CIVILITY IS DEAD, AND COMMON SENSE IS NOT FEELING SO GOOD 

 

By Steve Patterson

 

“I hope you won’t be acting like that the day you meet our Lord, so you’d better stop acting like that now!”

Ida Kate Patterson 

(My Grandmother)

 

I lament the passing ofcivility in our society and especially in our public discourse. It passed away peacefully, after a prolonged illness, while we were all sleeping.

As I write this obituary, it is necessary to define what is meant by the recently deceased “public civility.” I don’t mean the social graces like table manners, chivalry, social etiquette, and that sort of thing. I mean the social interactions we exhibit when we deal with each other and the attitudes we take toward public service.

Manners, the social graces, are vital to a functioning society because they are a reflection of our attitude toward our fellow man. Civility is the much broader attitude itself.

Civility is a choice. A choice that today’s world seems to be turning away from. Civility gained such a bad reputation in recent public discourse that many now view it as a silly weakness and grant it no harbor in their increasingly crass partisan speech. Public civility is simply the choice to do and say the right thing, for the right reasons, at the right times. When was the last time we saw that?

As I grew up in rural Mississippi, I was taught how to deal with all kinds of folks. Those lessons served me well. I became a pretty good campaigner and a successful politician. Dealing with people was my stock in trade.

Most of the guidelines I was given are rooted in Scripture. I’m sure my parents and their parents before them learned how to “mind your manners” from scriptural wisdom. For generations, minding our manners was an essential part of the Gospel in my family.

Take, for example, the Ten Commandments. There are all your basic manners’ guidelines handed down by God himself to Moses. After all, once you get past the strict laws and the “thou shalt not’s” like “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not covet,” etc., it all kinda boils down to treating folks with the same respect that you expect them to show to you. You know that little “Golden Rule”? “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?”

As a child, I also attended church-sponsored catechism classes on the shorter Westminster Confession of Faith. In those catechisms we learn who God is, who we are, and how we relate to one another. By following the scriptures, these catechisms explain how we are required, actually commanded by God, to relate to all of his children. While the exact word civility is not mentioned, the message is unmistakable: We are to “love one another.”

As children, we were all taught to never sass our elders. I thought this rule was in short supply, until l recently witnessed an extraordinary event in the local Walmart. An elderly lady was in the produce section with what appeared to be her nine-or-ten-year-old grandson. She was examining fruit, and asked the young lad to watch her basket as she chose some overripe pears. The young boy responded in a loud and disrespectful voice, “No, I don’t want to! I want cereal.” The lady patiently, but sternly, asked the youngster again, and once again he yelled a defiant “NO!” With this, the aging lady grabbed the young man by his arm and began to administer several not-so-gentle pats on his rear end. The boy, of course, started crying, but his grandmother was not done with his lesson. There were three onlookers to this, including me, and she insisted he go to each of us and tell us he was sorry for acting ugly and ask for our forgiveness. The cute little child complied, and one by one. told each of us he was sorry and requested our forgiveness. I left this amazing grandmother satisfied that this young man would one day grow into a fine gentleman due to her influence. On this day he learned a valuable lesson in civility — one I’m sure he’ll not soon forget.

On a more adult level, when did it become okay to disrespect someone because of his or her views on politics, or religion or race? When did it become popular to verbally abuse and belittle those of different backgrounds and views? It seems civility, whether it is in politics or just everyday engagement with others, has disappeared. I no longer see much evidence for proof of life.

I do, however, see a tiny flicker of hope coming from Texas in the U. S. Senate candidacy of Democrat James Talarico. His message seems to be gaining traction, and he is a knight in shining armor preaching a message of Christian civility.

Now, it seems that public leaders of both political parties and every political persuasion have succumbed to childlike name calling and slime and slush discourse. Today’s political language is that of the gutter — designed to enrage the audience and appeal to the darker angels of our nature. It is not at all uncommon to hear vulgar speech in the public square that, only a few years ago, would have been career ending for any politician caught uttering it. And that’s even on television.

Politics used to be a noble calling. I guess it is still, but the majority of those who are answering the call these days seem to be the most miserable bunch of charlatans ever assembled. As an unapologetic politician myself, I am sickened by the lack of civility in today’s society, and the political leaders it has birthed. Politicians today are giving the profession I practiced, and once excelled in, a bad name. I no longer want to be associated with today’s crop of cheap snake oil salesmen whose only goal is self-serving power and momentary fame. If this is what politics is about, count me out!

Shall we look carefully at today’s crop of glib, shallow politicians masquerading as public servants and national and state leaders? Yes, let’s take an honest, but perhaps not so “civil,” look at the folks we see on the daily news telling us how they are making our lives better.

The first thing we notice is the volume of their speech.They are loud, sometimes to the point of terrifyingly shouting. They speak with certainty. They are unburdened by the tedious process of thinking. Their sentences emerge fully formed, pre- packaged, requiring no assembly and accepting no modifications. Theirs is not the language of persuasion. Persuasion acknowledges the possibility that minds might change, that evidence might matter, that the other person might have something worth saying.

No!

