The Problem with the Civility Movement
Civility is a virtue in individuals, but the political movement is a distraction from the issues of the day. The civility movement has three major problems:
1. It brings out the worst in people.
It seems contradictory that efforts to get people to behave better would make our political climate more caustic. However, no civility summit begins with a confessional moment where the panelists own up to their own misdoings. It’s always pointing a self-righteous finger at others.
The aftermath of the Rally to Restore Sanity put on by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is instructive as to how these efforts work, even when lavished with media attention.
Civility guru Stewart defends the tone of his own show by ignoring surveys that indicate people take his show seriously. Stewart further states that “coarseness” in our political environment is not a problem, only overwrought comparisons of political opponents to Nazis, Communists, etc. This is intended to let himself off the hook for his profanity-filled personal attacks.
At Stewart’s big rally, he called out both MSNBC and Fox for what he believes to be overheated rhetoric. Rachel Maddow took issue with Stewart’s rally for alleging equivalence between Fox News and MSNBC. Ditto for Keith Olbermann.
Did the Rally to Restore Sanity make us behave better? Did it create a more positive tone in our political discourse? Or did it merely re-enforce a belief among the participants and the left that the tone of American politics is somebody else’s fault?
2. The civility movement is political correctness by another name.
Sarah Palin’s use of targets for congressional seats has become controversial in the aftermath of the Tucson rampage. CNN issued an “apology” for the use of a crosshairs analogy. Both of these incidents show the posturing over civility is nothing more than political correctness in disguise.
Like political correctness, the civility movement seeks to protect us by limiting what we can say in polite society. They seek to be the umpires who can declare what rhetoric is overwrought, dangerous, and unacceptable, and what rhetoric is in bounds.
Most of the people trying to play this rhetoric-control game are on the left, so we end up with a series of double standards in the ever-changing political strike zone. According to them, it is wrong for Sarah Palin to say that ObamaCare will lead to rationing and the government deciding who will live and who will die. Yet it is fine for Democrats to tell senior citizens the Republicans want to take away their Social Security. In reality, Democrats are dodging legitimate concerns that Obamacare will require rationing while every Social Security reform proposal begins with meeting obligations to current recipients.
4: Those who demand Civility the MOST, practice it the LEAST!
That’s true.
The “civility” movement is an attack on freedom of speech, press, and assembly.
It is an effort to narrow the bounds of subject matter that is considered to be acceptable topics for debate, purely for the partisan political advantage of those using “civility” to falsely claim the moral high ground.
What’s makes the attacks from the left even worse is that, rather than discuss policy, they constantly feel the need to personally attack a whole group of people. For example, the Tea Party movement was trashed by liberal Democrats long before that Congresswoman was shot in Arizona (not that that shooting had ANYTHING TO DO with the Tea Party movement, as the Democrats initially tried to make that connection and FAILED MISERABLY). Even Pelosi, Reid, and Obama himself got into the act and tried to ridicule, diminish, and outright insult all of the members of the Tea Parties, calling them “extreme,” “Brown Shirts,” “Astroturf,” and perhaps the worst by Pelosi and Reid, “Un-American.” And where was Obama’s call for civility then? Where was his “respect” for other people’s ideas, let alone their political beliefs? What people like Obama don’t understand is that this bogus call for “civility” is only making the public angrier. It showes to hypocritical and duplicitous nature of the left in this country and it only serves to harden the hatred the two sides have for each other. It also diminishes the very real grievances the Tea Party members have towards the Federal Government, especially its liberal members. If they keep calling for more “civility” in this manner, we should just about be on the brink of a civil war by 2012.
Don’t worry about what other people are doing or saying. Think instead how you can change people’s minds about the issues that are important. Snide remarks, name calling, sarcasm, ridicule etc will only alienate people who disagree with your opinions. If you want to convince people who disagree with you you will have to be civil.
On the other hand, if you want to be polarizing, and increase the differences between people and harden the opposition against you then don’t worry about civility.
If people who disagree with you are communicating in ways that hinder them from attracting converts and adherents then why should you care? If your political opponents are uncivil, be glad. It won’t increase their numbers.
Be careful; you are asking for a slightly higher order of thinking here than some are comfortable with.
Oracle of infite wisdom, enlighten me. Never mind. Your wisdom blinds even yourself.
You can start with your spelling.
Stop the infighting.
“Self-righteous and hypocritical attacks on the free speech rights of others will not make our country or our politics better.”
But mocking the CONTENT of the over-blown nasty stuff is a citizen’s duty, right? Last night on O’Reilly, Rove (not that he doesn’t know how to run a polarizing campaign), was giving his view on the risk to Repubs, which comes if they can be linked to birther, truther wierdos.
What is the difference between the things which need to be hidden on the right, as opposed to the left? As a start, I’ll throw out the idea that the left has Acorn-type corruption to hide and the right has crazy people who want to grab you by the lapel and talk to you about Obama being a Kenyan commie. You need sting operations to go out and find the former, whereas the latter are always trying to get your attention. There is no shortage of them here.
