The Daily Signal - #440: Recovering the Lost Art of Civility

Episode Date: April 14, 2019

With 2020 campaigns already ramping up, it looks like partisanship could be the norm for the foreseeable future. But it doesn't have to be that way. In today's episode, Alexandra Hudson joins us to discuss the lost art of civility and the critical role it plays in helping us survive our disagreements.We also cover these stories:-Notre-Dame, the iconic cathedral in Paris, is engulfed by fire.-Fallout continues from Rep. Ilhan Omar's tonedeaf comments on 9/11.-Mike Pompeo sees firsthand the devastation of Venezuelan socialism.-Sen. Lindsey Graham puts together a serious immigration proposal.-The Mueller report is set for release on Thursday.The Daily Signal podcast is available on the Ricochet Audio Network. You also can listen on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts.If you like what you hear, please leave a review or give us feedback. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, April 16th. I'm Kelsey Bowler. And I'm Daniel Davis. It's just April of 2019, but the campaign season is already gearing up. And with it, the prospect of even greater partisanship. The tenor of American politics really has changed, and Alexandra Hudson is actually writing a book on that very subject. She argues for why Americans need to rediscover the lost art of civility. She'll join Kate and I to discuss.

By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encouraging others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. Well, the long-expected Mueller report will be released to the public on Thursday, according to the Justice Department, though it's expected to be heavily redacted. But Democrats have been demanding that it be released in its entirety. Last month, Attorney General William Barr wrote a four-page summary of that report to Congress, which said that Mueller found no proof that Trump or his campaign had colluded with Russian agents during the 2016 election.

Barr also said that Mueller reached no conclusion on obstruction of justice, but that the report didn't exonerate Trump. Fallout continues after Congresswoman Ilan Omar said some people did something in regards to 9-11 while speaking at a conference for the Council on American Islamic Relations last month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.S. Capitol Police and the House Sergeant at Arms are now conducting a security assessment to safeguard the Congresswoman, her family, and staff after she said she's faced threats following the remarks. prominent Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, are standing by Omar and blaming President Trump for, quote, inciting violence, unquote, after he shared an edited video of Omar superimposed over images of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. We will never forget, the president wrote on Twitter. Democrats, including Pelosi, are demanding President Trump removed the video, but thus far, he's not relented. On Monday, Trump doubled down, tweeting,

Before Nancy, who has lost all control of Congress and is getting nothing done, decides to defend her leader, Rep Omar, she should look at the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and ungrateful U.S. hate statements Omar has made. She is out of control except for her control of Nancy. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Venezuelan refugees over the weekend in Colombia. Pompeo was on a four-day trip to South America aimed at ramping up pressure on Nicholas. Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator holding on to power. Pompeo went to a migrant center in the border town of Cucuta, along with the Colombian president. Some 3.4 million Venezuelans have now fled the country amid hyperinflation and a collapsing economy. Pompeo urged Maduro to lift a military blockade that's been blocking aid coming into the country. He said the U.S. would

use all economic and political tools at its disposal to see that Maduro is held accountable, and that Cuba and Russia would pay a price for supporting him. Well, will Congress finally do something to address the illegal immigration crisis happening at our southern border? The answer is yes if Senator Lindsey Graham has anything to do with it. The South Carolina Republican shared his immigration plan during an interview with Fox News on Sunday. The president has correctly identified the crisis at the border. Now it's time to have a legislative solution. you need to change our laws for this to stop.

Graham said he plans to introduce a new immigration proposal that would change asylum laws, fix the florist settlement that says you can only hold a minor child for 20 days and enable children from Central America to be sent back home. Graham is hopeful Democrats will work with him on this compromise and said he'll put together the legislative package once Congress returns to Washington, D.C. from its recess on April 29th. While a tragic scene in Paris shocked the world on Monday, the historic Notre Dame Cathedral was engulfed in flames.

The cathedral's roof caught fire and raged into the evening, and then the spire and part of the roof collapsed. The cause of the fire is still unknown, but we do know that the damage is extensive. A spokesman for the cathedral said, quote, everything is burning. Nothing will remain from the frame, end quote. French President Emmanuel Macron mourned the devastation in a tweet saying, Notre Dame of Paris in flames, emotion of a whole nation, thoughts for all Catholics and for all French. Like all our compatriots, I'm sad tonight to see this part of us burn, end quote. Notre Dame is over 800 years old and one of the most iconic sites of Gothic architecture in the world.

