Bolling: Unbridled Rhetoric Spurs Political Extremism and Violence

According to Republicans, Joe Biden and liberal Democrats are destroying our country and our way of life.

According to Democrats, Donald Trump and his supporters are an existential threat to democracy and they must be stopped at any cost.

This type of unbridled rhetoric has created the pernicious political polarization we are experiencing in our country today.

Here’s the truth.

Both Republicans and Democrats love America, we just have a different vision of what we want America to be and how we seek to achieve our objectives.

In America, we are all entitled to our views on the important political issues of the day. We don’t have to agree with each other, but we do need to respect each others political views. That’s a fundamental part of Liberty.

And at the end of the day, we must remember that in America we resolve our differences and choose our leaders in democratic elections and through the resulting legislative process.

When we debate the important issues of the day, we should choose our words carefully, and we should never use words that defame, defile, or question the motives of our adversaries and inflame the passions of the more extreme voices among us.

Yes, these are highly polarized political times, and both political parties have done their part to create these divisions. But as we saw from the events of yesterday, such unbridled passions can have disastrous consequences.

It is up to each of us to do our part to dial back the rhetoric before these passions drive us to further acts of violence.

I encourage you to take the pledge to support political civility and respect, and do your part to help restore a sense of calm and tolerance in our public discourse.

As Thomas Jefferson once said: “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”