Anti-Civility on the Moderate Left

Incivility is often said to have been the norm in (at least American) politics. Since at least Reagan, it has seemed to me that mainstream conservatism has been moving farther to the right. For about the same period of time, it's seemed to me that political discourse on the right has been becoming less civil. Since at least the ascendancy of Rush Limbaugh, much political discussion on the right seems to have become downright vicious. Now it is the norm there.

I used to think that this was something peculiar to the right, until I encountered leftist extremists in graduate school. I discovered that they were at least as vicious as folks on the right. In many ways the leftists I encountered--in person and in print--were actually worse than the rightists I'd encountered. I came to think that hateful discourse was something associated with extremists of both stripes. The radical left, however, is a fringe in America, whereas the radical right is a powerful force here. That's why incivility had seemed to be a right-wing phenomenon.

When I started this blog, one of my main goals was to try to discuss issues in a civil way. I suppose it's obvious that I haven't always lived up to that ideal. In my defense, I think that the Bush administration is enough to--as my dad would say--make the Pope cuss. Still, to my shame, I often find myself being dismissive, derisive and dogmatic. But my failure to live up the the ideals in question doesn't make them bad ideals. It just makes me incontinent. (snicker)

It's important to strive for civility in political discussions. One important reason for this is a purely instrumental one: we're more likely to achieve rational consensus and converge on the truth if our discussions remain largely civil. The more derisive we are towards each other in our discussions, the more firmly entrenched we become in our antecedently-held positions. If we're discussing whether or not p, and I start out by saying that only a liar or an idiot could defend not-p, then you will almost certainly automatically become defensive about your belief that not-p, and resistant to changing your mind. We'll be engaged in argument, not inquiry. It's hard to make progress in political discussions, but that's only partially because the questions are difficult. In large part its because of psychological factors of this kind. Dogmatism and incivility breed dogmatism and incivility, and dogmatism is perhaps the greatest enemy of reason and truth. As Nietzsche has noted, it's often not what is said with which we disagree, but, rather, the tone in which it is said.

Many blogs are fairly uncivil places. A couple of years ago, folks in the blogs I frequent came to the consensus that cyberbalkanization is not a problem. I think they were and are wrong about that and tried to convince them of this at the time, but you know how such things go. (For one thing, it's hard to get bloggers to agree that blogs are bad in some important way.) People tend to frequent blogs with orientations they find congenial, and that means that people tend to flock together in relatively uniform communities of opinion. Under such conditions, one might predict that smaller and smaller differences of opinion might begin to seem more and more significant. Whether cyberbalkanization has played a major role in the growth of incivility is unclear, but it would not be surprising it if had.

My point here, though, is not to say something about incivility per se. And although incivilty seems to me to be on the rise in leftish blogs (I don't know whether it's frequency is changing on rightish ones), that's not what I want to discuss, either. What I'm really concerned about is that it seems to be more and more common on relatively centrist leftish blogs to encounter advocacy of what we might call anti-civility. I've encountered many leftish folks recently who can barely conceal their contempt for any appeal to keep the discussion civil. In some placed its become close to a kind of inside joke--though that's not really a very good description of it. It's like a line that's always good for a kind of snicker or knowing smile. Like, e.g., in philosophy, it's almost always possible to elicit a snicker if, in the middle of a discussion, you say "of course that might just be true for me," or "well, who's to say?" Relativism is (rightfully, IMO) such a joke that the mere mention of it is good for a cheap quasi-laugh. That's the way I've frequently seen civility mentioned of late. It's as if it's on its way to becoming the newest article of leftish orthodoxy: civility: bad.

Needless to say, I could be wrong, this could be a sampling error, or it could be a mini-fad that will just die out. Also needless to say, I hope it's one of those. But right now this seems to constitute a real problem. Like so many opinions, this one seems to be based partially one an at least moderately reasonable insight, this being that some make bogus appeal to civility as a way to insulate the powers that be from criticism. Such bogus appeals are rightly ridiculed. But not all appeals for civility are sneaky attempts to dampen legitimate criticism. That's certainly not why I, for example, encourage it. Condemning appeals for civility because they might be misused is like condemning appeals for passionate advocacy because they might be misused. What should be condemned is the illigitimate appeals, not all such appeals. Civility and passionate advocacy are both good when properly engaged in.

But much of the anti-civility fad is merely unreflective and irrational, not based on any good reasons whatsoever. This often the nature of such beasts: a small insight that gives a veneer of plausibility to an irrational preference or unreflective inclination. Much of it is just monkey see-monkey do. People are mad--and justifiably so--and this primes them to embrace a theory that says that unbridled expressions of anger are good. And then this becomes the latest badge of blogospheric chic. All the cool kids are dissing civility...you fucker.

This is the point at which the bogus defenses kick in. It'll be charged that I'm advocating docility, which I am certainly not. In fact I think we're far too docile as it is. I'm one of the most ardent advocates and devoted practitioners of speaking truth to power you'll ever meet. You don't know me, so I can't prove that, but I could if you did. I think that we live in dangerous times, and that we face a genuinely immoral, irrational, and criminal administration. If it were up to me, there'd be anti-administration protests on the Mall every couple of weeks. Nobody here is advocating docility, passivity, or deferential politeness. I think we need to tell it like it is, but to do so in a way that doesn't go out of its way to piss people off. Or, rather: we need to do it in a way that pisses people off in the right way. They need to be pissed off at the administration, not at its critics. Unbridled anger isn't effective in the long run in a democracy. It won't effect political change, it won't forge consensus, it won't change minds. It breeds dogmatism in part by making people disinclined to reflect on their views and admit their errors. (And by 'them' I also mean us.) Unbridled anger is particularly ineffective when used by liberals; their base is largely averse to it in a way that a large part of the conservative base is not.

Knowing the propensity of liberals to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I've begun to wonder how we might screw this up now that the criminality and incompetence of the Bush administration have become so manifest. What I've been discussing here is one way we might do it. We might give in to our anger and go over to the dark side, embracing the very source of power that drive the Coulters and Hannitys and Norquists of the world, thus driving away the very centrists and independents who are ready to ally themselves with us. And, what's perhaps even worse, corrupting ourselves in the process and making ourselves not merely incapable of but also unworthy of victory exactly when our country needs us most.