Krauthammer’s column today is about immigration, but it’s also about political civility. It makes me wonder if the best way to become truly civil isn’t precisely to stop being “civil” as that concept is now defined, not by becoming uncivil but by striving for a different model of civility.
As Krauthammer observes, those who talk loudest about the need for “civil” discussion of political differences tend to be the worst offenders against real civility. Unfortunately, the whole discussion about the need for civility seems to have been captured by people (in both parties) who want to use it uncivilly to delegitimize their opponents. “Stop demonizing people!” is a great way to demonize people. More broadly, the narrative “I am reasonable and civil” makes a great counterpart to the narrative “my opponents are irrational and illegitimate, motivated by a combination of religious and ideological fanaticisms as well as pure lust for money and power.”
I’ll admit that for my whole adult life, the cultured despisers of incivility have irritated me. The word civility has meant, to me, a tool for (uncivilly) demonizing those of us who have strongly held opinions that are out of alignment with the reigning orthodoxy.
Moreover, there was no lost golden age when politicians were civil. No one should be permitted to talk about the problem of civility without first spending two minutes watching this. (For some reason the video won’t embed. Go on, I’ll wait.)
Yet I’m coming to understand that this issue of civility is closely related to another issue I’ve cared about for a long time: the long-term viability of religious freedom as a social model. The political community can’t survive if we don’t somehow “own” one another across the boundaries of our deepest differences. Politics can’t be simply a mechanistic legal machine in which people with unlimited hatred for one another (or even just an absolute indifference to one another’s interests) work out their competing desires.
This mechanistic model of politics is what many people seem to think Madison had in mind in Federalist 10 – everyone is out for himself, and politics is about keeping all the competing self-interested claims as balanced as possible so no one gets to exercise too much raw power. But that’s not what Madison has in mind at all (read it here). In spite of their frequent acts of incivility toward one another, the founding fathers did live in a political community where something other than mere self-interest was assumed to be at the heart of politics. The incivility didn’t reach all the way down.
The merely mechanistic approach to politics doesn’t work even on its own terms. A merely mechanistic political process couldn’t operate if it couldn’t enforce rules. But you can’t enforce rules without a community that agrees on the meanings of words. It’s easy to say you’ll make “murder” and “theft” and “fraud” against the law. But what actions count as murder and theft and fraud? You may well have a minutely articualted account of what is and is not “murder” that seems to you to be utterly logical, objective and convincing – but your neighbor doesn’t find it so, and his vote counts the same as yours. Think about how persistent our disagreements on what counts as murder have been; think about how the economic crisis has revealed the different ways people in our society define theft.
If we don’t have deep and wide social agreement on these terms, then the real content of the law will change depending on who is enforcing it. This would annihilate the rule of law, which is the beating heart of our liberty.
Real social agreement on contested terms like “murder” and “theft” can’t be restored except by taking politics beyond the reductionist legal machine and somehow establishing a political community that has some shared metaphysical commitments. And that, in turn, is going to require us to own one another on more than a reductively mechanistic level.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers on how to do that, but I do know that in our politics, this is what we need to be working on. Politically, this is the great challenge of our age. And it looks like civility will be part of the equasion.
But the civility we need is real tolerance for real diversity – a civility that is comfortable with the strongest and firmest expression of our most troublesome differences. We need thick skins – not because we’re indifferent to what other people think but because we care enough about what other people think to keep our attention focused on the ideas and not immediately personalize everything. We need to own the fact of extreme and uncomfortable disagreements, as well as owning each other in spite of these disagreements. In fact, I don’t think we’ll really be able to own each other in spite of our differences until we first own the fact of the differences.
At the 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society I witnessed a panel discussion of “Loving God and Neighbor Together,” a document signed by some evangelical scholars and leaders in response to Islamic overtures for mutual love and toleration. “Loving God” focuses primarily on asserting that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, and building on that as a basis for mutual love. Al Mohler and John Piper spoke on the panel as critics of the document, and the debate was almost entirely taken up by the question of whether Christians and Muslims really do worship the same God. Evangelical supporters of “Loving God” and two Muslim scholars spoke on the other side.
All participants conducted themselves with exemplary sensitivity and respect, and nothing was personalized. But that’s not why I mention the event. I mention it because at one point, Piper actually cried out—in what seemed to me to be a very deep frustration—something like this: “If we want to talk about loving each other and tolerating each other, why are we even debating whether we worship the same God? Don’t we have to love each other whether we worship the same God or not?”
Indeed we do, and it seems to me that the whole problem with “civility” as commonly practiced is that it’s predicated on denying the real depth and discomfort of our differences. While all the panelists that day were civil in the superficial sense, that exclamation from Piper was the manifestation of the deeper civility we really need.
May 13th, 2011 | 11:46 am
Real civility would take a cue from the Marriage Encounter Movement: avoid “you” language. A debater knows next to nothing about the “you” he or she is discussing. Argue (if arguing must be done) the arguments, not the person.
Where people get into trouble is assuming they know the other person and can speak for them. The poverty of an ideologue’s viewpoint is patently obvious when he or she can’t talk about himself of herself and provides little to nothing in terms of a constructive viewpoint.
