Category: Civility

“Hate” is a Crutch

Posted on | by hr | Leave a Comment on “Hate” is a Crutch

I am confident that people who know me in real life will tell you that, while I exhibit at least the usual complement of flaws, odd quirks, and irritating peccadilloes, being hateful is not numbered among them. That’s probably because I’ve been fortunate, and can’t think of anyone who has seriously wronged me or wronged someone I love. Hate simply isn’t an emotion I experience, and the word is not one I use.

I would like to believe that this is true of most people — that they don’t really feel hate much, if at all — and that the word is simply too casually used.

Certainly it is overused. It has become a convenience for some to label a difference of opinion as an expression of hate. This hurts everyone, simultaneously undermining the language, denigrating the person or group so labeled, and forestalling any possibility of discussion and understanding.

We can disagree about even important matters without hate being a factor. We can favor open borders or controlled borders, high minimum wages or no minimum wages, legal same-sex marriage or only traditional marriage, socialism or free markets, free abortion or no abortion — any of these extremes or anything in-between. We can vote Democrat or Republican, have Bernie stickers on our cars or wear Make America Great Again hats, embrace a rainbow of sexual promiscuity or prudishly advocate abstinence, fully accept the apocalyptic claims of the global warming alarmists or be skeptical of their science or the policies they advocate, be an enthusiastic supporter of the trans movement or think it’s a bunch of faddish nonsense, oppose the private ownership of guns or be a pro-gun fanatic in favor of no regulation at all.

None of these positions requires that someone be hateful, and it’s small-minded, presumptuous, and rude behavior to ascribe hate to someone simply because he or she disagrees with your position on these issues — or, indeed, on the vast majority of issues.

I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t hate: how much of your life you want to devote to hating is your business, not mine. I’m saying you shouldn’t accuse other people of hating based on something as superficial as their opinions on topics about which you happen to think differently.

By far, most of the claims of “hate” I hear and read suggest more to me about the person making the claim than about the ostensibly hateful object of the accusation. I think it most often reveals that the accuser is shallow, lacks self-awareness and empathy, is uncharitable, and/or cynically uses the ugly label to silence people whose arguments he or she is unwilling or unable to engage.

Too readily smearing others as “haters” seems itself almost… well, it certainly isn’t an act of love.

Hat talk: the rest of the story

Posted on | by hr | 3 Comments on Hat talk: the rest of the story

While my night on the town began, as related here, at Starbucks, it didn’t end there — nor did it continue in precisely the same vein of tolerance and understanding.

A few hours after I left the iconic cafe with my bag of free coffee and attended a family dinner, I ended up in a local bar doing what I do in bars: acting as designated driver and herder of tipsy friends. I am widely valued for my public temperance, my modestly imposing physical presence, and my capacious vehicle. (I drink, but only moderately and always at home. )

As I sat at a table watching my friends and the other patrons and nursing my third Diet Coke, a youngish woman appeared at my elbow and began talking. She informed me that she was a nurse, that she saw a lot of early-onset dementia, and that she thought people didn’t appreciate how big a problem it is.

(No, I didn’t take it personally: whatever doubts I may occasionally have about my own grip on reality, I do a pretty good job of keeping my peccadilloes under wraps. She was obviously just making conversation with this rakishly good-looking fellow trying — unsuccessfully, apparently — to keep counsel with his own thoughts amidst the noise of a crowded bar.)

I didn’t say much in response, beyond periodic sympathetic noises and an occasional attempt to soften her more hard-edged observations. She thought people live too long and didn’t approve of that; I suggested that we die too long, but that it seemed understandable that we might cling tenaciously to life for ourselves and encourage our loved ones to do the same. But I agreed that senility and dementia were sad and difficult challenges, whether occurring in the geriatric crowd or among my own relatively youthful cohort.

Despite her incipient intoxication, she noticed that I seemed to have a hard time hearing her, and she commented on the volume in the bar. I told her that I have a slight hearing deficiency (true), the product, I believe, of too many years riding motorcycles, scuba-diving, and shooting guns (also true).

“Do you like guns?” she asked me.

“I love them.”

“Do you have a MAGA hat?” From her tone, I took the question to be intended humorously.

“I do. It’s in the car,” I answered. As, in fact, it was.