It's also home to countless works of art. Well, up next, Alexandra Hudson shares from her new book project on America's Crisis of Civility. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Well, we're joined now by a good friend of mine, Alexandra Hudson. She is a writer who lives in Indianapolis, a former employee for the Secretary of Education here in Washington, D.C. She is a published author in the Wall Street Journal, Quillette, Commentary Magazine, Washington Examiner, and, of course, The Daily Signal. You may have noticed a piece that she wrote a few months ago reviewing a book by Senator Ben Sass. Alexandra, thanks for being back in the studio.

Thank you for having me. So we're here to talk about a subject of a book that you're currently working to write. And I look forward to hopefully having you back once it's on the bookshelves. But the book is about civility. And you're pointing out a lot of the problems in our current society and putting our day in context, in the context of American history. First question for you on this. I mean, I think a lot of people would easily admit that we live in a day where there's a lot of toxic rhetoric and, you know, bitter divisions that we maybe didn't feel were as severe 10 to 15 years ago. What's changed in the last 10 to 15 years?

It's gotten it so bad. Yeah, it's a good question. So it's true that it often feels like our current moment is the most uncivil. And frankly, that's often because our current moment is the one that we live in and are affected by the most. And memories fade. And we weren't around, you know, at our founding era, 150 years ago when, frankly, there was just as much in civility, maybe different in civility. But it's probably wrong to think that our current moment is necessarily the most uncivil in our American history. But there have been two things that have changed markedly, especially in the last 10, 15 years to your question. One is the prevalence of social media and this kind of democratization of access to the internet and these social networking sites that allow us to be more interconnected in a way that was previously impossible.

And why that is important to the development of the understanding that our or the feeling that our current moment is more uncivil than past areas is because this allows one person's offensive opinion to all of a sudden go viral around the world. And so there's more opportunity for one individual or one group of people to both offend and for people to be offended by all of a sudden these ideas proliferating and gaining traction in them and just being spread instantaneously in seconds via by the internet and these social networking sites. So that's one reason that contributes to our current, current instability or a feeling of instability. And a second is as our current moment has become increasingly polarized, which has been documented. over the last, you know, a few decades. It's not just, you know, it just didn't happen overnight. But it seems like our public leaders care less and less about civility or respecting the fundamental humanity and personhood of our fellow citizens and our fellow, you know, fellow Americans as, as less of an ideal to strive for. And it becomes more and more kind of apocalyptic,

you know, winning at any cost and having someone and, and frankly, feeling justified in, in attacking someone personally or something about their background, so to score rhetorical points with, you know, with one's supporters. And so those are two notable differences that I think demarcate us from past eras and contribute to this feeling that we live in the most in civil era. And it's certain, those are certainly, you know, problems that we should think seriously about. So on social media, it obviously, I mean, anyone who looks at Facebook or Twitter can see the inscivility. But I'm curious as to why you think that is, because I know at Daily Signal, we thought that in our comments boxes that if folks had to use their real name, they would be more civil.

And so for a while, we had comments by Facebook where most people do use their real name. It did not improve the comments. So that sort of took out, although we have many wonderful comments. who are probably furious at the annoying trolls. But anyway, so obviously even when using their real names, people seem to be comfortable on social media with a different level of aggressiveness when they would be in offline life.

And why do you think that that is? That's a great question. And other outlets also have experimented with attaching people's actual identity to commenting YouTube has done that as well. And I think they had a little bit more success than you guys did. So sorry about that. Yeah, exactly. That's true.

that's true. But I think the really salient contributing factor to that is the depersonalized depersonalization of communicating online versus in person. Like you're not looking at the person you're criticizing and calling horrible names in the eye and in the face. And it's easier to do that when you're not looking someone in the eye and confronted with their humanity and the fact that they're not so dissimilar from you. And so that's, And of course, the Internet is here and not going away, and it's important to, you know, for us to all think about that, how do we keep the humanity of our, you know, political opponents and enemies on this new forum of public discourse, the Internet and Twitter and Facebook in mind when we are engaging in these different platforms and not find it easy to dismiss or neglect to recognize their humanity when we do engage in that way. Yeah, that's so true. I mean, when you comment on whether it's a thread or some YouTube video or something, goodness, you.

YouTube. I mean, that's just a whole different realm of awfulness in terms of comments. It creates like a new different, kind of like a false world, right? It's not real. I mean, it feels like it's not real. It is two people on opposite sides of a computer kind of, you know, commenting toward each other, but they're not acting as though they're really doing that. It's almost like a fake forum. So it really does distort our interactions. And it's, I have a friend who calls it, who's written about it. It calls it keyboard courage that we have the courage to lash out at each other from behind a keyboard. But that actually when you encounter someone face to face, even if they're super different and maybe even hostile, that there's a lot more of that you encounter the humanity there. That's right.

