Civility

Everyone from President Obama down has been bemoaning the decline of civility in American politics, and they’ve been right to do so. Civility is a bulwark of liberal democracy, and indeed what we mean by the term is of a piece with liberal democracy and the basic commitments that sustain it. Having grasped what civility is and isn’t, we’ll be in a better position to respond to the two biggest threats to it: the claim that it has become obsolete, and the usurpation of its province by big government.