That’s when the ugliness of the passionately uninformed revealed itself.

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” she said, sounding sincerely perplexed. “You listened so politely while I was talking.”

What went through my head at that moment was almost precisely this:

“You little idiot. Sixty million people voted for Donald Trump. Do you think they’re all such mean-spirited intolerant wretches that they can’t listen to someone talk about the challenges of managing dementia in the hospitalized elderly without feeling compelled to give vent to their inherent misogyny and/or fascist tendencies? What kind of bubble do you live in?”

That’s what I thought. What I said was that I didn’t understand why that would surprise her.

I listened to her prattle on for another little bit. She wanted to educate me on the “truth” about abortion law, but I told her I was pretty knowledgeable about it already, and that she and I probably wouldn’t agree. Then she told me about her “ex-boyfriend” who was recently arrested for sexual misconduct, though she thinks he’s been falsely accused. Seriously. She couldn’t have teed it up better if she’d tried, but I let it go: don’t argue with foolish people, and particularly with drunk foolish people. (Friends who know of the incident later assured me that she’s mistaken, and that the fellow in question is pretty awful.) 

I don’t know how many on the left share this silly woman’s bigoted assumptions about the half of America that voted for the Republican. I do know that, when I wear the hat, I make a special effort to be pleasant. I’d like to think that, by being unexpectedly nice, I’m responsible for a little painful cognitive dissonance, a little uncomfortable opening of smug little minds. Certainly, that’s my hope.

One of Those Parenting Moments

Posted on | by hr | 1 Comment on One of Those Parenting Moments

I don’t get many late-night calls from my children. I don’t get many calls from them at all, really: they’re pretty independent, and they’ve put up with years of me talking to them and at them. I can forgive them for not wanting to volunteer for yet another lecture on whatever political or cultural issue is my current obsession. (Having put up with me for years, many of you can probably relate to that.)

Parents understandably dread the late-night call. So when my 19 year old daughter, my youngest child, called me from college an hour ago, my first words upon answering were “is everything okay?”

Everything was fine. More than fine: this was one of those rare and delightful moments of parental affirmation, when your kid decides that maybe you were right all along.

She was walking home from a guest lecture by Jonathan Haidt. His topics were largely those covered in his latest book, The Coddling of the American Mind: the social justice movement and the related and debilitating hypersensitivities of gen-Z (or whatever we’re calling the current crop of college students), the negative impact of safe spaces and social media, and the way our obsession with safety has created fragile, vulnerable young people unable to deal with conflict or consider alternative views.

She enjoyed the lecture, which she says was well received, and she stayed on the phone for almost an hour telling me about it — and this a girl from whom I’m lucky to get three texts a week.

But what I loved best was when she told me, in her characteristically frank, even blunt way, that the speaker said the things she’d heard from me for years, and that it felt good to her to hear them affirmed by someone of his stature and reputation — in short, that maybe Dad wasn’t as crazy as she and her brothers had always agreed he was.

Ah, sweet vindication.

Marching and Talking, Actions and Words

Posted on | by hr | Leave a Comment on Marching and Talking, Actions and Words

My friend Susan Quinn wrote a post recently suggesting a Men’s and Women’s March as a way of re-acknowledging the differences between men and women and re-asserting support for a more traditional understanding of our respective roles. I commented on it, and rained on her parade more than I probably should have, since there’s absolutely nothing wrong with showing support for traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity — shoot, that’s a pet topic of mine. I let my general lack of enthusiasm for public events, and my suspicion that the press would be able to spin such an event in a way that makes it counter-productive, color my comments, and perhaps too much.

There’s room for all kinds of action, all kinds of ways of reaching people with a message. I’m a cantankerous old crank who doesn’t like joining things, but if this inspires you, by all means pursue it. We need everyone contributing in the way he or she feels is best. Go out, make a joyful noise, and spread the word. It’s a worthy cause, and I wish you well.

But that conversation got me thinking about the cultural clash between right and left, conservative and radical, and about the most productive way to meet our cultural opposition in the battle for ideas. It occurred to me, and not for the first time, that the left avoids debate and the discussion of ideas whenever possible. The left is most often about theater, about waving a sign and coining a slogan and drowning out the conversation.

