I think it is due to the right starting to get more verbal. We have been quiet for too long. Instead of keeping our mouths shut when we hear some drivel out of a liberal we are correcting it. The liberals see this as rude because we are speaking up. (How dare we). Get used to it.

 I really think you hit upon a very good point.  We have been silent for way too long and the libs and media do see our speaking out against their rather mind-numbing beliefs as rude.  But we must keep it up!

I'm just happy that no one on this board mimics that rude behavior...
Shocking - just shocking.

Politics is showbiz for ugly people

Me-me-me! Look at me! A generation has been raised on this "liberal" crapola. The media, the schools, and now many "parents" have drumed it into the heads of the young. Relativism rather than absolutism---"right" if you can get away with it--only "wrong" when you can't. Look no further than the lying, immature narcissist we have as POTUS.

 For example-- at the food store yesterday, I witnessed a young couple bringing a filled basket to the "express" counter. While the people behind them protested, they laughed it off, piled it up, and went out to the parking lot to load their new Cadillac SUV. Spoiled rotten!

NEVER,NEVER trust a "liberal"

            YES! The fringe media is responsible. They are the poster child of rude.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

not the medical definition of it.  Just complete lack of attention beyond anything that isn't "self" related.  Cell phones are my #1 peeve.  Cell phones in the checkout line, cells while driving, cells in a nice restaraunt.  Ever see two people out to dinner and they are both on their cell?  Unreal.

Personal pages like facebook etc only amplify more of "me" problem.  People don't need to know you just had a sandwich and are proceeding to the porch for a smoke and then perhaps...  you'll wash your car.  You're just not that important.  No one is that important because everyone is now that important.

Rudeness is prevalent everywhere.  Its in the print ads, its on the television commercials and of course, in the television programs. Parents are idiots.  Dads, especially are idiots.  There is an... heirarchy of stupidity in television land.  Usually the family dog is the smartest one in the family. 

I don't think most people pay attention to politics but the pundits are hardly a place to start for a lesson on manners.  I don't watch sports so I can't speak to that.

I work with hundreds of people everyday and a good 40% of them are rude, or at the very least, apathetic.  The recession has definately soured people's moods.  But, I guess our small town is better than America as a whole?

It's the other 60% that give me hope.

____________________________________________ 
The Emperor, he has no clothes

Noel, America, if not the whole world has been getting ruder and less civilized for a long time.  It didn't start in 2000, it started a long time ago.  It accelerated in the 1960's.  Prior to that, people were fined for using profanity in public, and there weren't that many occurrences of public profanity.  Prior to the 1960's, if a man held a door for a woman, she told him "thank you", not "I can get my own door you chauvinist pig."  You're welcome. (Actually, I did have a woman berate me for holding a door for her.  She shut up and stalked off when I told her, "Ma'am, it was out of respect for your age, not your sex.")  Before the 1960's you didn't see a whole lot of litter on the sidewalk, people didn't spit on the sidewalk, gentlemen gave up their seats on busses and trains, people did not play radios or boomboxes at loud volumes on public transportation (of course, in the 1960's, they didn't have boomboxes).

No, Noel, it isn't the partisan newsmedia causing the lack of manners or civility.  I will posit they used to be a braking influence, but recently, but recently they have acted as an accelerant. 

"A communist is someone who reads Marx.  An anti-communist is someone who understands Marx."  Ronald Reagan

I don't think the media is responsible.  The media simply supplies what's in demand.  Someone makes something kind of rude and loose on morals, it makes a hundred million bucks and producers pile on.  If it didn't make money, they wouldn't keep doing it (for the most part).  The New York Times might be failing today but there was a time when their left leaning slant was working great.  MSNBC is what it is because of a perception that it was what the people wanted (this may still be true, but since they are in direct competition with so many other liberal news stations, they are simply spreading their audience too thin).

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I think the root cause comes down to the rise of "permissiveness".  Somehow it became "enlightened" to be permissive to all sorts of previously abhorant behavior.  People always push the edges so when edge behavior becomes permissable, new edge behaviors will be that much further out.

I think we can also thank, basically, decades of peace, and a liberal culture where backing down in the face of confrontation is seen as the elite, educated path.  People feel safe to say what they want and do what they want.

If you ever read Robert E. Howard's Conan books, there was one Conan quote I always liked: "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know
they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general
thing." -The Tower of the Elephant

I agree.  Ironically, years of peace and backing down have taught us that we can be just as rude and uncouth as we please without facing any consequences, because when push comes to shove, we think one or both sides will back away from any conflict, then carry on with the rudeness somewhere else.