Essay On Gabler's 'America The Stony-Heartd'

Bryant Hernandez

English 1C

Professor Shahoian

4 September 2013

The Bold Play On Words

"America the Stony-Hearted," is the title of a column by famous journalist and political commentator, Neal Gabler. Gabler believes we have become "a different country morally from what we were." Ultimately though, his analysis of a "moral revolution" in the U.S. over the past 30 years, in my perspective, is inaccurate. Gabler states: “When the political history of the last 30 years is written, scholars will no doubt describe a rightward revolution that jolted this country out of its embrace of New Deal, big-government progressivism and into a love affair with small-government conservatism.” In accordance to recent political issues, the phrase “love
affair with small-government conservatism” is a complete contradiction. Would you consider Obama Care, General Motor’s bailout, and trillions of dollars of accumulated debt as “small-government conservatism”? Whatever possible shrinkage in spending there was under President Reagan’s time in office has been offset tremendously by the wasteful spending of Clinton, Bush, but most of all, Obama. When you put all that into perspective, that much spending simply eradicates small-government conservatism, making it a contradiction and something I cannot agree with. As he proceeds throughout the article examining this “moral revolution” based from liberal and conservative standpoints, Gabler ends with a bold statement:
If compassion is seen as softness, tolerance as a kind of promiscuity, community as a leech on individuals and fairness as another word for scheming, we are a harder nation than we used to be, and arguably a less moral one as well.
In undergoing a revolution for the nation’s soul, we may have found ourselves losing it.
When taken into context though, the question arises: is the statement really bold or is Gabler’s approach in how he directed the concluding statement bold? By lacking “compassion”, being “tolerant”, and serving the “community” instead of the individual, the nation’s stance is therefore deemed “immoral”. Denotatively speaking, the word immoral implies not confirming to the accepted standards of morality. The words used by Gabler though —compassion, tolerance, and community— are often associated connotatively with morality. Therefore, Gabler’s concluding statement, although bold, is quite contradicting and inaccurate once again. Even if there was a possibility of being accurate, you cannot assert a statement based on a generalization — just because a few may fall into the category depicted, doesn’t mean the whole nation
does. Of the myriad of problems with Gabler’s column, two big ones in this piece are very evident— dishonesty through contradiction, and inaccuracy. When put into examination, any argument that displays inaccurate statements as well as contradicting ones is an argument difficult to agree with. Therefore, Gabler’s analysis of America’s “moral revolution” in my perspective is inaccurate. We may have become a different country from what we were, but what role does morality really play?