Civility is a conservative virtue
Online conservatives have too often eschewed civility and manners, important virtues which conservatives should embrace.
Written by Bo Winegard.
“The teaching of manners to children goes beyond just controlling their behavior. It also involves a kind of shaping, which lifts the human form above the level of animal life, so as to become fully human, fully sociable, and fully self-aware.”
—Roger Scruton
One fashionable message among rightwing populists is that conservatives need to stop being polite and start telling the truth—the harsh truth and the whole truth—in their battle against the stifling cultural hegemony of progressivism. Sure, the truth is often unpleasant, but it is better than empathy-fueled lies and fantasies.
In many ways this message is admirable. We all like the encouraging mother who tells us that we can grow up to be a famous concert pianist, but it’s also good to have a realist father who advises us to make different plans. The future of excessive compassion is a world in which all students get A’s; all athletes, trophies; and all employees, raises. It’s a world of equity in which excellence is submerged in a dull sea of uniformity, and it’s a world of euphemisms in which language is made insipid by platitudes and equivocations.
Some, however, take this penchant for the supposedly unvarnished truth too far. They contend that decency and civility are symptoms of decadence, signs that a culture, weakened by affluence and privilege, is no longer capable of handling the arduous challenges of life. In certain corners of the internet and especially on X, this attitude manifests as an almost perverse delight in boorishness and provocation. The more rude, crude, or crass the statement, the better.
A tweet by Jon Miller perfectly illustrates this. In it, he commented on a screenshot of Emilia Clark’s Instagram, “Lmao wow Daenerys Targaryen didn’t just hit the wall she flew into it full speed on a dragon.” For those who are unfamiliar, Daenerys Targeryen was a popular character on the wildly successful HBO series Game of Thrones played by Emilia Clark, a 36-year-old British actress. In other words, the tweeter denigrated Emilia Clark for appearing old (“hitting the wall”) and for having lost her sexual allure.
Although some trolls and pseudonymous users enthusiastically agreed with the tweet, claiming that although harsh, it was true, most people seemed to respond with disgust, decrying the misogyny and cruelness of the sentiment. Some even used it as a moment to reflect upon the ethos of the modern right, which they criticized for being full of bitter, aggrieved men. Fair or not, this criticism has some bite. And conservatives should reflect upon it. For if the right, at least the online right, embraces the unrestrained expression of strident, grating, or unpleasant truths as an abrasive alternative to effete lies, then it will be condemned for such boorishness and will alienate potential allies.
Furthermore, conservatism—the ideal kind of conservatism that should be endorsed by traditionalists and even reactionaries—stands for precisely the opposite values than those espoused in the tweet about Emilia Clark. It stands for restraining humankind’s bestial appetites, their impolite impulses, and their attention on the ephemeral. It stands for disciplining and shaping and elevating. It stands for turning humans to the lasting and the permanent and away from seductive surfaces that will inevitably age and die.
Conservatism should be about embracing natural beauty and the graceful process of aging—of accumulating wisdom and, yes, wrinkles. This embrace is necessary for promoting monogamy and for encouraging people to think about more than raw sex appeal. Women should not be reduced to sexual or aesthetic objects. And conservatism should welcome a kind of difference feminism that recognizes and applauds the uniquely feminine and that discourages and indeed assails the crude sexualization of girls and women.
Disparaging a woman’s appearance as she ages is not telling an important truth; it’s reducing her to flesh and belittling her for not being able to stop time. And mocking a woman for aging also incentivizes industries that sell the promise of perpetual youth while at least implicitly endorsing the men who judge their own wives more for their ability to turn heads in a restaurant than for their character, their decency, their erudition, their faithfulness, their femininity, or any of other innumerable traits that are vastly more important.
Another illustration of the online right’s embrace of the outre is the recent enthusiasm for cat and dog memes related to the idea that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating domesticated pets. The claim about pet eating was originally forwarded on a Facebook group post, then spread rapidly, becoming a subject of national conversation and confusion after Trump declared during the presidential debate, “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Conservatives and restrictionists have many legitimate grievances with Biden and Harris’s calamitous policies at the border. And not all immigrants are the same. Some are culturally more distant from mainstream American values than others. Some are more prone to crime and less educated than others. Forwarding challenges and objections to immigration policies or even to certain immigrant populations is perfectly legitimate. However, immigration is a supercharged and fractious topic that requires decency and civility and commitment to persuasion and compromise.
