On Respect and Decency in the Public Discourse

On an Example of Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln

Today as I was reading a speech by Stephen Douglas, the counterpart to the latter President of the United States [POTUS] Abraham Lincoln, I came across the following passage:

«In the remarks, I have made on this platform and the position of Mr. Lincoln upon it, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys, both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school-teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of Salem. [Applause and laughter] He was more successful in his occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods, Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill everything in which they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I could, and when a cabinet-maker I made a good bedstead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than with anything else; [cheers] but I believe that Lincoln was always more successful in business than I, for his business enabled him to get into the Legislature. I met him there, however, and had a sympathy with him, because of the up-hill struggle we both had in life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. [“No doubt.”]»[1]

Nowadays, we must say that there is little chance to meet such respect and credit for a political counterpart as Mr. Douglas has expressed for his counterpart in this debate on slavery, itself a hot iron. It therefore inspired me for the following text which you will read hereunder.

One thing that we're missing for sure in these days is the prerequisite for reciprocal respect even for our worst enemies and adversaries. 

Now, many people would possibly say that there is no reason to show respect to those who would not respect you, or who hold most despicable views, e.g. Donald J. Trump, who in his final days openly called for a mob to overthrow a Democracially and verifiably elected government, because it would have meant that he had to concede his own electoral defeat, which did not sit well with his ego and his intentions to continue ruling the United States. There is nothing to say against that, and it wasn't men like him whom I consider worthy of one's respect. I speak of disagreeable, yet respectable personalities, such as Hillary R. Clinton, or Bernard Sanders. (Which, when you use his official name rather than his nickname, starkly resembles Col. Sanders) I speak of the arch-Conservative, piously Christian Mike Pence, who, like Newt Gingrich, is disagreeable insofar as that he would favour rules and legislation taht would infringe women's rights to self-determination, which had to be opposed by anyone who claimed the principle of full liberty to everyone within a bearable limit. (You can check some of my blog posts to see what I mean by this, I will not elaborate on it here) You could also say that Brett Kavanaugh, who came under fire for allegations of rape and sexual harassment, next to his outspoken enjoyment of alcoholic beverages, but when it comes to his opinions in cases is hardly more radical than your average circuit judge in DC or SDNY. 

I don't mean to relativise radicals who would threaten the freedom of our society, there are enough politicians and activists who need to be condemned and not to be played with in public discourse. When there is someone who holds dangerous views, we need to put them in their place and point out the aspects at which we need to speak out decisively against them. Nowadays, both right-winged and left-winged populists tend to speak out, even decry and openly assail “Liberals” (a broad term with little definition, other than what could be translated as „Bauchlinke” in German—people who let themselves lead by their heart and their stomache) for their lack of determination who to consider their enemy, instead applying what is condescendingly described as “both-side'ism”, i.e. claiming that both sides were [equally] wrong. They pursue discussions and peaceful negotiations to forge compromises. We could say that those both sides who alternately condemn Liberals' standards in politics follow Carl Schmitt's anti-Liberalism: 

„Wie der Liberalismus in jeder politischen Einzelheit diskutiert und transigniert, so möchte er auch die metaphysische Wahrheit in eine Diskussion auflösen. Sein Wesen ist Verhandeln, abwartende Halbheit, mit der Hoffnung, die definitive Auseinandersetzung, die blutige Entscheidungsschlacht, könnte in eine parlamentarische Debatte verwandelt werden und ließe sich durch eine ewige Diskussion ewig suspendieren.”[2]

 Now there is nothing wrong about negotiating, just as there is nothing wrong with being a watermelon seller. Secondly, we also needed to be careful with Schmitt, given his collaboration with the Nazis, even though his theory on the state cannot exclusively be understood as having functioned as an intellectual scaffold for the Nazi reign. The problem with Liberals, and where Schmitt is right, is that because of this almost sole principle of negotiating with the enemy is that it thereby knows that it can roam freely and act as it wishes to without facing a decisive opposition to it, because Liberals always want to keep an open door for negotiations, thus binding their hands. With regards to the war in Ukraine, those who call for a lift on sanctions to not scare Putin away from the roundtable of negotiations are those who are also understood to be nothing but Putin's lapdogs, because they relativise the atrocity of his war crimes and therefore give him the predicate of a viable partner in negotiations. What can be said about Liberals in those three parties' understanding is that they fail to call a spade a spade. 

