“The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The
slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measure of government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.”
So states Henry David Thoreau in his seminal essay “Civil Disobedience”.
Continuing he writes, “How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you his due; but take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again.”
A clarion call for a new revolution in response to the occupation of Mexico and the persistence of
the institution of slavery, Thoreau was a moralist who held individual action higher than any notion of puffery. He was famously jailed in 1846 for refusing to pay a poll tax, which provoked his famous essay.
It is Thoreau who came to mind when the outrage over Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ dismissal from a Washington DC restaurant began to dislodge a new public dialogue on the need for civility in discourse.
For me, personally, the most erroneous statements came from the editorial board of the Washington Post, “We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly
believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion
rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families? Down that road lies a world
in which only the most zealous sign up for public service. That benefits no one.”
I cannot overstate how profoundly wrong this declaration is. Primarily, my frustration comes at
the term “incivility” and the ponderous abuse of the term which is far more threating to the state of
American discourse than the polite dismissal of a woman who obfuscates President Trump’s lies,
egregious policies on human rights, and Constitutional crises on a daily basis. The paucity of conservative credibility on this issue is astounding. Writing for Fox News, Lauren DeBellis Appell wrote on Sunday, “This political correctness is quickly approaching dangerous and irrational levels the likes of which we’ve never witnessed before. In the age of social media anyone can seize an opportunity to publicly take a stand against President Trump, and know that it could easily become national news and give them their 15 minutes of fame in the process.” She continues, “The PC liberals in this country increasingly seem to believe that they can bully their way to public policy goals. Celebrities instigate the behavior, the far left mimics the behavior, and the media enables it all. The result is the public now thinks this is the new normal. It is not normal. It is dangerous.”
Ms. Appell seems unfamiliar with recent history, as the increase in “uncivil” rhetoric by the left
has not occurred within a vacuum. President Trump, surely, is evidence of a degeneration of civility
which has been more than noticed since his announcement to run for the presidency in June of 2015.
However, this atmosphere is not unique to Trump. When Tea Party activist William Kostric showed up outside a town hall event in New Hampshire in 2009, where President Obama was discussing healthcare, armed and holding a sign proclaiming the need to water the tree of liberty, the response from conservatives was hardly one of a need to quiet the uncivil rhetoric. Instead, you had mainstream conservative outlets spend much of the Obama years comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
Esquire was the most eloquent in responding to the pedantic shallowness of the Red Hen
kerfuffle, with contributor Charles Pierce writing, “This debate is stupid. It’s also dangerously beside the point. Sarah Huckabee is the lying mouthpiece of a lying regime that is one step away from simply hauling people off in trucks. That she was politely told to take her business elsewhere is a small step towards assigning public responsibility to public officials that enable a perilous brand of politics.”
This is exactly the kind of rhetorical action Thoreau not only called for in “Civil Disobedience”, but enacted when he refused to pay his tax. I think a long overdue discussion on what civility in discourse means need be had before we continue to shout madly off the handle that the practice is eroding. Going back to the Latin Civillis, the word relates to the citizenry itself. The mischaracterization that “civil” speech be “polished” (the Latin meaning for polite) is simply one of extreme privilege, harkening to an outdated notion that rhetoric is about style and pretense over substance and content. As Michael Harriot clearly stated in The Root, “Kirstjen Nielsen was not heckled for what she believes. Sarah Sanders was not booted from the restaurant because of her politics. They were singled out because of things they actually did. And that is the difference.”
By misconstruing the actions of the owner of the Red Hen and how they relate to the actions of
Trump and his dogsbodies, Americans risk far more than the appearance of civility of speech. What we truly risk is civility of the citizenry to maintain virtue. In an era where a professional athlete is
foreshamed by the chief executive as a “son of a bitch” and white supremacists can chant “blood and soil” in a “peaceful protest”, the right is stretching the rhetoric of nicety to an absurd extreme that is not out of character for conservatives.
Professor of linguistics Deborah Tannen summarizes this notion best in her 1998 book The Argument Culture, “‘Civility’ suggests a superficial, pinky-in-the-air veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast.”
The thesis of her work is for an end to adversarial argument (or agonism), wherein the other side
is wrong for the sake of being Other and arguments are had for the sake of having an argument. This is the kind of argumentation of which both Appell and the editorial staff of The Washington Post are trying to characterize this dissent. That is an onerous claim which undermines the critical function of dialogue. If we truly wish to know what got us to this point, we should probably cast blame first at our agenda setters.
When Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire in October of 2004, he slammed hard the destructive nature of the program’s central premise. “It’s hurting America,” Stewart asserted as he used his platform to dissect the program live.
Tannen also goes after Crossfire strongly in her book as indicative of perpetuating argument
culture. “One way television shows and print news stories try to achieve balance is to include
representatives of both the left and the right. This prompts us to squeeze people with widely diverse views into the procrustean beds of left and right.” She highlights and seems to predict the quagmire of “truthiness” inherent in our present crisis, continuing, “Yet another troubling trap laid by the two-sides-to-every-issue approach is sometimes there is only one side: truth.” Tannen then evidences this phenomenon with the case of Holocaust denials. While Crossfire may have been laid to rest on the dust bin of 24-hour cable news programming, the damages enumerated by Stewart and Tannen have clearly taken their toll.
Just as Harriot argues that “ostracizing people because of their political beliefs is a slippery slope
that could lead to business owners selectively choosing whom they will or won’t serve” is a valid
argument at face value, upon further inquiry all it does is reify the false narrative that the Trump
administration is civil. That there is something civil about taking children from their parents and
incarcerating them in cages. And no, I’m not going to get into a debate on what a cage is, because that is the destructive, uncivil rhetoric which is truly deteriorating our public discourse. What happened to Sanders and her friends was not equitable to Jim Crow policies of segregation. She has chosen and acted with this administration and been instrumental in carrying out these uncivil policies and the unvirtuous agenda it propagates.
Not only do I stand with Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ call to press Trump surrogates, I will
go further in calling out would-be allies like Charles Schumer as ignoble standersby to the right’s
debasement of civility. This is far from Bleeding Kansas, where pro-slavery Missourians poured over
Kansas’ borders to violate not only virtuous civility but the very integrity of our democratic institutions. This is not Roseanne Barr equating a woman of color to a subhuman with an Islamophobic flare. These are uncivil. I see nothing uncivil about what Waters is calling for nor with what the proprietor of Red Hen did.
In fact, I see it as the very enactment of civility in its purest form. I am not calling for the storming of
the Bastille (yet). Nor am I validating punching fascists in DC streets. What Waters and I are advocating is pure American activism removed from the knee-jerk agonism of the argument culture.
When Thoreau was visited in his cell by his friend Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Emmerson asked of
his colleague, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Which, to wit, Thoreau responded, “Waldo, the
question is what are you doing out there?” Much like Emmerson had missed the virtuous call to action for civility
Thoreau had proclaimed though his actions, equating this disruptive action as uncivil misses the danger we risk should we remain unresponsive. “Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison,” Thoreau argues after declaring in much more revolutionary rhetoric than Waters, “I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think it is enough that they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one.”
By,
Andrew Eick