Are conservatives less civil?
Rick Perlstein argues that America’s right-wing activists have long been prone to incivility, rage, and worse. After chronicling the sins of town-hall protesters and those of old anti-communists and white segregationists, Perlstein concludes that the conservative grassroots is diseased:
So, crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny. When Adlai Stevenson spoke at a 1963 United Nations Day observance in Dallas, the Indignation forces thronged the hall, sweating and furious, shrieking down the speaker for the television cameras. Then, when Stevenson was walked to his limousine, a grimacing and wild-eyed lady thwacked him with a picket sign. Stevenson was baffled. “What’s the matter, madam?” he asked. “What can I do for you?” The woman responded with self-righteous fury: “Well, if you don’t know I can’t help you.”
The various elements — the liberal earnestly confused when rational dialogue won’t hold sway; the anti-liberal rage at a world self-evidently out of joint; and, most of all, their mutual incomprehension — sound as fresh as yesterday’s news. (Internment camps for conservatives? That’s the latest theory of tea party favorite Michael Savage.)
The orchestration of incivility happens, too, and it is evil. Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror — powerful elites — find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.
Perlstein’s inference is all but telegraphed: when it comes to tactics, liberals own the moral high ground over conservatives. This is more than laughably one-sided. It’s at odds with the thesis of his latest book. In Nixonland, Perlstein recounts the sins of ‘60s liberal activists, especially those of students who hijacked university buildings. When student revolutionaries at Columbia fought with cops in the spring of 1968, Perlstein writes,
The last act took place on May Day. A small number of policemen remained behind on campus to maintain order. One bent down to pick up his hat after a kid knocked it from his head. At that moment, someone leapt on his back from a second-floor window. The cop spent the next twelve weeks in the hospital.
The cops got the confrontation they wanted. The revolutionaries got the confrontation they wanted. Lo, a new crop of revolutionaries; lo, a new crop of vigilantes: Nixonland.
Before I get to that last paragraph, I should note that liberal activists didn’t stop being violent and underhanded in the 1960s. Can you say the bomb-throwing weathermen of the early 1970s, the Communion-destroying ACT UP activists of the 1980s, or the window-smashing IMF protesters of the ‘90s?
I am not saying that liberal activists are more underhanded or sinister than their conservative counterparts. Right wingers have done plenty of evil and dirty tricks. They firebombed homes and churches in the middle third of the 20th century that blacks sought to integrate and worship in. They pressured county officials in Florida from counting all the votes in the 2000 election. And they have done thousands of things that cannot be recounted here. (Whether liberal elites are more crooked than conservatives ones is a topic for another day. However, I did write a book that addressed the subject).
I am saying something different, akin to the last paragraph in the Perlstein passaged I cited above: both sides’ tactics are equally incivil, nefarious, and corrupt. Neither side owns the moral high ground. Liberals and conservatives play politics. And you know what they say about the type of business politics is.
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To a certain extent, I must agree.
In many ways, it is a generational thing. Having been around and “active” in the ‘60a”, I can certainly recall acts of violence and over-the-top demonstration techniques.
Maybe the difference is that the demonstrations-and even the violence-during the ’60s were in the name of accomplishing civil rights and ending what we believed to be an unjust war in Southeast Asia. Even the bombings were executed in a way designed to make a point without killing anyone. That doesn’t excuse violence or bad behavior.
Yet, when you look at the violence during the ’60s that set off so much of this, it was all violence intended to kill. Martin Luther King…the Kennedys..you get the idea.
Somehow, it seems different today. The motivation of the fringe right seems more the result of selfish drives rather than social drives. They hate the government because the government taxes them They still have some issues when it comes to race and ethnicity. They are prepared to do harm in the name of their religion.
While I fully recognize that my own bias may be playing into my feelings, it seems to me that when a member of the fringe right decided to become a bomber in the name of his cause, he killed a serious number of people, including children. In the ’60s, we didn’t carry guns to a protest rally. As we have seen, there have been an extraordinary number of guns making an appearance at the town hall meetings – a bad idea in the name of any cause.
As for the shouting, the liberals were just as obnoxious in the ’60s (I know – I was one of the obnoxious ones) as they are today at a town hall meeting. So, nobody has the moral high ground on this issue.
But honestly, as someone who has experienced the overzealousness from both sides of the political spectrum, I have to say that what is happening today feels considerably more dangerous than what happened back in day.
Rick,
I agree with part of your point: in the ’60s, the left’s social movements were not violent and did not intend to be. I quibble with part of this: in August 1970, radical students at the University of Wisconsin bombed the physics building, resulting in the death of one man (a physics researcher and father of three) and severe injuries to four others. Maybe the radical students didn’t intend to kill anyone. But if their intent was simply to bomb a university building, could they not have foreseen the possible consequences?
