In his recent commencement address at Hilldsale College, Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation makes a compelling call for civil discourse. Explaining how incivility fuels incivility (by way of discussing James Wilson's "broken windows theory"), Feulner writes:
What we see today, I am afraid, is an accelerating competition between the left and the right to see which side can inflict the most damage with the hammer of incivility. Increasingly, those who take part in public debates appear to be exchanging ideas when, in fact, they are trading insults: idiot, liar, moron, traitor.
He then enjoins the graduating class at Hillsdale:
After four years of study at Hillsdale, you know the difference between attacking a person's argument and attacking a person's character. Respect that difference.
I'm thrilled to read these remarks, which echo some of my own considerations in this space. Makes me proud to have once worked with Ed at Heritage.
I wonder further whether it isn't also incumbent upon us all to remember as well that when someone attacks our argument, they may not necessarily be attacking our character. An important but overlooked virtue of a free, self-governing people is their slowness to take offense.
In a world where public discourse is increasingly marked by incivilities of ad hominem argument and invective, we all get bristly and rise too quickly to defend our character when what is needed is more clear headed and calm persuasion.
I believe the trends of incivility are accelerated by our tendencies to separate ourselves off into pure enclaves, where we can interact mostly with those who think like us. The more we take our identities from our political/ideological cohorts, the more difficult it is to think clearly--without taking personal offense--about arguments against the ideas we hold dear. In this way, ideas truly may have consequences, and perverse, unintended ones at that. It does us all good to be reminded how easily we wield our hammers, and how quickly everything outside our own worldview begins to look like a nail.