By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News
Last week, I wrote about something of a cultural shift through which men and women seem to place less value on personal integrity. Notably, members of the "Ugly Party" demonize and wish the worst for those of opposite views. Political mean-spiritedness is nothing new, but it has seemed to reach a contemporary crescendo.Many have commented on man's competing passions. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us." In Time magazine's Dec. 3, 2007, cover story, "What Makes Us Good/Evil," Jeffrey Kluger posited, "The savage and the splendid" coexist in the same person -- "Morality and empathy are writ deep in our genes. Alas, so are savagery and bloodlust."
James Madison famously observed, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Kluger asserted that man's sense of "morality" -- a "sense of moral grammar" -- is built on empathy that's inborn; but others teach man how to apply it. As my father taught me when I was a child, "Live with cow, sleep like cow; live with parrot, fly like parrot."
Later, in college, I learned that political socialization is a process that molds one's values and beliefs, opinions and perceptions, attitudes and personality. As a lifelong process, political socialization stops only when man dies.
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