Politics

Sure, the state of public discourse in the United States has become most uncivil, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

A Spokane conference titled “Civility and American Democracy” quickly became an extended discussion of this central question, when scholars from across the nation gathered at the Riverpoint Campus on Friday.

The conference is presented by the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University, in association with Humanities Washington and the Idaho Humanities Council.

It is one of four conferences nationwide supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to explore how society’s conceptions of civility have evolved and how they relate to political power.

The scholars pointed out that while there have been other times in our nation’s history when civility reached depths at least as low, rarely has politics become so polarized that a congressman’s vote can be predicted with more than 90 percent accuracy based on party affiliation.

In his keynote address on Thursday night, Yale University law professor and author Stephen L. Carter said his father told him that politics is not so much about results, but how you reach those results.

“I don’t mind particularly insults,” Carter said. “I just think they should be clever.”

Friday’s sessions covered civility in history, religion, art and architecture, philosophy and ethics, as well as communication and media.

“Civility is a high value,” said Paul Boyer, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “But perhaps there are moments when it is not the highest value.”

Boyer and other historians at the conference cited abolition, the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War as instances where incivility served a higher purpose.

Amanda Porterfield, professor of religion and history at Florida State University, said incivility is appropriate when it pushes aside obstacles to discourse, but bad when it gets in the way of discourse.

Today’s incivility – amplified by a 24-hour news cycle and angry talk show hosts – is accompanied by a dramatic decline in trust of media, said Russell Dalton, professor of political science at the University of California at Irvine.

He said many of his students get their news from Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” who appears to be a voice of moderation at a time of increasing incivility even on the floor of Congress.

“What does it mean when our statesmen act like comedians and our comedians act like statesmen?” Dalton asked.

Ideas generated by the conference, which continues today in private workshops, will be incorporated in a public information campaign by the National Endowment for the Humanities.