Know thyself, reads the ancient Greek aphorism. And in light of our recent post about the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, that aphorism seems particularly relevant. Part of civility – undoubtedly – is about listening to and taking seriously the positions of people with whom we disagree. If the purpose of a discussion is…
Most of us, if we think of logical fallacies at all, remember them as some obscure concept from a years-old college rhetoric class, or as a list of stern don’ts given to us by a finger-wagging high-school English teacher bent on instilling in us the ‘right’ way to write an essay. Avoid these things, perhaps…
Back in February, we looked at some experimental data from political scientists Michael J. LaCour and Donald P. Green that offered insight into the less rational side of our political beliefs, and into the value of face-to-face conversations with the objects of our prejudices in moderating our positions and changing our minds. Taking the issue…
The purpose of this week’s post is to point out an excellent online civility resource that we here at The Civility Blog have sadly previously neglected. It is called The Civil Conversations Project. And it is an extension of On Being — NPR’s radio program about the place of faith and spirituality in American life.
Institute member Mark Winburn recently sent us this image on the back of an envelope containing his renewal. The design, a riff on the Keep Calm and Carry On message that has become a regular feature of t-shirts, coffee mugs, and mousepads around the world, is based on a poster produced by the British Government…
Increasingly popular since the late 2000s, TED talks cover a wide gamut of topics — political, scientific, and creative. The organization was founded in 1984, and the website — which features more than 1,500 openly licensed videos from TED conferences around the world — has become a place where creativity and curiosity merge, and where anyone can listen in on a world of ideas.
As co-founders of a nonprofit organization seeking to impact the governing process and our lives in community, we have taken on a rather large task. We seek to motivate people not only to make changes in how they interact with others in the midst of conflict, but also to come together to form a civility movement that will shape our culture into a more civil one.
Some people think it never happens. They think that Republicans and Democrats cannot work together, or even have a civil conversation. But those people are mistaken. It does happen – and could happen more if more people would speak out for civility.
For years the Institute for Civility in Government has sponsored Congressional Student Forums. These bring two members of Congress from opposite sides of the political aisle together on college campuses around the country in order to model civil and respectful conversations with students and faculty on whatever issues the students bring to the table. The conversations are lively and informative. And they are critically important to our civic process.
Ordinarily, this is not a venue where — we hope — one expects to find celebrity news. But from the perspective of civility, Alec Baldwin’s new piece in New York Magazine, “Good-Bye, Public Life,” is worthy of special consideration. In it, Baldwin offers a firsthand account of the very real decline in civility when it comes to how we interact with public figures — with actors, members of the media, and politicians. While at the same time, he demonstrates the way in which incivility is virulent, taking root even — or perhaps especially — in the author himself.
Baldwin is most insightful when it comes to the adversarial stew that has him, in his words, done with it — with being a public figure beyond the work you are actually paid for.
On Friday, according to The Hill newspaper, the Republican National Committee formally renounced the “dragnet” surveillance program at the National Security Agency (NSA), and overwhelmingly approved a measure calling for lawmakers to end the program and create a special committee to investigate domestic surveillance efforts.
The Martin Luther King Jr. who we remember as a nation — the one for whom we have named a national holiday — is the Martin Luther King Jr. who articulated a dream. He is not the man who delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech as a whole — not the man who told us that now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood, nor the man who told us that he would not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
The Martin Luther King Jr. we remember is the one who, in a misty voice, devoted two minutes of a twenty minute oratory to considering a future in which one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
