Civility in Public Discourse :This is truly getting ridiculous!
This party has to be broken up!
What’s next? Will the Village Council eventually vote to make it illegal to go so far as to raise one’s eyebrow in response to misbehavior by public officials? Does anyone remember the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790’s which made it illegal to publicly criticize the government? We don’t need a quasi-public civility panel composed in large part of non-residents to impose via subtle (or not-so-subtle) social intimidation tactics what was so clearly unconstitutional for the government to impose via the criminal code.
Do we really want the newly-elected Bergen County Executive telling us how to express ourselves in Ridgewood? This was a mistake for Mr. Tedesco to intrude on Ridgewood’s strictly local concerns. Tedesco should withdraw from the scheduled appearance immediately unless, of course, he plans to break out into a full-throated defense of the God-given free-speech rights held so dear by self-respecting Ridgewood residents (much to the chagrin of Mayor Aronsohn, who by now must be fed up with us “bitter clingers”).
Make no mistake, the North Jersey Media Group would like nothing more than to turn back the clock to a time when letters to the editor (never anonymous) and speaking at the public microphone (never anonymous) at public meetings were the only timely and reliable ways to get one’s point across to the wider public when attempting to register discontent as a resident or taxpayer with the activities (or unaccountable lack of activity) of local government. Anonymous commenting on local blogs, demonstrably on the increase both in terms of frequency and political effectiveness, is so clearly anathema to traditional news outlets (such as print newspapers) straining to prop up the remnants of the political power structure built up so carefully over time by the progressive elite. Accordingly, we in Ridgewood should not put up with people who live outside the Village seeking to impose their free-speech restriction ideas on us, whether they were invited to do so by our mayor, or not.
The steady march of technology, and the irrepressible desire of Americans to speak their minds freely and without fear of disproportionate political or personal retribution, is making things more and more difficult for progressive House Organs like the Record of Bergen County and The Ridgewood News to control the terms of political debate. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, “is a good thing!”
I’m curious how a brainstorming meeting about respecting others, complete with disagreement, could become “social intimidation tactics”, disallowing the raising of an eyebrow. And as per the intro Patrick Henry graphic, I’d like to include the rest of Henry’s statement: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Patrick Henry was a slaveholder.
Democracy requires disagreement. It’s only in totalitarian societies that dissent is silenced. Civility actually encourages disagreement, conflict, and the passionate exchange of ideas. Civility provides a platform for debate. Civility is not antithetical to free speech. We all have a lowest common denominator and our exercise of free speech can devolve into insults, verbal abuse, or hate speech. And while I think we can generally find a more grown-up way to express ourselves, I am single-minded about free speech being the cornerstone of a free society.
The problem is, when the mud-slinging starts, we can all get dirty, and whatever the “political debate” was about does too. In a democracy, not only should everyone have a voice, but it is the civic duty of everyone to use that voice. Insults, character assassinations, namely a suspension of civil, respectful disagreement – that silences dissent.
p.s. per James’ advice, I’m choosing to be Anonymous.
“Democracy requires disagreement.”
This not really true. What is true is that men are not angels, disagreement is an unavoidable fact, and governments are created among men because otherwise, serious disagreements would be impossible to resolve without physical violence.
Our constitutional republic has been set up well to handle inevitable disagreement. Because we adopted Madison’s brilliant idea of expanding democratic principles beyond small city-states to a continent-wide scale, we actually (and ironically) harness disagreement (or what used to be called ‘factions’) to work in the best interests of the country at large. Clearly articulated disagreement, and publicly-aired disputes are telltale signs that democratic principles embedded in our form of government are functioning properly. Absence of disagreement is not a bad thing, in and if itself. But civil society is typically best served when such disagreement as may exist at a given point in time is accurately identified or characterized, freely discussed (however uncomfortably), and if possible, ironed out or resolved before disagreement leads to open conflict. Do you not see that what the highly politically-oriented Mr. Aronsohn and his like-minded friends are doing is trying to cut this process off at the first step by freezing, isolating, and ridiculing (often by laying on a thick coating of condescension) those who disagree with his ideas? That he is attempting to manipulate adult citizens into developing some kind of collective contempt for or immunity to dissent, ostensibly because it is presented in an awkward, incomplete, amateurish, argumentative, or otherwise improper form? Do you not see that it is not the ‘form’ of dissent which truly troubles Mr. Aronsohn and his friends, although that seems to be all they want to talk about (at this point, at least). No, in fact it is the very substance or content of well-founded dissent that panics them, due to its inherent capacity to persuade fence-sitters, and dissuade some of his supporters once they have been informed of the weakness and folly of so many of his public policy positions.
What is truly a bad thing is when disagreement exists, but not only is the disagreement perversely, intentionally, and condescendingly censored in advance of its utterance, or brutally squelched by means of publicly shaming one who utters it (Saul Alinsky-style, e.g., by professional agitators), but still worse, this is done in the name of…wait for it…’Civility’!
Sir or Ma’am, what could be less ‘civil’ than that?
Dissent, by its very nature, is not susceptible to regulation. In a properly-functioning representative republic, a priori restrictions placed on the ‘form’ of dissent are to be used extremely sparingly, if at all, lest they be used in bad faith by vulnerable officeholders as a cudgel for actually stifling content-based or ‘substantive’ disagreement.
One who disagrees with a current public measure or policy, or who is in favor of a new or different public measure or policy is not to be condemned or ridiculed simply because such dissent is communicated in a more strident manner than some others may prefer. It is the content of the idea or ideas being conveyed, not the form or packaging of it, that is most important, and that is most properly the subject of public debate. Do not get drawn in by those who, in truth, wish nothing more than to shoot disfavored messengers, or to kill their new or different ideas or perspectives of such messengers in the crib before they have a chance to be aired or considered by the public. Far from creating a ‘new normal’ of ‘civil public discourse’, these individuals are really engaging in bad-faith behavior. In the medium-term, and in the long run this can only damage civil society by driving aesthetically unattractive but substantively potentially valuable ideas underground. Thus not only are we deprived of good ideas, we likely foment a much greater degree of discontent and resentment on the part of those who were prematurely turned away.
Intelligent Ridgewood residents with a sense of our rich political heritage need to start thinking very deeply about whether we really need to put up with the juvenile machinations of a relative handful of relatively new residents seeking to import this poisonous concept into our local polity. Look at the other places where these tactics are being used. Do we really want to be the go-to location in Northern New Jersey where society-destroying ideas can be safely incubated or promulgated, solely because the local residents have proven themselves too afraid to publicly denounce and reject them? Because, make no mistake, this is where Mr. Aronsohn is going with this. He will soon move on from simply denouncing improper forms of dissent to insinuating and promoting anti-social and destructive substantive policy prescriptions he and his ideological compatriots hold near and dear, much like the hapless residents of Mountain View, California were needlessly force fed the merits and fine features of a brave new world in which first-world countries foolishly abandon the concept of border control and unaccountably invite and encourage unrestricted illegal immigration.