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Prologue
- Temple University Press
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Prologue S hould civility govern public discourse and the conduct of citizens? This seemingly simple question sparked fierce debate in response to incendiary statements about Jared loughner’s infamous shooting spree in a suburb near Tucson, Arizona, on January 8, 2011. nineteen people were shot, and six of them died, including Chief Judge John roll and nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green. Among those injured was Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Although the attack, the latest in a decades-long rash of mass shootings , reignited familiar discussions about gun control, what was unusual about it was civility’s sudden and surprising centrality. After all, the lone, crazed shooter is usually singled out as the cause. Civility has little, if anything, to do with the narrative shaped by the moral discourse on mass shootings. However, critics pointed out that nearly a year earlier, former vice presidential candidate sarah Palin’s “Crosshairs” map on Facebook had targeted Democrats such as Giffords and could therefore be construed as an incitement to violence.1 Although loughner appeared to be a disturbed man, his hostility toward Giffords’s views was well known. While the debate on civility was not explicitly framed within the terms of immigration, a few commentators noted that Giffords drew attention for her opposition to Arizona ’s notoriously punitive immigration law.2 The standard madman theory of mass shootings, which was confirmed several months later in may 2011, when loughner was declared unfit to stand trial, was nevertheless complicated by this possible political motivation. in a confusing video statement, Palin blasted back, accusing her accusers, in turn, of “blood libel”—uncivil speech—and unapologetically defending the incivility of her own violent rhetoric by linking 2 Prologue it to a patriotic tradition.3 “There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal,” she acknowledged, “and they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those ‘calm days’ when political figures literally settled their differences with duelling pistols? in an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women.”4 On the day that this video statement was broadcast, President Barack Obama delivered an eloquent speech on civility at the University of Arizona that also addressed the increasingly divisive tenor of public speech, exhorting that “at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized—at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do—it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”5 Unlike Palin, for whom civility is an ideal whose impossibility is corrected through the system of government, Obama insists that nevertheless this ideal should be the foundation of American life and, by implication, a part of this system: “The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives—to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”6 For Obama, civility is a primary condition of citizenship. in calling for a return to civil discourse, Obama was also in a sense calling for a model citizenship. This book explores how civility helps to construct and, at times, to dismantle this ideal. Although loughner’s motivations were unclear, what is certain is that civility suddenly mattered. shortly after Obama’s landmark speech, the University of Arizona announced that it would establish a national institute for Civil Discourse, with former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush serving as honorary chairmen of the foundation. The conduct of public and private life has become politically relevant in an unexpected way. yet discussions about this conduct remain simplistically polarized, swinging between proper and improper—good and bad—comportment. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this binary was recently provided in one of the most dramatic events in...