Typical tactic of the left: produce an exception that the right has done and make the case that what the left does repeatedly and with prejudice and malice of forethought is no different than the right. The left takes equivalence in any context to a level usually reserved for the dimwitted.
“the right has crazy people who want to grab you by the lapel and talk to you about Obama being a Kenyan commie.” Produce one instance of this happening. Yet I can produce a whole video of the left taking over the legislature in WI..
“But mocking the CONTENT of the over-blown nasty stuff is a citizen’s duty, right? Last night on O’Reilly, Rove (not that he doesn’t know how to run a polarizing campaign), was giving his view on the risk to Repubs, which comes if they can be linked to birther, truther wierdos.” This, my friend, makes no sense.
I’ll try and simplify it for you. Rove said that to the extent the Repubs are connected in the voters’ mind to birthers, it will cost them votes. “Grab by the lapels” is as Mr Lucky would say, a metaphor.
You will get a lot more traction going after over-reaching unions than Obama’s birth certificate.
Have you ever looked at the publicly available information about Obama’s birthplace? Have you?
If it were not for the fear of name-calling (BIRTHER!!!), no rational person could do so and escape the conclusion that Obama is hiding something, the most likely thing being that he was born in Kenya (as his grandmother claims) and is not legally qualified to be President.
The facts are all out there. Only prejudice or fear can stop anyone from seeing the obvious.
At the very least, there is more than probable cause for a serious investigation.
I’m in agreement with some of what you’re arguing here. The Democratic party and their coalition constituencies do have their own swamps to drain before legitimately making an issue of others’ hateful rhetoric — there’s plenty of hypocrisy on the left, granted. i think that point has been made plenty already.
I think you’re somewhat off in the assertion that civility is fundamentally a property or virtue of individuals. Institutions and communities can also be civil — of course, remaining so depends on having a critical mass of individuals who are civil and committed to the value of civility within that institution or community.
One element of civility in a democracy is what we might call procedural fair play — this has much less to do with whether one’s rhetoric is violent (after all, “civil” and “violent” are not antonyms) — and much more to do with how one interacts with one’s opponents. Not accepting the 2000 election verdict on the part of Democrats and the left was a deep blow against the civility of our political community, one followed by all the 2000-2006 threats to filibuster, the self-portrayal of senatorial intransigence as courage and oversight.
When the Republicans or others on the right use similar rhetoric, e.g. “he’s not my President”, or engage in similar attempts to tilt the system, alter the playing field, etc (e.g. the union-breaking going on currently), I have two reactions.
One is to note that those actions are not likely to introduce any new basic civility into our system (and we need to preserve a modicum of it). The other is to say to the Democrats, the unions, etc.: “Reap the whirlwind, buddy. You get zero sympathy from me and other independents like me.”
Lemme tell you a true story.
There was once a little boy who had a sister just one year older than he. When he was five years old, they were visiting their grandparents. His older sister had a mean streak and a proven strategy for indulging it.
When they were out of sight, but within hearing range, she would hit him (hard) and at the same time scream (loudly).
He received several spankings for hitting his sister.
I believe your story. That said, in most instances where things like this happen, it’s the younger siblings who do this sort of thing to the eldest. The eldest has been taught to protect the younger siblings, not hit back at them, not attack anybody smaller, and so forth.
Yep, 1389AD, my younger sister pulled the “Big sister punched me!” card every time she kicked me. It’s the younger siblings who pull that kind of trump card and it [unfortunately] usually works because you are the bigger, stronger, older one vs. the pipsqueak who is fake squealing after they pummeled you (and, my sister was a tomboy and beat boys up whereas I was a girly girl even though I was older ha-ha).
Rule # 1: everything that the leftists do is gamed out and is a con. “Civility” is the latest con game. It’s so obvious, a child can see it.
Civility became the meme du jour immediately after Paul Krugman and thousands of other rabid dogs of the left spent 5 days, unchallenged by the prostitute press, accusing Sarah Palin and conservatives of inciting the Tucson massacre. Isn’t that a surprise? This from the people who wrote novels about killing George Bush, called him Hitler for 7 years, and have accused the entire Tea Party movement of being racist millions of times.
So don’t get sucked into this one.
Whatever you hear from the left, WHATEVER, understand that it isn’t what it seems to be. It’s always a con designed to weaken opposition to the agenda they work so hard to disguise.
Hey, I’d love to have a straight up discussion of where the country needs to go. Let’s have a 6 month all-hands-on-deck debate about socialism/ leftism/ marxism/ statism vs the Founding Principles. Let’s talk about ponzi schemes and crushing debt vs common sense. Let’s talk about whether Judeo-Christian principles are dead. Let’s talk about the plight of minorities and figure out why so many millions of them risk their lives to get into the US. Let’s talk about whether reparations / redistribution is a smart thing. Let’s talk about whether the United States should continue to be the most powerful country in the world or whether Palestine and Iran and China are misunderstood and need to be equally admired.
Instead, we are called racists, lectured about civility, instructed that debt isn’t really debt, told that religion is obsolete, have massive socialism jammed down our throats, and are told we are too stupid to know what’s good for us.
Why is that?
