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 simply getting what we want. Taking inspiration from the Abolitionist sermons of the nineteenth century, Carter proposes to rebuild our public and private lives around the fundamental rule that we must love our neighbors, a tenet of all the world's great religions. Writing with his familiar combination of erudition and wit, Carter examines the ways in which an ethic of neighbor-love would alter everything from our political campaigns to our fast food outlets to the information superhighway, from the way we behave in the workplace to the way we drive our cars to the way we argue about constitutional rights.^ He investigates many of the fundamental institutions of society - including the family, the churches, and the schools - and illustrates how each one must do more to promote the virtue of civility. Carter draws on such diverse disciplines as law, theology and psychology, as well as the stories from his own life that his readers have come to expect and to enjoy. Whether tracing the history of the fork and analyzing the Vatican's critique of the advertising industry, Civility is forcefully argued; yet it shows, at all times, respect and even affection for those it criticizes. Through it all, Carter emphasizes that loving our neighbors has little to do with how we feel and everything to do with how we choose to act. The true test of civility is whether, out of love and concern for others, we will discipline our individual desires and work for the common good. -- from dust jacket.