BuzzFlash presents P.M. Carpenter

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How Very Uncivil of Us

by P.M. Carpenter

The radical wing of the revolutionary faction of America's extremist party -- a peculiar collective still, for reasons unknown, called the conservative movement -- has managed yet another selfless public service in calling for civility in political discourse.

Weird, but true.

More to the point, still-frothing conservatives in radio, television, print and public office are orchestrating a new bugaboo of -- get this -- liberal incivility. It's the latest in right-wing table turning. Spend years cutting up and screaming down the opposition, then cry foul when the poor schmucks begin to fight back.

The ploy was not unexpected, to be sure. The sad part is that so many on the left and in the center remain intimidated by the right's chutzpah, and as such continue to urge timidity.

Take, for instance, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's recent jeremiad on the dangers of political hardball -- when liberals decide to play it, that is. "Considering the savagery with which the Snarling Right excoriated President Clinton," he wrote, "it is utterly hypocritical for conservatives to complain about liberal incivility. But they're right. Liberals have now become as intemperate as conservatives, and the result ... corrodes the body politic." (He quotes one reader's email to substantiate the charge.) To exude anything but "amiability and optimism," Kristof warned, is a negative for Democrats.

At first glance, the shame-on-you-too admonition seems but little more than another instance of a mildly left-leaning columnist stretching to appear balanced. After all, to be "as intemperate as conservatives" is a metaphysical proposition at best. It could never happen. Surely Kristof knows that. And as for liberals corroding the body politic, that puppy got corrupted long ago.

On second thought, however, one begins to wonder what it is, really, that qualifies as liberal incivility in the right's playbook, especially since the left has not the remotest equivalent of the right's rhetorical bullpen -- habitual übermouths such as Gingrich, DeLay, Dornan, Scarborough, Coulter, Novak, O'Reilly, Limbaugh ... you get the point.

Given the left's deficient pool of offensive windbags, what passes for liberal incivility seems to center on creative semantics: the deliberate reworking of the very meaning of incivility. The word's usual sense is that of being ill-mannered, insulting, cruel, caustic, or as Kristof put it, snarling and intemperate. Again, see partial list above. But now that traditional sense is out, just as the right discarded traditional meanings of, for example, "compassion" and "fiscal responsibility." In conservatism's permissive lexicon, to be uncivil today means only to express outrage -- any outrage, that is, directed at right-wing policies.

Uncivil, it is, to continue pressing in the strongest terms for White House accountability on Iraq. Its pre-invasion record is littered with knowingly deceptive claims of imminent threats, truckloads of WMD, scary nuclear programs and promises of a postwar cakewalk, but what typical liberal crankiness to keep pointing these things out. How gauche, how uncivil.

It's uncivil to attack Bush II's unAmerican policy of launching unprovoked attacks; uncivil to question the administration's commitment to veterans; uncivil to criticize the administration for blowing unprecedented global goodwill after 9/11. It's uncivil to be civil to the French.

It's uncivil to harp on W's unseemly corporate connections or linger on campaign-finance quid pro quos and sweetheart deals, and uncivil to denounce environmental initiatives such as "Healthy Forests" and "Clear Skies" for what they are: insidious Orwellian manipulations wholly hostile to the environment. It is uncivil to vilify the administration's vilify-able secrecy on its formulation of energy policy.

And so on.

Yet the right is redefining incivility for a deeper reason than merely keeping its hypocrisy skills honed. Conservatives pushed the incivility envelope to its busting point in the 1990s, and they knew it. Their polling revealed the public had had enough. But rather than domesticating themselves, conservatives opted for the easier and more politically profitable tactic of simply claiming it's the other guys, in fact, who have a bad case of dyspeptic incivility. Classic table turning with no foundation; a classic defense maneuver of victimizing the victim.

My own sense is that the left should turn up the heat, not chill out. Conservatives most fear a steady and far-overdue beat of vocal outrage. Their attempt to stigmatize honest criticism as incivility proves it.