DECONSTRUCT BOURGEOIS NORMS AT YOUR PERIL.

New York's Times gives Roxane Gay the opportunity to do just that, and she heaves up "Civility Is a Fantasy."  It used to be that people offering that sort of argument had a working familiarity with Critique of Pure Tolerance and the like.  Today, a stance of "I'm in your face, deal with it" suffices.

Civility is the mode of engagement that is often demanded in political discourse; it is the price of admission to important political conversation, its adherents would have us believe; no civility, no service. But civility — this idea that there is a perfect, polite way to communicate about sociopolitical differences — is a fantasy.

The people who call for civility harbor the belief that we can contend with challenging ideas, and we can be open to changing our minds and we can be well mannered even in the face of significant differences. For such an atmosphere to exist, we would have to forget everything that makes us who we are. We would have to believe, despite so much evidence to the contrary, that the world is a fair and just place. And we would have to have nothing at stake.

In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters.

If diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" while reaching for a stick, Mx Gay is the dog deserving of stick.  Would she rather somebody came straight out with the bigotry?  That passage prompted a fisking from Pajamas Media's Jamie K. Wilson.

Right out of the gate, she redefines civility as some impossible demand for perfection. Wrong. Civility isn’t about being perfect or polite for politeness’ sake. It’s about keeping disagreement from spilling into violence. Without civility, you don’t get liberation — you get chaos, like the recent Texas ICE shooting where two detainees died while the targeted ICE agents walked away untouched. That wasn’t civility. That was incivility, and the powerless paid the price.

If civility were a fantasy, the American Revolution wouldn’t have birthed a republic through debate and petition before a single shot was fired. The Constitution itself is civility written down. Incivility didn’t protect the powerless; it killed them. Gay calls civility a cage. In reality, it’s the only shield the weak have left.

Someone who properly understands Repressive Tolerance will be conversant with the argument that civility protects the arguments of the Oppressor, and if you have identified the proper set of Oppressors, you have every right to tell them to shut up.  The lady doesn't even understand that part of the argument.

Civility obsessives love a silver-tongued devil, wearing a nice suit, sporting a tidy haircut, while whispering sweet bigotries. The conservatives among them push for marginalized people to lose their rights and freedoms and, sometimes, even risk their lives. They will tolerate a protest but only if you congregate in an orderly fashion, for culturally sanctioned causes, and if you don’t raise your voice or express anger or overstay your welcome.

Within this framework, incivility is refusing to surrender to hatred, refusing to smile politely at someone who doesn’t consider you their equal, refusing to carve away the seemingly unpalatable parts of yourself until there is nothing left. To be uncivil means pointing out hypocrisies and misinformation. It means accurately acknowledging what people have said, with ample documentation and holding them accountable for their words and deeds.

It means protesting injustice while recognizing that protest isn’t supposed to be demure or mindful. It means exercising one’s constitutionally protected right to free speech. It means believing in science and factual information and public education and other such heretical ideas. Civility is a cage that we’re supposed to lock ourselves into and then we are expected to be grateful for our incarceration.

Ms Wilson suggests civility restrains power, and science challenges orthodoxies.

The good news is that in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, even writers for the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, are backing away from the troubling implications of liberating tolerance.  Yes, Ryan Quinn chants the proper litany first.

[D]id Kirk actually practice civil discourse? Calls for civil discourse increased in the wake of the 2023–24 academic year’s pro-Palestinian campus protests, which prompted criticism of universities for tolerating polarizing rhetoric. But does civil discourse require some level of civility?

While there’s no set definition of the term, critics in higher ed have balked at the depiction of Kirk as an icon of civil discourse, pointing to demeaning statements he made about Islam, Black people and transgender individuals, among others, as well as his embrace of the lie that Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election. They also cite Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist, which calls out faculty whom the organization alleges “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom” and supplies contact information so people can call and complain to universities.

There's a concurrence of sorts in Mx Gay's essay.

Nonviolent, civil protest was met with rank incivility, which is to say that the hypocritical way in which we presently understand civility and incivility is nothing new.

Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.

Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.

Yes, and those "fearful leaders" might include the poo-bahs of higher education.

