The Virtues of Disunity or Why Civility Is More Important Than Unity

On the 8th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I was reading my favorite sports blog, when I came a cross a post remembering those attacks. The post had links to a couple videos, including Paul Simon's memorable performance of "The Boxer" on Saturday Night Live, backed by New York firefighters. The post's comments quickly devolved into politics, as you might imagine if you've read anything about the September 11th attacks in the last few years, and several of the commenters remembered with fondness the political unity that followed the attacks, lamenting the relative lack of unity we're seeing in America today. I couldn't have agreed less.

Now I will agree, for the sake of discussion, to forget what that unity actually bought us: two wars, at least one of which was a tragic mistake (and which was sold to us with lies that would likely have been much less convincing without that unity), the Patriot Act, which most members of Congress failed to read (likely for the sake of unity), Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detentions, a second Bush term¹, etc., etc., etc. But even with such agreed forgetfulness, I'm still loath to believe that the post-September 11 unity was a good thing. For one, democracy, only works, to the extent that it does, with healthy debate and discussion, and the sort of unity this country experienced after September 11, 2001 made debate and discussion nearly impossible. Can you imagine what would have happened to politicians who had vocally opposed our going to war in Afghanistan? Oh wait, I'm supposed to be forgetting that stuff.

The other, related problem with unity of this sort is that a lot of stuff that should get done, or should at least be the subject of discussion, doesn't, because it would threaten the unity. Politicians, particularly those who are members of the party that is not in power, are unlikely to broach certain subjects unrelated to the cause of the unity (e.g., abortion, health care, etc.) that are likely to spark dissent. It's probably not a coincidence that Bush's popularity took a nosedive when he went after Social Security. By doing so, he alienated the American political middle who had, by and large, stuck with him since they had become Bush fans on September 12, 2001, and thereby killed the last vestiges of the post-9/11 unity. We were then left with the old divisions -- left, right, and middle/undecided. And it's not as though Bush hadn't been planning to go after Social Security all along. It's just that he waited until reelection so that his reelection bid could benefit from his residual post-9/11 popularity. With unity comes complacency.

If you ask me (and it's not as though anyone actually did, but still), what we need more than unity is civility. The only thing that can rival unity's ability to stifle political debate and discussion is incivility. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a champion of civility for civility's sake: the next time some asshole driver turning right, but only looking left, nearly runs me over while I try to cross the street, the finger I extend and the words that freely flow from my mouth will show just how committed I am to civility in that context. I don't even believe that civility is called for in every discussion. The purveyors² of Young Earth Creationism, for example, deserve nothing but derision dripping with mocking and smothered in secret disrespect sauce. But in political discourse, the goal at least should be to convince people that your position is the correct one. And incivility, of the sort that talk radio and, in "today's 24-hour news cycle" (scare quotes cannot express how much I hate that phrase), TV news channels thrive on, that inspires political signs painting Bush or Obama as Hitler, or causes books and articles proclaiming liberalism to be based on fascist principles or conservatism to be based in mental instability to be widely read and agreed with, makes convincing anyone impossible. Or at least, it leads to a situation in which the only way to convince anyone of anything is to first convince them that your opposition is a bigger villain than the villain your opposition is portraying you to be. This ultimately gets us nowhere.

Witness the health care debate, with its socialist/Marxist/fascist bogeymen and threats of death panels. Sure, this has seemingly changed certain people's minds, given that until recently, the vast majority of Americans favored universal healthcare and even single-payer health care, but now are convinced that Democrats are out to kill their grandmothers, but where do we go from here? The discussion, or lack thereof, doesn't leave us with many outs, even should we decide that government-run health care, in the form of a public option or whatever, isn't the way we as a country want to go. The Baucus bill, which is a result of this political "discussion," is exactly the sort of meaningless incivility. Meanwhile, health care remains in crisis. Unity wouldn't help us here, because if we were united as we were after September 11, 2001, we wouldn't even be talking about health care (we sure as hell didn't talk about it much from 2002-2007), but a little bit of civility might. At least then we'd actually be able to discuss a single-payer health care, a public option, co-ops, or any number of other potential changes to our health care system, and decide where all of that leaves us. Where it leaves us can't be worse than where we are now.

1I know, I know, Bush was reelected in one of the most contentious elections ever, winning by one of the lowest margins (percentage-wise) ever, particularly for a war president, but ask yourself this question: would Bush have had any chance of reelection, given how close the election in fact was, if he hadn't benefited from the residual popularity he had from that post-September 11 unity?
2The purveyors, but not the believers. The purveyors are to be derided, but the believers are to be educated. Education requires trust, and trust requires, at a minimum, civility.