The left thrives in environments where ideas flow in one direction: universities, the press, television, entertainment, protests and mass events. That makes sense: a lot of the left’s ideas don’t stand up to scrutiny and won’t survive a thoughtful challenge; many of their proponents barely understand their own ideas and can’t defend them. Cold facts and figures are not as important as feelings — and in particular as the strong feelings of anger, resentment, outrage, and fear.

Rallies are good for building moral, and sometimes they actually educate people. I was involved in the TEA Party movement in its early days, and I thought the rallies were uplifting and productive. The March for Life is a beautiful and inspirational event, and I applaud the many thousands who take part.

But I think we should focus our greatest attention on confronting the left in the realm of ideas. They own the protest space; they enjoy clashes and confrontation and the noise that silences their critics. That’s what they do best — indeed, it’s all they do well. They excel at loud and meaningless action, and the appearance of righteousness they think it gives them.

We own the battlefield of ideas, where substance matters more than slogans. Most of us step on to the battlefield every single day, and have opportunities to speak up — calmly, thoughtfully, politely — and present a new perspective, perhaps change a mind. We’re all competing for the same minds. We have the advantage that we can actually engage those minds in thoughtful conversation, and impress them with our reasonableness. We should press that advantage at every opportunity.

More Tolerance, Please

Posted on | by hr | 4 Comments on More Tolerance, Please

The more significant the disagreement, the more important it is that something as easily settled as the meaning of the words we use not prevent us from having a civil discussion. There are many real and important things about which we differ; our words should not be counted among them.

The word “tolerance” implies disagreement. After all, we are never asked to tolerate something of which we approve. Rather, we’re asked to tolerate things that we don’t necessarily like. Approval and tolerance are two different things, and asking someone to approve of something is not the same as asking them to tolerate it.

For example, I don’t approve of people swearing in public, but I tolerate it.

What does it mean to tolerate something? I’ll offer this simple definition: tolerance means that you would allow something even if you had the practical authority to prevent it.

So, back to my example: even if I had the authority to prevent people from swearing in public, I wouldn’t use it. I am tolerant of swearing in public, even though I don’t like it.

Please note that I’m not talking about changing what people think, making them believe what I believe and so do what I’d like them to do. That isn’t something accomplished through authority, but rather through persuasion and the exchange of ideas and viewpoints. We must, of necessity, “tolerate” what people think and believe, because there is no authority, real or imagined, which can compel others to believe what we believe. Nor, I would argue, should there be, as that would violate our most private right of conscience.

I believe strongly that people should be free, free to express their ideas and to live their lives with a reasonable minimum of restriction, free to approve or disapprove of whatever they want. We all have opinions, and sometimes strong ones, about what makes sense, what is true, and what is good for people. We should be free to express our approval or disapproval. That isn’t the same as tolerating or not tolerating.

I tolerate expression of approval and disapproval, even when I don’t agree with them.

Smoking, swearing in public, yelling at your kids in Wal-Mart, self-identifying as the wrong sex, hooking up, Gender Studies departments, cross-country skiing, blue-grass music, white-supremacist talk, black-supremacist talk, made-up pronouns, anti-semitic talk, Islam, decaf coffee, omitting the Oxford comma — there are a lot of things of which I don’t approve, but which I will tolerate.

I would like to ask my friends on the left to name a few things which they tolerate, but of which they do not approve. I wonder what they would answer. Because my impression is that many on the left use “tolerance” as a synonym for “approval.” And, when you tolerate only those things of which you approve, you really tolerate nothing at all.

[At Least] Two Americas

Posted on | by hr | Leave a Comment on [At Least] Two Americas

In one America, people are online and informed. Whether they’re well and accurately informed is another matter entirely: journalistic standards appear to be all but nonexistent, and social media and the internet in general are a swirling maelstrom of confirmation bias and venomous hostility. Left-wing opinion writers masquerade as dispassionate reporters; radicals dominate our universities; and activists of every stripe parade across the country’s stage with their claims of increasingly implausible grievances.

In this America, the anger and the outrage and the offense are ubiquitous, inescapable: no claim is too outlandish, no evidence too inadequate, to render it unworthy of reporting — if the right (i.e., right) ox is gored. This is an angry, divided America.