My real problem with the left’s tactics, those of the New Left or post-’60s left at least, is its use of abortion. But that’s a topic for another time.
In response to another comment. See in context »I might point out to both of you that the difference between the uncivil protest and discourse from either right- or left- wing activists 20, 30 or more years ago is that they weren’t given a national media platform to argue, complain and threaten. That, I thought, was the more important observation made in the Post piece. It’s highly unlikely that a Walter Cronkite would have been so quick to “air both sides” of what are patently false and demonstrably untrue claims.
Additionally, even when you’re discussing the IMF riots in Seattle, or Code Pink, or any of the other fringe groups, can you imagine an MSNBC anchor coming on the television to “air both sides” of their complaints? I challenge you to find me more than one example of this.
In response to another comment. See in context »“My real problem with the left’s tactics, those of the New Left or post-’60s left at least, is its use of abortion.” What do you mean by this statement. Are you saying the legality of abortion, and the left’s general overall support of this legal medical procedure, is an uncivil protest tactic? I know you said this was a discussion for another time, but i was very confused by that statement.
to the topic at hand, protests are protests. Town halls are not protests. Sure, you can demonstrate at a town hall but do so silently. If you want a venue where you, and your supporters want to monopolize the conversation with inflammatory speech and tactics, then get a permit and find a street to march down. And if your conversation is based on lies, the media should do us a favor and no legitimize their behavior by showing it over and over with little context. I barely heard about Code Pink until recently when some conservative was calling them out for their incivility.
I know, it shows my bias too when i defend the tactic of the left, but if violence or something adverse doesn’t happen, no one pays attention. And in this respect, I agree both sides go as far as they can to incite anger and potential for violence.
In response to another comment. See in context »Ha. You got me. Abortion is not a tactic by left-leaning protesters. My bad.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mark,
I’m going to look at this from the perspective of a different generation. The protests, at least most, of the 60’s and 70’s were for noble causes. Ending costly, and arguably unjust, wars, claiming that all men, and women, should be treated equally. Those are causes I can get behind. I talk to a lot of people my age, and all but the least ideological find protests, and sometimes violence, over healthcare, immigration, or drugs, absurd. There are issues that are worthy of protest, extreme poverty, AIDS, human trafficking, and environmental justice, to name just a few. These are mostly liberal causes, but the action is lacking.
Back to who is more civil. The liberals certainly can be uncivil, but it seems like they aren’t exactly in a target-rich environment. Who is more civil at the moment? In my lifetime, I’ve seen more conservative discivility than liberal, but I’m sure that will change at some point.
My mother has joked that the town hall protests are so animated because the concerned baby boomers nearing retirement got so much protest experience in the ’60s and ’70s.
Indeed, many formerly left-wing conservatives like David Horowitz have recommended the tactics of left-wing agitators as textbooks.
Causes, noble or not; reasons, selfish or not. The past, as glorious as it was at times, is just the past. We’re here in the present, with new dragons to slay.
All things aside, since the question here is civility (thereby, in my eyes, implying respect of others’ opinions, open-mindedness, and enough devotion to the bedrock principles of healthy democracy to accept that someone else might have a worldview different than one’s own), and since civility here is being measured as though it were a commodity to be possessed rather than a virtue to personify, and since we’re measuring that commodity in people who identify themselves with whichever faction of the War Party promises them the best scraps from Massah’s table:
I would say, “No. Conservatives are no less civil than Liberals.”
And, as evidence, I would recommend a visit to any number of left-leaning blogs or news aggregators that allows user comments – sites such as (but not limited to) RAW Story, DailyKos, or AlterNet.
A quick perusal of the comments penned by mentally-challenged blowhards shows that the “public discourse” is the same as it was through all of the Bush years. Only, since the “opposite” faction of the War Party is now firmly “in control”, the positions have reversed. Now, instead of “conservatives” in the foreground, deriding everyone who doesn’t agree with them one hundred percent as un-American, terrorist-loving appeasers (undoubtedly, all the worst things their feeble minds can bring to muster), we now have “progressives” in the foreground, deriding everyone who doesn’t agree with them one hundred percent as Nazis, domestic terrorists, and corporate shills (undoubtedly, all the worst things their feeble minds can bring to bear).
Every four or eight years for as long as I can remember, this same, tired, worn-out episode of the shittiest soap-opera I could ever hope to not be trapped in plays out, just the same as it did the last time.
All I’d like to know is: Is Massah ever actually going to hand out those scraps?
You make some good points, but it seems the GOP has decided to use outright lies and deception to deflect attention from the real issues that need to be addressed. The other side of the issue is not discussed by the right anymore; they are just against everything they do not seem to be for anything except chaos.
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