Civility

Something terrible has happened to civility. We can no longer hold political discussions without screaming at each other, so our democracy is dying. We can no longer look at strangers without suspicion and even hostility, so our social life is dying. We can no longer hold public conversation about morality without trading vicious accusations, so our moral life is dying. All the skills of living a common life - what Alexis de Tocqueville called "the etiquette of democracy" - are collapsing around us, and nobody seems to know how to shore them up again. Basic good manners have become a casualty of our postmodern culture. Yale law professor and social critic Stephen L. Carter, whose 1993 bestseller The Culture of Disbelief changed the way we talk about religion in our national life, argues that civility is disintegrating because we have forgotten the obligations we owe to each other, and are awash instead in a sea of self-indulgence.^ Neither liberals nor conservatives can help us much, Carter explains, because each political movement, in a different way, exemplifies what has become the principal value of modern America: think what matters most is not the needs or hopes of others, but