CIVILITY IS ALL ABOUT HOW WE FORMULATE AND PRESENT OUR POLITICAL OPINIONS AND IDEAS AS EQUALS

Several Wrights Lane posts ago I alluded to the fact that increasing lack of civility in politics today and misplaced emphasis on accountability is a major contributor to the simultaneous growth of public distrust and unrest in our civic institutions. In this post I take another kick at the can.

Despite multiple pleas for civility in North American society, little is said about what civility really means. People are inclined to define the term in their own way, and no one believes in the possibility that their definition has uncivil undertones. 

But if we believe that our country needs to recover the virtue of civility in our midst, it behooves us to better define it.

Civility cannot be the demand to always remain calm in debate. It is generally good to keep one’s cool, of course. However when engaging in political disagreement, our  opinions typically reflect deeply held values and commitments about justice and we react accordingly. 

We tend to regard those who disagree with us about such matters as not merely on the other side of the issue, but on the wrong side. We should expect disagreements about important matters to get heated.

Civility might be better understood as the avoidance of undue hostility and gratuitous animosity in political debate. This could be something as simple as calling out inflated rhetoric. 

This idea acknowledges that heated debates can be appropriate within reason. It allows for some degree of antagonism, while at the same time prohibiting unnecessary vitriol. In a sense, this makes civility a matter of judging whether our subject’s behaviour calls for an escalation of hostility. The problem is that, when it comes to evaluating the behaviour of our opponents, we are remarkably poor judges.

Assessment of political behaviour tightly tracks our partisan allegiances. We cut our allies slack while holding our opponents to very high standards. When our allies engage in objectionable behaviour, we excuse them. But when members of the opposition engage in the same behaviour, we condemn them. 

In one experiment, when partisans were told of an ally stealing an opposing candidate’s campaign signs off neighbourhood lawns, they chalked it up to political integrity. But when those same partisans were told that an opponent had stolen their signs, they condemned the act as undemocratic. Go figure!

We over-ascribe hostility, dishonesty and untrustworthiness to our political opponents. Consequently, we will almost always see fit to escalate hostility when interacting with our opposition. When civility is understood as the avoidance of unnecessary rancour, it fails.

In his recently published book "Sustaining Democracy" Vanderbuilt University Professor of Philosophy W. Alton Jones says that civility isn’t really about how we conduct disagreements with political opponents. "Instead, civility has to do with how people formulate their own political ideas. We are uncivil when our political opinions do not take due account of the perspectives, priorities and concerns of our fellow citizens."

To better understand this idea, consider that in a democratic society citizens share political power as political equals. As democratic citizens, we have the responsibility to act in ways that respect the equality of our fellow citizens, even when we disagree with their politics. "In my view, one way to respect their equality is to give due consideration to their values and preferences," Professor Jones adds.

Of course, this does not require that we water down our own political commitments -- or always try to meet opponents halfway. It calls only for a sincere attempt to consider their perspectives when devising our own. People are civil when they can explain political opinions to political opponents in ways that are responsive to their rival ideas, that is the essence of what I have been trying convey on Wrights Lane.

Here is a suggested simple three-part test to help arrive at civility in an ideal world:

-- Take one of your strongest political views, and then try to figure out what your smartest partisan opponent might say about it.

-- Identify a political idea that is key to your opponent and then develop a lucid argument that supports it.

-- Identify a major policy favoured by the other side that you could regard as permissible for government — despite your opposition.

If you struggle to perform those tasks, that means you have a feeble grasp on the range of responsible political opinion.

When we cannot even imagine a cogent political perspective that stands in opposition to our own, we can’t engage civilly with our fellow citizens.

Sadly, this is a concept that some in our society today fail to grasp...and probably never will. It has become far too easy to write off opposition views as simply false news.