But I want to ask you about how this relates to our democracy because your book is going to be about civility and American democracy in particular. Why is it so important to have civility for democracy to actually work? Yeah, thank you for asking that question. So my book does look at the intersection of the importance of civility to our uniquely American context and American history and particularly our American institutions, Democratic institutions. And my argument is threefold that civility is how we live out are all men is created equal. All men are created equal creed in our Declaration of Independence. So, you know, about promoting social equality that is central to the American. experiment. It promotes tolerance, you know, by refocusing the, by refocusing on the, you know, our common, our common humanity and seeing that, you know, we have more in common with our fellow citizens more than that which divides us, having that be what informs a more tolerant way of engaging in the world, that the differences aren't things to be minimized, but resources to be mined. And, you know, our strength, our founding motto is a pluribus unum, you know,

out of many one that our strength lies in our diversity and, um, in culture and opinion. And so, and thirdly, that civility is necessary to sustain our regime of, of limited government. That our government can only be limited if, if a citizen exercise self-governance. And when we, and that self-governance is, um, civility is self-governance in the every day. in the micro level, at the individual person-to-person level, which is the fundamental building block to our civil society, this important buttress and foiled to our governmental or democratic institutions. And so as we lose civility, you know, our democracy is threatened because of these three ways.

So do you think people, I think a lot of people say they want civility. But then, you know, we've seen more and more cable news has become. you know, he says this, she says that, sort of almost like a fight. And the ratings seem to be doing well when they do that. That's right. So do you think people actually don't want civility? Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think you put your finger right on this sort of inherent tension between the social media era and the talk news show era where it seems like the loudest, the most bombastic, the most inflammatory and controversial. gets the most retweets, the most likes, the most, you know, hate clicks and shares. And that's the

business model of our current media culture. And how that's like very much intention with calm and reasoned, you know, civil discourse that our democracy needs to survive. And as we, you know, pursue truth in the common good together in a pluralistic society. And so in terms of what we do about that. You know, the people that we should be following on Facebook and watching and listening to and reading, like, we don't know about them because they don't do the kind of things that others do to kind of get the viral, the notoriety and the, and so, but there are good people out there.

There are good, you know, scholars and commentators. And so there is this tension. And it behooves us as readers to be edified by seeking these people out, even though they're not kind of at the top of the, you know, 24-hour news cycle. But we should be encouraged that they do exist and support them with our time. Yeah. Well, do you think part of the problem might be that, you know, conflict has become a source of entertainment, right? It's that we really take for granted in our country that we can have conflict without having civil war. or violence, that that's not going to happen here, maybe in some foreign country, you know,

where they don't have the rule of law. But we just take it for granted here. And so we just, you know, shoot tweets at each other and have, you know, internet conflict with, really with no fear of consequences. I wonder if we had real, like, you know, real scary kind of conflict in this country, if people would begin to consider civility as really an essential tool of politics. That's right. That's exactly right. That it holds people, it holds, you know, you've got a fragmented society, people with different interests, people with different worldviews, and civility is kind of like grease on the wheels that helps things actually work. Yeah. And I mean, it's a really good point that, you know, if we look at eras in American history, where verbal violence didn't stay,

verbal violence for very long. And, you know, we were talking earlier about the caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor. This is just three years before the outbreak of the Civil War. And Sumner was one of the, he was a Republican, incredible proponent of the anti-sla, the abolitionist position. And he did not mince his words in going after, you know, the character of the slave owner and how the institution of slavery was, you know, a weakness and antithetical to our democracy and he, you know, spoke truth to power in that way and wasn't, you know, civil in the traditional sense. And I think it's important to distinguish between civility and politeness in that way where civility, you know, respects person, someone enough to tell them that

that they're wrong, you know, and doesn't patronize them by kind of smoothing over differences of agreement and opinion. But, you know, Simner suffered for that, you know, he was attacked from behind by Parson Brooks. a senator from North Carolina, I think he was. Yeah, I think a House member, but yeah. Oh, was it a House member? Yeah, just because I remember that struck me that it was so interesting, a House member attacked a senator.