What does this mean with reference to the past question, on respect and decency in the public discourse? It means that we should, in fact, respect Liberals, as long as they won't fall for animosity, something that we behold throughout the discourse, particularly from the populists' tribes. One is not barred from using strong language against a political adversary or enemy! One should just keep a sober mind and a controlled tongue when participating in the discourse. Douglas (and Lincoln alike) gave a good example thereof; we can imagine that the question of slavery in their times was far from an everyday issue that was put on the Congressional agenda next to questions concerning the fiscal household or the question of whether to, for example either strengthen or retract trade relations with Spain with regards to trade routes surrounding the West Indies (also including permissible export quotas for sugar canes). This was for sure a hotly debated issue, lest because the quote from this book is the debate held between these two honourable man just on this particular issue. And it spans across 680 pages altogether, also including of course a foreword, an index, photographs, maps and a history preceding the debate, also with snippets from newspapers commenting and reporting on their campaign path. But still, the speeches of the debate still span a good part of this tome.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Eventually coming to an end of this argument, what is my point? My point is just this: That despite our political disagreements on a level base, we are ought to treat each other with due respect and without dehumanising or declassifying speech. There are of course limitations for this maxim, e.g. when speaking about radicals who intend to infringe their fellows' basic liberties because of their ethnic, religious or other affiliation, because of questionable unto downright impermissible principles, such as race sciences or alleged religious presumptions. (think for example about the argument that homo- or transsexuality were forbidden by a God, thus putting up the question how an Almighty God would create humans not matching his own likeness) To each there is a set of own beliefs and principles which everyone is free to hold and exercise as long as it does not infringe someone else's freedom of speech, movement and practise to pursue one's personal luck. Within this rationally limited space, respectful disagreement needs to be possible and practised; we are ought to give credit where credit is due, even if we may not agree with the legacy and achievements of our adversarial counterpart. Mr. Douglas has shown us how this can be done. And again, I shall refer to Ms. Clinton, who during her tenure and during her campaign for Presidency in 2016 was usually declassed for the Benghazi incident. It is true that the whole operation was botched and therefore bound to fail with all guns blazing. There can be no serious disagreement. She also testified for long hours in Congress during an investigation on what happened there. Still, to run this over again and again makes no sense outside of meaning to vilify her. The same can be said about then-POTUS Barack Obama's legacy concerning a foreign policy seemingly replicated from his predecessor, George W. Bush. Again, statements that this was a huge failure are reasonable and shall be uttered repeatedly. All that needs to be demanded from those who disagree is that such critique shall be uttered in due respect. We can say that the human toll of such botched foreign policies—I will not repeat the same sentences for Kissinger, the point should be clear by now—is atrocious and needed to be investigated in The Hague to see whether it violated the Geneva and the Hague convention on respectively human rights and land war. All of this is reasonable and can be discussed. But it needs to happen in a respectful manner. None of us are in any position to legislate or govern, we all discuss such issues as informed adults interested in what is happening around us, and even beyond that. If we don't do that in a sober tone, we could as well stop doing that altogether as we then wasted our time for zilch. 

Finally, one may say that this is actually a low bar and nothing but a verbose calendar motto. To prawdo. But on the other hand, one may wonder why it is still a modest proposal to be enquired from the community on the internet. Facebook in particular is known to host a good amount of vitriol and disrespect, next to sexism, racism, and dehumanising language. Memes that infuse a feeling of cringe and dizzying eyerolling are still the mildest posts, whereas calls for lynch justice and mob rule to suppress minorities and the aforementioned political adversary are considered reasonable and debatable. In such spaces, a call for mutual respect and the consideration of basic human decency are indeed a modest proposal hard to enforce without guardsmen and -women, which also arose the commonly reiterated question: „Quis custodiet ipso custodes?” One may allege such calls for oversight a political stunt to enforce a specific political affiliation, but just as those who claim to be free thinkers are tendentiously leaning towards the right, those who fear to be stifled by such oversight are those who fail to show considerate behaviour towards their political adversaries. Oversight of any kind is of course a controversial issue because the one overseeing a space is the one with the greatest power, and as Lord Acton has taught us, power gradually corrupts. Moreover, oversight to enforce respect should not be necessary as respect is the least of efforts in public interaction. Therefore, no such oversight is ever going to happen on the web space simply because we do not have it in the real world either. We only have enforcement for criminal intervention, this already surpasses the enquiry for respect. 

Where does this lead us all? Conservatives without quotation marks, as well as religious people who do not fall for the politicisation of their beliefs both say that the lack of standards and limitations in society is the root of all social and societal ailments. One may consider this a probable argument on why our society continously falls apart, or already lies in rubbles as it tries to bring itself together again to approach the most pressing issues of our time. If we assumed it to be true by factual means, we could individually walk upon this path and start beginning to reach our hand towards our adversaries and start respecting them, lending them an ear and listen to what they have got to say, to scrutinise their theses and arguments, to perhaps even reach a compromise. I have made it clear above where we should draw the line, but we also need to cleanse our minds of unreasonable presumptions. (Again, populists are the most susceptible to lay the bar higher than necessary, thereby throw anyone failing to reach this bar as either being against their own people or the needy) No-one is seriously interested in putting up unreasonable pressure against the needy, or favour third parties over those to whom they were eligible. Those who are nevertheless are either trolls or have crossed the line and are therefore uneligible to participation in the discourse. (They mostly are also not interested in it) To think so should lead to a question against oneself, and one should contemplate if one's point is still rational or rather led by one's heart and stomache, to refer to an above metaphor. 

The pursuit of social reconstruction and healing has to be exercised by everyone individually. Only a concerted action amongst the collective people can help to achieve it. If we uphold animosity amongst us, no progress can be achieved. When the people want to achieve ultimate well-being, the duty lies within themselves.

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[1] Schmitt, Carl (2015 [1922]). Politische Theologie. 10. Aufl. Berlin: Duncker & Hublot. Seite 67.

[2] Douglas, Stephen; Lincoln, Abraham; Sparks, Edwin Earle (Ed.) (1908). Lincoln Series, Vol. 1. The Lincoln—Douglas Debates of 1858. In: Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Page 120.

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