I don’t think that anyone has been fooled by this sudden push for “civility.” The whole thing is just so obvious that you would have to be in a coma to be taken in by it. This push for a “new tone” in political discourse sprang up virtually overnight on November 3, 2010 after the Republicans and Tea Party-backed candidates did rather well in the mid-term elections. The whole “movement for civility” is just a front operation for the left in order to spike the guns of coservative spokesmen and commentators and is also a flanking maneuver to try and resurrect the “Fairness Doctrine” in boradcasting.
There is also the sudden lapse of memory concerning the rather, shall we say, “heated” rhetoric concerning President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and other administration officials from 2004 through 2009. Calling Mr. Bush and his associates Nazis, murderers, racists, bigots, morons, selfish, greedy and even perverts was endorsed by our beloved MSM as “speaking truth to power” and “showing great political courage.” (Victor Davis Hanson perceptively described this phenomenon in a recent column.)
As I said nobody is fooled by any of this except those who want to be deluded or else know that this is all just a maneuver.
The so-called “civility” movement is actually the latest window dressing for the hate crimes/bias speech/diversity/anti-bullying industry.
Follow the money and you will find the same organizations sucking up vast quantities of money from school districts, local governments, private industry, etc.
And all of these movements depend upon manufacturing enemies in order to legitimate the need for, well, more training and workshops and interventions and conferences and experts to address the “problem,” all the while barraging vulnerable populations with emotionally coercive messaging designed to encourage guilt and shame while also encouraging people to monitor the words, and thoughts of their classmates and workmates.
Pretty creepy stuff, with a definite re-education camp flair. And absolutely nothing to do with real civility.
Sometimes, I swear that the phony new “call for civility” is just a repackaged form of “political correctness” that the left expects everyone else to adhere to but themselves. Oh, I can say “n*gger” because I’m black, I can say f*ggot because I’m gay, I can call her a whore because I’m a woman, I can hang a Palin effigy on my property because I’m a perfect Democrat, I can be a racist, club-toting thug who intimidates voters because I’m a New Black Panther, I can use cross-hairs and targets for political purposes because I’m a gentle, anti-gun lefty, I can say “bring a gun to a knife fight” because I’m the president… blah-blah-blah-blah.
PC for thee but not for me.
like
Indeed, like!!
Uh, without meaning to be insulting, can I say, “Duh!”, to this?
The last 2 sentences sum it all up and are OH SO TRUE “If you want to make our politics more civil, change the behavior of the one person you have a right to change: yourself. Self-righteous and hypocritical attacks on the free speech rights of others will not make our country or our politics better.”
Are not the words from Reid and Schumer to shut down the government or from this president that he will veto any budget different from his $1.65 trillion deficit he has planned inflammatory speech? Where is the new era of compromise? Is the news media absolutely the worst we have ever witnessed for not calling this what it is? We are in a mess and holding on to last 4 years of Democrat collapse of Fannie and Freddie and government expansion we may not make it much longer.
“Civility” is a code word for telling Grandma to shut up at a town hall meeting. She is not allowed to berate her congressman, but her grandson, as a committed “anarchist,” is allowed to: 1) storm a stage and interrupt the speaker, 2) throw a trashcan through a Starbuck’s window, and 3) he and his buddies are allowed to beat up a lone counterprotester or a couple emerging from a restaurant. He may also bite off the finger of someone ideologically different from him, slash opposing party’s tires at a polling station, and may also vote several times under assumed names.
There, I’ve defined “civility” for everyone 100% accurately.
Alinsky:
Get those libs on record talking about civility – and then slap them with charges of incivility everytime they open their mouth. Make them follow their own rules. From time to time, send an open letter to Obama demanding that he distances himself and expresses his outrage at the behavior of some liberal idiot. Keep pushing him.
“The Problem with the Civility Movement”
The biggest problem is that liberals/Democrats/leftists are the scum of the earth and I intend to say so at every opportunity.
That being the case, it will be kind of hard to get a solid civility movement going.
TO: All
RE: Gee….
…ya ‘think’?
TO: Delia
RE: Contact
Try going to www-dot-comensarations-info for an explanation of my ‘absence’.
This is the oldest game in town. You always have to be civil to the stronger force or kick their asse-s or die, you make the choice!
can anyone direct me to a Republican response to the email going around, “Republican war on women”? move on .org.
http://pol.moveon.org/waronwomen/?rc=fb
When you give up your right to call a spade a spade. That is giving up your right to free speech. That means you are no longer free!!!
Let’s make it simple for the liberal (the only loser on this site) since apparently you can’t understand analogies: (1) the soulless liberals set up a conflict–such as despicably blaming Tucson’s recent tragedy on conservatives within hours of its occurrence before ANY facts are known, turning a tragedy into a political move, an unbelievably despicable move; (2) these oh-so-”loving” libelous libs then wait for the wronged party to react, such as Palin’s protestations; and then (3) the Dims hypocrically demand civility. Got it? Happens all the time. Nothing wrong with it–if you have no morals, conscience, or decency.
Exactly.
“Nothing wrong with it–if you have no morals, conscience, or decency.”
But then, liberals don’t believe that there is any difference between right and wrong – except when they personally stand to gain by drawing such a distinction.