Uncivil Discourse.

Nate Garvis, Target's Vice President of Governmental Affairs, speaks Feb. 7th at Walker Art Center on a topic near and dear to this blog: "Uncivil Discourse and the Rise of the Outrage Industry." [Sponsored by the Citizens League; registration required.]

I'll be attending and likely writing about it, but if you want a foretaste, read the interview with Garvis at Minnesota Campaign Report.

[T]he anonymity of talk radio and the web allow us to not only be very angry, we've become angrier — I not only find it very easy these days to say "what a dumb idea" but it's easy to say "what an evil person with a dumb idea," because you're not going to run into them.  So that happens on an individual basis. Institutionally, I would imagine that every major instutition in our lives, whether it's governmental, or commercial, or faith-based — every institution structure in our society has a spectrum from those that want to advance the common good to those who want to be part of the problem. 

On a related note, I've been doing some groundwork to develop a cross-divide dialogue for this blog. It's been on the back-burner until recently and will start as an experiment in working around — on the Web — the challenge Garvis describes.