from 1947, which starts off by telling people not to let themselves be fooled by con men ... then segues into how divisiveness and minority-bashing are the tools of folks who want to get something -- money, power -- and how Americans shouldn't let themselves\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Movies"","block_context":{"text":"Movies","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}