Civility

The recent discussion of civility on these cyberpages disappointed me. Neither blogger defined civility but appeared to claim the guys who agree with them are civil while those who disagree are uncivil. Neither opposes civil discourse. So, if civility itself is not controversial, then what are we arguing about?

To me, civility begins with acting in a rational and consistent way. When I make my points, I use several devices to back up my arguments: I give examples of what I mean, I sometimes clarify my points with metaphors, I cite people with expertise on the matter at hand, I sometimes cite pertinent facts, I sometimes draw what I considerable logical conclusions from those facts, and I sometimes ask questions.

When in doubt, I define my terms. Sometimes different words mean different things to different people. We all agree on what a fork is but we may have different interpretation of the word, “liberal,” for example.

Now that I’ve attempted to describe what I consider civil, I’ll describe what I consider uncivil:
1) Personal accusations. Ironically, one frequent critic who accuses me of “playing the race card” also accuses me of anti-Semitism. If accusing someone of being anti-Semitic isn’t playing the race card, please explain that one to me. I mention race only when I consider it a significant factor. No one complains that my opposition to military aid to Cuba, North Korea and Zimbabwe proves I hate Hispanics, Asians, and blacks. So how does opposing aid to Israel make me anti-Semitic? Those who make that charge never explain that. For some reason, they refuse to back up their accusations with either facts or principles. Instead, they pretend to know my state of mind better than I do. That, folks is not civil behavior.
2) The old “straw man” technique. For those of you unfamiliar with that term from pre-feminist days, this little act of intellectual cowardice involves deliberately distorting what someone else says and then attacking the distortion. Some critics accuse me of blaming America for every evil in the world, even though I do not do any such thing. Having then lied about me, the critic proceeds to criticize me for doing what I don’t do and saying what I don’t say. This is another way of attacking the messenger instead of dealing with the message. This isn’t civil discourse, folks.
3) Labeling. In this act of intellectual cowardice, the critic ignores the point that I or someone else makes and instead sticks a label on someone. In this trick, the message is this person is a leftist, isolationist, bigot, elitist, homosexual, etc. and therefore anything that person says is automatically invalid. Recently, a critic responded to statistics cited from a doctor to a reporter by calling the doctor and the reporter “hacks.” But the plain truth is that the act of labeling does not automatically invalidate what another person says. That is not only illogical, but also uncivil.

Darin Markwardt makes a valid point when he says criticizing the president’s health care plan—assuming he has one—isn’t uncivil. Nor is concern about spending to implement such a plan. But Mr. Markwardt doesn’t address accusations that the president is a Muslim Nazi who wants to abort children and use “death panels” to kill your grandma. Lying isn’t civil.

Mr. Markwardt was right in pointing out that people acted civilly at Lisa Murkowski’s healthcare hearing last August at Dimond High School. I suspect the reason for that is not so much that people here are more civil but that the outfits that send people to such hearings to disrupt them did not get around to sending one of the representatives to Anchorage. I talked to a representative of one such group who was unaware that the group would send someone all the way up here from Washington, D.C. After all, Alaska is not a “battleground state’ anyway. (If you’re interested, I can relate the conversation I had several weeks ago with a representative of one of these groups. I will have to check with my source for further information on the name of the outfit I called.)

I believe if we truly want civil discourse we have to recognize the futility of demonizing each other. The more we fight each other instead of the special interests that control both parties, the more we let the special interests control us as well. Our real fight is not with each other but with those who buy and sell the politicians. The special interests stealing from you and me are laughing at both of us all the way to the bank, which you and I have bailed out.

Maybe if we recognized that basic truth, we’d be more civil to each other.