"We may be at risk of being bored to death by our better angels."

Kathleen Parker expresses an opinion regarding political speech and reaction thereto that I largely agree with. I especially agree with her closing thought:

Every now and then a public person is going to say or do something regrettable. I am beyond certain that our most beloved leaders were imperfect and must have said something inexact, without proper forethought or prescience. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt, among other notables, would be deeply grateful that they avoided these hyper-observant times.

Clearly, leaders are held to a higher standard and should be guardians of the light. Or, as the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy recently put it with passionate precision: "We are guardians of ze words!"

But human beings are not built for perfection or for constant scrutiny. We need time alone in our caves to reflect and imagine. We also need to be able to express our thoughts without fear of instant condemnation, granted time to reshuffle and regret, time to say, hey, I was wrong about that. Perhaps most of all, we need space to think more and talk less.