Okay. It's the eternal rivalry. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Not usually this far. Yeah. But, and then, so we have this outbreak of violence on the Senate floor, and then within a few years we have our whole country at, you know, and hanging in the balance, essentially,

North versus South and, you know, 400,000 Americans dead in the wake of that conflict. And so it is, you know, looking at history in that way, it can both be an encouragement. You know, we've been here before. What can we learn from it? But also a caution, you know, like the stakes are high. They've been high before and they're high again, and we ought not diminish that. So I think some people, when you talk about civility, I think there are some people who would say, you know, civility is good. but what we need right now, maybe civility has been a protector of the status quo.

That they see civility as people who cry for civility are really just trying to protect the powers that be and that there are people that have been stomped on and they need their voices to be heard. And so in order to break through that, we need, you know, civility is good in general, but maybe right now we need someone who just kind of does straight talk and truth to power. So obviously in politics, you've got to have room for that. You've got to have room for someone who's going to bluntly jump in and speak the truth. Yes. How, you know, if you're speaking to a new politician, maybe a new member of the house who's in town, won't name names, AOC, you know, who wants to be a straight talker.

How do you think they should do that while also being civil? Is that impossible? Yeah. That's a great question. And before I answer that one, I want to just touch on something you mentioned briefly about how people think civility is, you know, a means of keeping those in power and in control, like allowing them to stay in those positions of privilege. And in my research of the history of civility, both in the American context and also kind of the broader world context, I think that what we suffer

from is a case of misdefinition. And because, frankly, in the history of civility, there have been these two distinct strands and how civility has been used. And I'm familiar with this. I just reviewed a history of English civility Civility in English modern era for the Claremont Review of Books by an historian called Keith Thomas, which is an incredible book that anyone interested in this should

take a look at. But basically he shows how civility was it's kind of actually starts in the Renaissance where there's this rampant rediscovery of classical Greco-Roman texts and which got people thinking, okay, you know, what is civilization?

and how ought a person, a citizen of a civilization, conduct themselves. And it was a marked shift. And that's where we get this proliferation of etiquette and mannerism. Because prior to that, there was no real concept of civility. Like people ate with their hands and belched in public and, you know, defecated on the street corner. It didn't matter if your nobility or not. Like everyone, you know, that was just the way things were. You didn't feel any need to control your impulses.

in that way. And so after the Renaissance, after there is this market shift, especially in the elite classes, they begin to look down on people that hadn't made that shift, you know, to intentionally control their impulses and desires and learn how to use a fork and, you know, chew with their mouth closed. And we get a proliferation of all these rules in different forms. And civility gets used as a means of distinguishing between social classes and between other countries and we hear a lot about the civility and in the history of colonialism, like, you know, people couching colonialism is, oh, we have to do a, we're doing a favor. We're to civilize these, you know, quote unquote savages, these barbaric nations. So that's one strand of civility where

it's, you know, used as a language that divides. Yeah, kind of a condescending stability. Exactly. I've made this change. Like, you know, you are not like me and therefore I'm civilized and you are not. But there's this other strand of civility that is, is more founded on our on our common humanity. And the, you know, scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam and a lot of the Renaissance, Christian Renaissance humanists use the phrase humanitatus, where, and this is in, you know,

1,0001 nights, the character of Sinbad. This is Odysseus, where we get these narratives, these stories, these ethics of hospitality, of kindness to the stranger, someone that's not from your, you know, your town or your place, but you're going to show kindness and benevolence and charity to them, based on your shared humanity.

And that strand leads right through to today. And so part of my project is recovering that strand of civility and reviving it and disassociating. Like saying, you know, today we think of Catillion or dinner jackets or how to use a fork as civility. Right. Let's just call those class markers. Let's not call those civility at all and recover a definition of civility that is more useful, the one that is an ideal actually to strive for in our current moment. Interesting. So maybe if I can get you to just turn to the politician then who wants to just, you know, jump right into Congress and say what's true and who cares what, you know, I don't care who thinks badly about me. I'm just going to say what's true. How can that be done?

Yeah. Civilly. Is that even possible? I absolutely think it is. It's definitely possible to have a conversation with someone you deeply, deeply disagree with on first principles or on a myriad of policy issues. And but still, you know, not attack their family or their personal, you know, shortcomings or like these ad hominem attacks. Like keep it elevated to the level of ideas and the difference is a policy and don't make it personal. And, you know, modeling that, that fundamental respect for your fellow citizens and our shared humanity at that level is essential because it does have a trickle down effect, whether we want to realize it or not. Okay, well, thanks so much for joining us, Alexandra. Thanks so much for having me. That'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please give us a review or rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you on Wednesday. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.