Civility Battles Left and Right

As I've mentioned before, when I tell people about depolarization initiatives like those of Better Angels, I usually get one of two responses. Some say, That's awesome! We gotta get past hating each other. Others say, Miss me with that civility crap.

I get where the latter view comes from. As plenty of people have pointed out, civility is often a cudgel used to tone-police marginalized folk into not complaining so much about their marginalization. Naive or insincere appeals to figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., or Ghandi--see? They knew that incivility gets you nowhere!--overlook the elements of provocation and coercion that got their nonviolent campaigns results. (Most Americans in the 1960s did not see King as approvingly civil.) In the face of extremist misinformation and propaganda, in the face of emergencies caused by horrific governmental acts, tut-tutting activists to be more civil comes off as rationalizing pure evil.

I find it helpful, though, to note how a version of this same debate convulses those on the other side of the political divide from me. Within my blue/progressive/left bubble, I can all too easily fall into patterns where I over-exaggerate differences between "us" and "them," oversimplifying how complicated and heterogeneous "they" are. I like to think that my side's debates are more philosophically sophisticated and morally complex. In truth, similar patterns of activist discourse persist across social movements regardless of ideology.

Recently, National Review writer David French came in for some searing criticism by Sohrab Ahmari in First Things. In his piece, "Against David French-ism," Ahmari rejects what he considers a politics of niceness and coexistence (for which he posits French as avatar) as unsuited to the current political climate:

Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism. Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral. To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty.

What we (conservatives) need, Ahmari argues, is "to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good."

French responded promptly, decrying the strawman "David French" Ahmari manufactures and reasserting an unyielding support for respecting individual rights in every stage of political conflict.  Ahmari is right, French concedes, about one thing: "I do not see politics as war, and while enmity exists, I seek to lessen it, not fan the flames." French then recalls a speech he gave shortly before deploying to Iraq in 2007. At the time, he said that the two biggest threats to the US were "university leftists at home and jihadists abroad." He writes, "Looking back, I’m ashamed I said it. It was fundamentally wrong, as I quickly learned during my deployment." University politics, he reflects, proved an utterly different world than actual theatres of war. He concludes thus:

My political opponents are my fellow citizens. When I wore the uniform of my country, I was willing to die for them. Why would I think I’m at war with them now? I disagree with the Left and much of the populist Right, vigorously. If and when any of my political opponents seek to undermine our fundamental freedoms, I’ll be there to pick a legal, political, and cultural fight with them. I won’t yield. I won’t stop. I won’t be weak. But I also won’t turn my back on the truths of scripture. I won’t stop seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly. There is no political “emergency” that justifies abandoning classical liberalism, and there will never be a temporal emergency that justifies rejecting the eternal truth.

The Ahmari/French debate soon became a flashpoint in conservative media, with various pundits staking out different positions pro- or anti-French. I find the pro-French arguments more appealing, and many of French's defenders on the right offer arguments I think relevant to left-wing civility discussions. In particular, National Review writer Charles C. Cooke starts his criticism of Ahmari with the following:

One of my biggest problems with the worldview that Sohrab Ahmari outlines . . . is that it gets extremely fuzzy when it reaches the questions, “What do we actually want?” and “How do we intend to get there?” Ahmari says he wants to “fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.” Okay. But what does that actually mean in practice? What does a “defeated enemy” look like? By what mechanism is the “public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good”? Which “public square”? — there are many in America. And what is the “common good and ultimately the Highest Good”? Who decides? Ahmari? The Pope? Nicolás Maduro?

Cooke, in other words, brings up the question of the endgame, the goals of Ahmari's war. After you win, what? This is a question I ask myself about my progressive/left goals quite a bit, even and especially when I'm drowning in despair-alarm-adrenaline at X or Y latest emergency. Yes, please, immediately, without delay, fix the concentration camp scenario at the border. Stop stripping children from their families. Stop confining people in inhumane conditions.

But also recognize that something else--something other than panicked reaction--must follow that response. And that something else, it seems to me, cannot be an all-out war against political enemies.

Ahmari is right, I think, to remind us that civility is a second-order virtue. It's a means to an end, not an end itself. But so too is anger-driven militarism. We don't fight activist battles because fighting is in itself good. We fight because we want to achieve other ideals like equality, liberty, and dignity for all. If we can achieve those ideals at all or even better through some other route than pure battle, surely that's the path we should take.

That's not so easy, though. In practice, battle mentality creates its own perverse incentives.

More tomorrow,

JF