I was going to take the time today to write about ACES and the importance of clean renewable energy and energy efficiency, I really was, but then I watched the president’s speech last night. Just like his speech to school children earlier this week, I think his rhetoric was strong, and he laid out his message in a easily understandable, well reasoned manner. Yet, it was not my new favorite word (acrimony: bitterness or ill feeling), or even the passionate Kennedy references that stayed with me this morning, it was the yelling from a certain republican representative.

Representative Joe Wilson, from where else but South Carolina, yelled out “You Lie!” during the middle of the speech. Was anyone else shocked? Appalled? When did it become appropriate for congresspersons to engage in such blatant acts of disrespect to the President of the United States?

Perhaps Wilson was confused, and thought this was one of the rowdy town hall meetings we have been seeing of late where misinformed gun-toting citizens scream their opinions rather than engaging in diologe with their elected officials. The object of such a tactic, it would seem, is to avoid dialogue all together, by shutting down the conversation and returning our poltical system to chaos.

Health care isn’t the only area where people have stopped listening, there was an incredible backlash against Obama wanting to talk to school children. Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer went so far as saying  ”taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.”

Dialogue is the basis of a healthy democracy, and without connecting with one another and listening, really listening, we can never move forward as a society. Yet this has been the tactic of the right so far: to avoid conversation lest their terrified base realize they have been lying all along to mobilize a movement based on fear. In health care, in energy reform, on immigration, even during the election (who can forget the Obama = terrorist argument), the general tactic is to stop any logical thinking by immobilizing the conservative side of our country with fear tactics.

So, I leave you with the president’s words, in hopes that we can overcome fear and starting talking to one another again.

“We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it’s hard.  I still believe — I still believe that we can act when it’s hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history’s test.”