Is it impossible that a Haitian immigrant somewhere in Springfield ate or killed an animal that most Americans would not eat or kill? Certainly. Should that appall us? Also certainly. But (1) any such claim should be investigated by police not recklessly forwarded in a presidential debate, and (2) the chief and persuasive objection to rapid demographic change caused by immigration is not primarily that immigrants have strange culinary habits but that they irrevocably change the culture in ways beyond food and drink.
Furthermore, making apparently outlandish claims about the consumption of cats and dogs, however entertaining or amusing it might be, is more likely to unleash unproductive enmity than it is to persuade centrists and moderates.
Being civilized means being polite and respectful. It means suppressing unedifying insults. It means debating ideas and policies responsibly even if sometimes vehemently. It means working to calm roiling passions that can lead to explosions of violence. In other words, being civilized is the opposite of being a social media troll or an ideological nihilist who eschews morality in the pursuit of power and laughs like the Joker as the world burns.
This commitment to civility should not be confused with a feckless submission to the progressive status quo. One does not have to accept the claim that men can become women or that unlimited immigration from around the world is good to be a civilized person. Fighting for one’s values and ideals is dignified. And that requires steadfastness, even, at times, intransigence. But it does not require gratuitously insulting people or trolling the libs to delight in their tears. Provocation has its place in art and philosophy, but the consistent conservative believes in the abiding importance of manners and civility.
The populist movement, especially online, has brought attention to many problems and issues that mainstream thinkers, left and right, have ignored for too long. And they have laudably fought back against the increasing influence of effeminizing forces in the modern West. Men can be men. There is much to praise about masculinity. And the populists are right that politeness is not more important than the truth. Sometimes one must stand firmly and unapologetically against pernicious policies or ideas, even if that means appearing callous or rude.
But this does not justify gratuitous cruelty or nihilistic trolling. Humans are born frail, fallible, selfish, prone to mocking and bullying. Only through the inculcation of manners and the promotion of charity and civility do they become decent, cooperative, and ethically refined individuals. Conservatives, adhering to the doctrine of original sin, are acutely aware of this and should work diligently to counteract the allure of crudity and sectarianism. For these temptations, like the fruit of the forbidden tree, inevitably bring woe.
Bo Winegard is the Executive Editor at Aporia.
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Bo, there you go again—as the most famous of modern conservative pol’s, RR, liked to say of his opponents. It is precisely your recommendations that must *not* be followed if we are to win this battle for America and our Founders’ ideals. In that, your missive today was quite instructive—if we simply learn to do the opposite.
Your ideas of virtue are precisely what our Leftist enemies use against us everyday. This is the reason the Republicans have been “glorious losers” since I was a young boy. For example, you decry the false claim that Illegals (Yes Bo, that’s what they are. Illegal aliens who have crossed our borders under false pretenses! But you cannot even bear to use the correct terminology to describe them!) are eating dogs and cats. However, whenever a violent shooting spree takes place, all gun owners are pilloried by the Left and described as impotent hillbillies clinging to their guns and Bible. Of course, what immediately follows is a too often a successful appeal that even more restrictive gun regulation be enacted for the good of the nation. That is the famous ratcheting process the Left uses to great effect.
The above is only one typical example of emotional appeal of the Left to the crisis de jour—there are dozens—and illustrates how the Left has been so effective in the past. Is the appeal to the revulsion of gun violence any more “outlandish” than an appeal to the emotion of IA’s eating dogs and cats? Any more immoral, unethical, unvirtuous, even untrue…?
This is a war, nothing less, in which our very existence as a “virtuous” people *is* at stake—and we are losing. There is one solution and that stems from the unfortunate consequence of war, any war that has ever taken place—that is to win! Our enemies set the “terms of engagement”, not us. You leave your virtues at the door when you enter the arena, you fight with everything you have, and then some, because to lose is to cease to exist as a decent human being—and if not yourself, then certainly your children and their children.
After the enemy is defeated, you can exit and pick up those discarded virtues and use them once again among those who will cherish them as you have shown yourself. That is the path to victory, your path is one of defeat.
The lack of civility on the right has been on my mind recently. It's good to see this article pop up. It's an excellent reminder for people to remain civil and polite.
I notice some of the commenters on this article mistakenly believe that the Right has been losing due to not being aggressive or 'mean' enough like the left has. This is not the case. The left has been winning because it attracts intelligent and highly educated people. Theses same people matriculate into top positions at major institutions where they push leftist ideas on the people coming up behind them. Eventually these ideas become dominant and everyone thinks that in order to be high status they need to signal a leftwing perspective. It's mostly the bottom dwelling people on the left who are mean and snide on the Internet. Can you imagine Merrick Garland or William Galston shit-posting on X? I really doubt it.