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Beyond Good Manners 2
As Emily Post, the guru of good manners, acknowledges, it's what's inside that counts. It is possible to conceal a core of evil behind a smiling facade. A woman can be sweet and pleasant to your face and then figuratively stab you in the back with hurtful words. A man of "good-breeding" can politely send millions to their deaths in the misguided name of ethnic cleansing. These are moral infants who have never grown beyond the outward show of good manners to the internalised virtues that they are designed to represent.
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Beyond Good Manners 1
When my grandson William was not yet one year old, his mother was already training him to say please. When William wanted something, she reminded him, "Say please," and he responded by making a circular motion on his chest in the manner of American Sign Language. What can be the advantage in teaching a child who is still working on "Mama," "Dada," and "Nana" how to say please when he can't even really "say" it?