Abstaining from lying would be a big help, too.
May 13th, 2011 | 1:06 pm
. . . the civility we need is real tolerance for real diversity – a civility that is comfortable with the strongest and firmest expression of our most troublesome differences.
seems to be at odds with:
Real social agreement . . . can’t be restored except by taking politics beyond the reductionist legal machine and somehow establishing a political community that has some shared metaphysical commitments.
In other words I do not understand what is meant by real diversity and shared metaphysical commitment.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:04 pm
Yes, that’s the tension we have to navigate.
On the one hand, the political community can’t survive (and if it did survive it couldn’t be just) unless the terms we use to describe what is permitted or forbidden have a socially shared meaning. It’s not enough to say that “murder” is forbidden unless we all mean the same thing by “murder” – the meaning we all attribute to “murder” has to be a shared public meaning. That in turn requires metaphysics, because we’re talking about concepts that transcend the material facts. You can’t explain what makes the difference between murder and justifiable homicide without appealing to concepts that are more than just material facts – and if you want to discuss and debate concepts that are more than just material facts you are doing metaphysics. The aspiration to have shared public meanings for words like “murder” but not shared metaphysics is self-contradictory.
On the other hand, the totality of metaphysics can’t be shared, particularly not if we’re going to preserve freedom of religion. I doubt the totality of metaphysics can ever be shared in any event, but freedom of religion requires us to reduce the amount of shared metaphysics far below anything in premodern society. Space needs to be made for adherents of diverse metaphysical systems.
How we navigate this tension is still unclear to me. But we have to have enough shared metaphysics to justify the laws we need for public order without so much that we abandon freedom of religion.
It’s worth pointing out that the very concept of freedom of religion presupposes the need for some level of shared public metaphysics. The imperative that government should respect freedom of religion is itself a moral claim, thus it rests on claims that transcend the mere material facts of the world, thus it is (as all moral claims are) a metaphysical claim. So you can’t have freedom of religion without at least enough shared public metaphysics to justify that claim.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:20 pm
I’d like to see an answer to SteveP’s comment. It isn’t clear what is meant by real diversity and shared metaphysical commitment.
May 13th, 2011 | 2:51 pm
See above.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:01 pm
In the name of civility I might propose that anyone who posts a reply in a forum like this sign his actual name. Might be a small thing, but it’s a little bit easier to be moderate when one doesn’t hide behind a pseudonym. And it demonstrates at least a little moral courage.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:03 pm
And the above comment of mine was *not* in reply to anyone or anything in this thread, it was meant in general. I know it’s customary to use a screen name, but in an old-fashioned letter to the editor in a newspaper we always signed our names.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:45 pm
Ah, I see – thank you for clarifying.
I’ve nothing to add other than to nod in agreement and cluck at the difficult and deep waters you describe well.
May 13th, 2011 | 5:49 pm
What Would Real Civility Look Like?
Per Robert Bork, political discourse as it was conducted between 1939 and 1981. How ’bout Daniel Patrick Moynihan and James Buckley as examples?
May 14th, 2011 | 11:18 pm
To my mind, civility begins with a willingness to believe that one’s ideological opponents are arguing in good faith, and a concomitant eagerness to find common ground which acknowledges up front, and in the course of debate, the other side’s good points. It rejects the snide and sarcastic tone of talk radio and cable TV, and their juvenile loaded language about the other ideological side (“propaganda,” “lackeys,” “cronies,” etc.). It also encompasses a commitment, when engaging in public debate, to answer every serious challenge to one’s point of view instead of throwing a bunch of points and charges against the wall to see which ones will stick and falling silent in the face of challenging rebuttals. Civility doesn’t preclude blunt rebukes, but it looks for the best in people.
May 15th, 2011 | 10:33 pm
It’s possible you are describing an impossible task. Perhaps some societies can become so diverse that their shared metaphysics (source of morals?) is too weak to foster the trust required to debate, vote and suffer defeat. Presumably, those winning the day wouldn’t have trouble with the outcome. Yet, when trust breaks down even winning the argument isn’t enough. I’d say we’ve seen that in the modern commentariat.
Furthermore, the metaphysical waters have been so muddied that the civility you describe seems like a naive dream. (regretful sigh) Each passing year seems to add another brick to the wall of “We must all follow our own bliss and find our own truth.”
May 16th, 2011 | 1:46 pm
There’s no denying it’s a daunting challenge! Yet consider the following propositions:
1) Sustaining the constellation of social expectations we refer to as “freedom of religion” in some form is a moral imperative.
2) Sustaining a shared public meaning for the contested metaphysical terms on which the public order is based is a moral imperative.
3) No two moral imperatives can contradict one another.
4) Therefore, daunting as it appears, the problem does have a solution, even if we don’t (yet) see what it is.
QED. :)
May 17th, 2011 | 1:04 pm
Thank you. It’s a great article, by the way. Congratulations.
May 19th, 2011 | 8:00 am
3) No two moral imperatives can contradict one another.
And yet, this was a nation founded on the idea of checks & balances.
Sometimes it’s the argument that matters, not the conclusion.
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