Civility and Political Freedom
In my book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, I show why civility—basic respect for others—is essential to a free society. Here’s a story that exemplifies why.
In the early 2000s, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a campaign against rudeness in New York City. Subway riders and showgoers could be fined fifty dollars for inconsiderately resting their feet on a bench or for using their phones during movies or Broadway shows. The city’s noise code was overhauled to crack down on loud nightclubs and barking dogs and to promote neighborhood peace. Cell phones were banned in movie theaters, and smoking was banned in public places.
Other New York City officials, emboldened and inspired by Bloomberg, took aim at impoliteness at sporting events, arresting, fining, and imprisoning people for spitting or throwing objects onto the field. One man was sentenced to nine weekends in jail, fined two thousand dollars, and banned for three years from Shea Stadium.Still other local officials went further. Children under ten were prohibited from attending movies after 10 p.m., in an attempt to prevent disruption to people’s moviegoing experience. Parents who shouted during their children’s sporting events could be banned from them. Manners experts, apparently tired of being ignored by the public, praised these measures and elevated New York City as a shining example to other metropolises. “I cannot applaud it enough,” said Letitia Baldrige, the White House social secretary during John F. Kennedy’s administration. “My hands are tired from clapping.”
New Yorkers and local parents did not quite like being “civilized” by their local government. While proponents argued that just having these laws on the books in the first place was enough to improve behavior, the laws went largely unenforced and were soon recognized as entirely ineffective. Bloomberg and New York’s technocrats aren’t the only ones who have attempted to socially engineer civility. Nor are they the only ones who failed. Across the pond, British prime minister Tony Blair’s 2006 “respect action plan” also exemplified an unsuccessful effort to enforce civility from the top down. The campaign’s goal was to prevent and combat all forms of “antisocial behavior”—from crime to bad manners. It included imposing a nighttime curfew, with a salty fine of eighty pounds sterling (over one hundred US dollars) for violators, and a “national parenting academy” that aimed to help parents “recognize their responsibilities” in civilizing their children.
The plan’s more controversial proposal sought to address “nuisance behavior” by giving authorities the remarkable unilateral power to temporarily evict people from their homes for three months. If a bureaucrat deemed a person discourteous, perhaps noisy or disruptive, or their home a “property from hell,” that person could be given the boot from their own hearth, even if they owned the home.
While the government assured the public that such a measure would be a “last resort,” the potential for abuse alarmed many. Detractors argued that Blair’s “respect” agenda wasn’t terribly respectful of English people’s basic civil rights and verged on totalitarianism that unnecessarily made criminals out of everyday citizens.
We take for granted the many freedoms we enjoy. The ability to move, leave our jobs to pursue better opportunity, worship where and how we want, and more, however, have not always been part of the human experience. We often overlook the moral underpinnings, as well as the norms of restraint and self-sacrifice, that support the freedoms we enjoy in contemporary, democratic societies. By regulating the manifestations of our selfishness, civility supports our personal and political freedom. When too many of us fail to exercise civility, people will begin calling for the government to restrain us through laws and regulation. Civility promotes the virtue and self-government that allow us to thrive in community, uninhibited by either tyranny or fear of our fellow citizens.Alexandra Hudson is the curator of Civic Renaissance, a newsletter and intellectual community dedicated to moral and cultural renewal. Her first book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Princples to Heal Society and Ourselves is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press this October. Follow her on Twitter @LexiOHudson.