The other America is substantially larger, and substantially less informed about the offense du jour. Sure, that America knows the President is a monster: that truth is in the air and water by now, along with the certain knowledge that he is a Russian… something… bent on repealing the First Amendment. Everyone knows, thanks to media saturation and pop-cultural osmosis, that these things must be true. But, honestly, it’s such a bore, the way some people go on endlessly about it, the way it creeps into their Facebook feeds and dominates late-night television.

This America knows it’s divided. How can it not — it hears it every day. People in this America figure, sensibly enough, that somewhere out there a civil war must be raging. It isn’t here, not where they live. Where they live, everyone seems to get along pretty well: there are no masked antifa freedom-fighters breaking shop windows, no loudmouth activists shouting down dangerously conservative speakers, no riots of any sort. People just go on living, earning and spending money, changing jobs (which is a lot easier than it used to be, by the way), raising their kids, and watching blockbuster super-hero movies.

The country is in a civil war, this America is told. Hard to believe, its people think — but they made the mistake of popping onto Twitter once, so they know the mayhem and bloodshed is real.

On the other hand, they think, Friends is on Netflix, and — peaking out the front window into the empty streets — things seem peaceful enough. And the kids are upstairs sleeping…. Maybe, it sometimes occurs to people in this America, they aren’t the crazy ones.

Toward a Deeper Civility

Posted on | by hr | 3 Comments on Toward a Deeper Civility

From a President who often seems mean-spirited and petty, to angry mobs threatening their opponents with bodily harm, to smugly superior journalists and entertainers preaching their bottomless contempt to a Pavlovian audience of unthinking conformists, the observation that much of our national conversation is mired in incivility and vulgarity seems undeniable.

Whether or not this is new is debatable. Heated political exchanges are nothing new; yellow journalism and intemperate pundits are not a 21st century phenomenon, nor even a 20th. What seems likely is that the scope of incivility has increased, upward to the President and Congress, downward to every citizen with a microphone or Twitter account. Partly this is the product of greater participation: when everyone has a voice, a lot of people with nothing useful to say will nonetheless say it loudly.

In such a heated atmosphere, it’s difficult to resist joining in, piling on. I’ve certainly fallen prey to the temptation, as much as I try to resist it. We should all make a greater effort to slow down and dial back the outrage, focus more on ideas than on individuals, spend more time trying to understand each other than scoring points with barbed comments and cheap wit. If civil society is what we want, we should try to be more broadly civil.

But there’s another aspect to civility, one less obvious than a rude tweet or a vulgar stand-up journalist comic. This is respect for alternative viewpoints — at least, for those that are not obviously far outside the bounds of humanity and decency, or wildly irrational. This is deep civility, the willingness not only to be reasonably gracious in one’s discourse, but also sincerely thoughtful in one’s engagement with ideas.

This kind of deep civility is difficult for both conservatives and radicals, for those wary of change and for those enthusiastic for it. But it’s the kind of civility that will be required if we hope to become more broadly decent, because the casual disrespect for ideas and beliefs is the engine that drives the rage we see.

Those on the right, who value tradition and are skeptical, wary, fearful, or otherwise resistant to change should keep in mind what they know to be true: that the old ways aren’t always the best ways. More importantly, they must not assume that those with radical ideas are bent on destruction, or that their desire to effect change is evidence of a wish to tear down the civilized world and introduce barbarism. Whatever one thinks of the virtue of the ideas they espouse, one should try to credit them with decent motives and engage them accordingly.

Those on the left, who are eager for change and confident that the change will be good, should honestly face the reality that change brings inherent risk, that unintended consequences often lead to unexpected and undesirable — and sometimes catastrophic — outcomes. More importantly, they should keep in mind that those who oppose them are not consumed by hatred and a desire to return to an ignoble past, but rather by a wish to preserve and defend what they sincerely believe is good.

I am a man of the right. As long as hatred, bigotry, and small-mindedness are the motives imputed to me because of the views I hold, I must struggle to assume the decency of those with whom I disagree. But I do believe that most people — left and right — are decent; that everyone I know personally is a decent person who wants to make the world better, and that that’s true of most people; and that the ugliness we see springs more from human frailty and imperfection than from malice.

Perhaps the most destructive word introduced into our popular lexicon is hate. It’s time to be a little more charitable in our assessment of motives, so that we can discuss the worthiness of ideas rather than attacking the people who hold them.