Let's be clear: there are lots of compelling reasons for civility in the context of collegial, social, and pedagogical interactions (indeed, in the latter context, it is absolutely obligatory). None of that is at issue here. There's even a reasonable case for civility in genuine intellectual disputes among intellectuals and scholars. That's not at issue here either. What's at issue is the demand for civility in two contexts: (1) political disputes, and (2) disputes in the blogosphere. Both kinds of disputes have something important in common, namely, they are often devoid of intellectual content, pretense notwithstanding.
One of the pernicious aspects of the blogosphere--a consequence, obviously, of the fact that contributions to it are not subject to any screening for qualifications or content--is that those who are basically ignorant, or inane, or trivial, can adopt all the forms and poses and mannerisms of those who aren't.
A civility norm helps sustain the charade. The demand for civility is tantamount to the demand to accord a legitimacy to that which lacks it, to treat the "less they know, the less they know it" blather as though it were "thoughtful," "well-reasoned," and "an interesting perspective."
Civility has even more pernicious consequence in political contexts. The minute one extends civility towards, e.g., the Discovery [sic] Institute, they have won an enormous victory; the minute one drops the "sic" after Discovery, it is as though it was an Institute made up of people actually interested in science or discoveries. Suddenly the whole fraudulent operation--the mix of pathological liars and conmen--acquires a legitimacy it does not deserve.
Plainly my rather brusque treatment of, say, the overreaching Mr. Cherniss is upsetting to all those other bloggers who are similarly situated. (One victim of my polemics even wrote and asked for a detailed critique of his intellectual failings! I suggested he enroll in the law school or the philosophy department here, where I'm paid to help students develop their intellectual skills.) My blog site is not meant to be a remedial class for self-important pontificators who overreach both their abilities and their achievements in Cyberspace. This blog site has modest aims: it includes supplemental information to my various academic rankings sites, as well as miscellaneous musings on cognate academic matters (and a few close-to-home obsessions, like the Texas Taliban). I am rather astonished that some appear to think that every time I make an offhand remark about a Chernissian character, I have acquired an obligation to conduct tutorials. Ezra Pound remarks, "You can not talk to the ignorant about lies, since they have no criteria." I don't have the time to supply all the criteria.
There is a final argument sometimes made on behalf of civility norms, namely, that civility enhances rhetorical effectiveness. One might, of course, have other reasons for blogging besides persuasion, though this appears not to occur to members of the civility cult. But putting that aside, the rhetorical effectiveness of civility, while sometimes real, is often simply speculative. If, as Nietzsche suspects, philosophers "all act as if they had discovered and arrived at their genuine convictions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely insouciant dialectic" when in fact "what really happens is that they take a conjecture, a whim, an 'inspiration' or...some fervent wish that they have sifted through and made property abstract--and they defend it with rationalizations after the fact," then it is simply a mistake to think rhetorical advantage will be gained through dispassionate argument. In fact, as Nietzsche's own argumentative practice illustrates, it may turn out that the opposite of dispassionate ratiocination--namely, uncivil, insulting, ad hominem acccusations and derision--is far more consequential in changing people's views. Perhaps. (It served Nietzsche well, but he was a really good writer!)
Is it an accident that my introduction to the blogosphere came as a consequence of my utterly innocent comments about the Straussian pathology in political theory? Philosophers with whom I have almost nothing else in common share the views I expressed about the Strauss cult--indeed (and this will surprise no philosophical reader) their views are often far harsher than the ones I expressed. Straussiansm, alas, preys on the intellectually eager but undereducated, i.e., precisely those angered by my lack of "civility," and precisely those who became livid about my remarks on Strauss. (Needless to say, in response, they observed no civility norms--just like Mr. Cherniss on Chomsky.)
"Don't be so open-minded that you brains fall out," a religion professor at Princeton (whose name now escapes me) used to say many years ago. Many questions that the undereducated think are open, are, in fact, closed questions; I am a bit brusque about those. Those who don't like it have a simple option: read something else. The blogosphere offers many choices, after all.
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