This is the language of a demented revivalist brush-arbor tent meeting. Elmer Gantry gone to Congress! The purpose is not conversion, but confirmation. Don’t you see? The crowd already believes in the flim-flam. They just want their beliefs confirmed, amplified, and returned to them in a voice that is louder than their own secret doubts.

My favorite conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke. along with America’s founding fathers, are all rolling over in their graves at this spectacle!

Another thing I have noticed in today’s politicians, and this seems to be true for Democrats and Republicans alike, is that every issue is an existential crisis! Today’s leaders seem to deal exclusively in crises. Everything has become a factual threat. A budget disagreement becomes an invasion. A policy proposal becomes sedition. Our Republic is always only a few days from a complete and total collapse. If you really think about it, that’s all pretty damned convenient. Once they’ve announced the emergency, they have no responsibility to produce actual solutions. All these so-called leaders actually do is fan the flames of the real or imagined crisis and accept gratitude for their vigilance in identifying it. The fire, you’ll notice, never quite consumes anything. Yet it’s always there, burning in the distance, always useful, always eternal.

Complexity offends today’s bunch of grand-standing politicos. Or perhaps, it simply bores them. Either way, they have no use for it. In their world, all problems have specific creators, identifiable villains, known traitors. Someone else is always to blame. It’s not complicated.

Blame the other guy! Someone betrayed a sacred compact. Someone meant harm. Someone failed to enforce a law or a policy with the necessary force. Someone was not cruel enough! History? Irrelevant! The Constitution? Be damned! Nuance? Cowardness!

Civility? No way! Have another drink with the tribal chiefs!

A careful examination of the vocabulary of today’s crop of uncivil political leaders is most illuminating. Their choice of words sheds much light on their self-serving agendas. Radical. Corrupt. Fake news. Invasion. Fascist. Dictator. Hoards of Savages. Vermin. Law and Order. These are not analytical terms.They are tribal markers. Passwords. Code words with meaning. They allow their constituents to feel informed without the inconvenience of excessive information. They permit the uncivil, unthinking politicians to sound decisive without risking precision. Entire policy debates are avoided and circumvented by the clever strategic deployment of these cynically crafted noises. Why engage in informative debate when one can simply and repetitively intone these code word noises?

Today’s political class also has a curious relationship with their perceptions of power.They present themselves as perpetually besieged victims. Harassed by nameless bureaucrats, journalists, academics, and the very government which they are paid to serve. The irony would be delicious if it weren’t so common and so schizophrenic! No one is more eager to claim victimhood than the one holding the microphone! The rebellious martyr feeding at the public trough. How disgusting and uncivil is that? It’s all just performative art, cynically calculated to appeal to society’s darker angels. And sadly, the audience, now accustomed to this crass behavior, eats it up hook, line, and sinker.

I’m espcially troubled by the “moral” certainty we see in today’s public discourse. Today’s political leaders do not arrive at reasonable conclusions, they pronounce them. The tone of their discourse suggests not reasoned thought, but rather divine transmission. Alas, this approach is deeply comforting to folks who are exhausted by ambiguity, and who long for certainty. It’s also intellectually dishonest and a highly uncivil approach to political dialogue. Ignorance, in my view, wants to learn. Ignorance can be educated. Certainty, on the other hand, does not require study, does not tolerate reasoned debate, dismisses historical data, and scoffs and rejects intellectual appeal.

Virtue, civility, and common sense are all first cousins. Yet, with the recent demise of public civility, thoughtfulness has become suspicion, and expertise has become elitism. Anyone who pauses to consider the evidence, data, and historical facts is accused of having hidden agendas. In this world devoid of civility, the one who shouts with certainty is celebrated for authenticity.

Without civility there can be no shame. Without the emotion of shame, public humility, reason, and fairness are but fleeting dreams of a bygone era.

Well now, I could go on endlessly describing my disgust at the decline of civil discourse in our country and indeed the world, but expressing disgust alone does not make much of a contribution. So, allow me to offer a tongue-in-cheek idea that has been marinating in my mind all my life.

Due to, in my view, a correctly decided Supreme Court case involving the separation of Church and State, we can no longer display the Ten Commandments or any other biblical wisdom, in public buildings. So, I have an idea!

Since public civility is dead, and common sense is in short supply, perhaps the wisdom of my sainted Grandmother, which she no doubt obtained from her forbearers based on the Holy Scriptures, should be placed in all public buildings. Maybe her words could shame folks into better behavior, like they have done for me all these years.

Imagine, a posting on all state capitols and legislative chambers, and the nation’s Capitol and the Senate and House chambers, and the White House (especially the White House) that simply says:

MIND YOUR MANNERS!

Or perhaps:

Y’ALL BE SWEET NOW!

Or maybe:

DON’T GET TOO BIG FOR YOUR BRITCHES!

Or even:

DON’T FORGET YOUR RAISING!

I’m certain this effort would survive all Constitutional challenges and would do a great deal toward reviving civility. A little common sense might even make a difference and give hope to a hopeless situation.

My Grandmother’s words ring true in my ears daily and go a long way toward taming my sometimes not-so-noble passions. I’ll bet your mother’s and grandmother’s words have had a similar profound impact.

So, why don’t we all give it a try? Our blood pressure will thank us.