On Expectations of Civility

This will be interesting to watch. Like a social experiment. 🙂

There are so many brilliant and intelligent posters here that in my hurry to absorb as much as possible, I scroll by any obstacle that does not feed the brain. Sorry but I even scroll by the kissy hugging stuff. So carry on.

Civility is a tricky thing these days.
The left hates civility and seek to erode it at every point. This isn’t just that they don’t like it, but it is an intentional, targeted and malicious assault on our civil discourse.
I was thinking more about this recently in the context of William Wilberforce. To quote in paraphrase, he said that God put before him two great objects: The abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.
Those words “reformation of manners” seem very strange to contemporary American ears. Why are “manners” a great object at the level of abolition?
By “manners” Wilberforce was not thinking that everyone would be reading Emily Post, though that is part of it. In his day, it had become fashionable for people to act badly, and to do evil things. At that time it is estimated that a quarter of the population of London were engaged in prostitution as a trade. Being bad was the normal thing to do. Religion of course had become weak.
Wilberforce sought to transform society by changing the “manner” in which people lived their lives. He wanted to make it fashionable to do good things. Small platoons and societies for social reform budded like crazy from the Claham circle on topics from prison reform to animal welfare and of course abolition. The results of this generational activity was the birth of the Victorian era.
The left hates the Victorian era. They love to portray the time as an era of prudes with extreme sexual repression and as total hypocrites. The social success of the Victorians has to be attacked by the left because its successes in social progress are undeniable. Britain became wealthy, becoming the world’s leading empire and world power. Their hated empire also did the unimaginable: Slavery was abolished in every colonial territory in the British Empire. That’s an unprecedented historical achievement that every critical-theory Marx-drunken anti-colonialist writer wishes were sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
Cultural Marxists knew they couldn’t win on the terms of civility. They had to attack the goodness of society to shake it to its core. Toqueville said in paraphrase that America will cease to be when her people cease to be good. In almost an unintentional prophecy, the cultural marxists saw this as an opportunity to weaken America from within using the cancer of incivility.
In short, the cultural marxists “march through the institutions” is really a project to make doing bad fashionable. The media gives ample example of glorifying thuggery and crime, it isn’t worth repeating. At the same time they constantly project hypocrisy onto anyone who does good – If someone stands for something good, the media do everything in their power to smear that person’s reputation. The 1960s sexual revolution was a clear case of making bad fashionable: selling a young generation on the lie that fornication is good, marriage is meh. These examples can be multiplied ad nauseum.
In terms of speech, the left is notoriously incivil. They literally believe in two standards – one for us and one for them. They struggle to justify their behavior. The recent version “Is it ok to punch a Nazi?” tries to convince you that they are bad people who deserve to be punched, and that rules of civility do not apply to certain classes of people. Nevermind that assault is a criminal act! But this is how they wedge legitimizing incivility. The crass “free speech” movement of Berkley was not about using speech to aspire and communicate powerful ideas, but to degenerate language and undermine social norms of decency and civility in speech.
Meanwhile the left loves to weaponize civility in their favor. Politicians are very obvious, the leftists acting all offended when someone says something – anything – they can portray as improper and incivil. “… bbbbut his tweets!!!. At the same time they can get away with the incivil speech equivalent of murder and hide behind “free speech”. They don’t even care that they’re hypocrites.
Humans cannot abide much incivility and this is true for the left as well. Instead of the old practices of tolerance of speech and ideas with a belief in civil discourse, the left pushes for “political correctness” and a Marcusian notion of “tolerance” that give the lie to intolerance – beautiful emperor clothing. They can’t win in the open field of ideas, so they shut down speech, or use their own incivility to undercut it. It’s a disgusting reality but the Alinskyites are all too happy to use the rulebook against their political opponents. We need to be awake to that fact.
Consider the case of the offended feminist, that someone held open a door for her! She wants to demand changes to the civil norms of society, not to improve them, but to destroy them. A gentleman opening a door for another person, seeking to be helpful and do good for others is a GOOD NORM. The feminist wants people to think only of themselves, to STOP DOING GOOD, essentially to make being ungood the norm. An America where a neighbor won’t open a door for someone else is an America with a destroyed social fabric – exactly what the neo-marxists want! They want an America where the average America won’t do good and won’t fight back, an America ripe for socialist takeover. It’s not about the feminist – it is about undermining all American goodness, even the basic decency we used to expect from the Boy Scouts as a quintessential American institution.
Civility is more than just speech. It is a shared respect of others, a belief in the dignity and value of other people, and treating them with respect regardless of their station in life. It is the practice of human equality in daily life. The left cannot abide this because when people are civil, when they aren’t full of envy and resentment, when people are good people who are virtuous and practice chivalry and the Golden Rule, they CAN’T exploit it and gain power.
In conclusion, even if civility offends people, practice it anyway. We should always strive to be good toward other people and do good for them with our words and deeds, and everywhere we can resist their efforts to make us stop being civil and stop being good.