Baylor University’s website says, “Civil discourse requires mutual respect and objectivity without hostility—demonstrating an appreciation for the experiences of others.” And at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the website for the Civil Discourse Initiative says, “Civil discourse is the practice of engaging across differences in ways that seek to expand knowledge, respect perspectives, and moves us toward rediscovering common ground.”

Darren C. Zook, a continuing lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, who teaches about civil discourse, believes Kirk did practice civil discourse—which he argues doesn’t actually have to include civility.

“Civil discourse, at least by my definition, is any public discourse that takes place outside of the sphere of official discourse,” Zook said. Even hate speech “is protected by the First Amendment and so would also be a part of civil discourse.”

However, while “respect is not a precondition for civil discourse,” he said, it is “a precondition for civility in civil discourse.”

“Charlie Kirk certainly practiced civil discourse, but to the extent that he showed a lack of respect for others or a lack of concern for how his words might create division rather than understanding, I would say he engaged in civil discourse outside the parameters of civility,” Zook said.

Schwartz, of American University, said she believes civil discourse should include respecting others, giving them the benefit of the doubt, being truthful and sowing greater understanding rather than dissension and distrust.

Erika Weissinger, an assistant professor of practice and director of community, climate and culture at UC Berkeley, wrote in a message to Inside Higher Ed that “speech that dehumanizes others forecloses the possibility of dialogue—it is the antithesis.”

Weissinger noted that “calls for civility can feel silencing, platforming those who can maintain a measured, broadcast-anchor style of speech.” But “respect is an essential precondition for civil discourse,” she said.

“Respect does not mean silencing critique,” she wrote. “It is both possible and necessary to challenge harmful policies, theologies, or ideologies. But when contempt for people themselves is the starting point, conversation cannot generate anything constructive … The Constitution provides the floor—it protects even the most offensive speech. But civility sets a higher bar. It asks us to move past mere tolerance of difference toward an effort to understand people on their own terms.”

It sounds as if Professor Weissinger is trying to have her Critique of Pure Tolerance ("calls for civility can feel silencing") and the Scottish Enlightenment ("when contempt ... is the starting point") too.  Good.  It's possible to engage the arguments of Repressive Tolerance without writing them into a speech code.  It's a small step toward restoring the norms of intelligent discourse.

Small and necessary, notes Jed W. Atkins.

Mr. Kirk is the first American public figure to be assassinated literally in the act of public dialogue, and this is a key to understanding the cultural meaning of the attack. Kirk did not deliver speeches and denunciations when he visited campuses. On Wednesday, he was taking questions from students, as was his practice. Under the banner “Prove Me Wrong,” he vigorously yet respectfully stated his political views in give-and-take exchanges with all-comers. Such vibrant discussion once defined the campus experience, where the pursuit of truth depends on the free exchange of ideas.

The setting of Kirk’s murder reminds us of an old truth: the dark alternative to persuasion is force. Where discourse breaks down, violence often follows. The alternative to dialogue is not merely quiet retreat into our private lives; it is often war.

In the wake of this horrific assassination, Americans must reclaim our tradition of open, honest, and vigorous debate among those with different views.

That starts by rejecting the twin temptations that inevitably follow in the wake of such a tragedy. We cannot respond by censoring ourselves, fearing that we’ll be targeted by those who disagree with us, violently or otherwise. Nor can we respond by censoring others on the premise that shutting down debate will keep people safe.

Those temptations are perhaps felt most strongly on college campuses, where one-third of students say, according to a recent FIRE survey, that using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable in rare cases. Sadly, FIRE’s survey data on North Carolina institutions shows that our campuses are not immune to this deeply troubling ethos.

We need more speech, not less. We need stronger and better arguments, and we need the courage not only to say our peace, but to listen in peace as others respond.

We need this commitment to civil discourse at every level of society, but in a special way, we need it on campus. At its best, the university, more than anywhere else, is where society’s leaders learn how to think, speak, and act. Universities must help students learn to listen to one another actively, to exchange their different views patiently, and to assail only bad arguments—not people. All this flows, in turn, from an awareness that we do not know all the answers, and that truth is the reward of reasoned argument.

If the rising generation of students is taught, either implicitly or explicitly, to censor themselves or to despise those with different viewpoints, they will act accordingly in the public square after they graduate. But if they’re taught to debate vigorously – with an exchange of arguments and evidence – in pursuit of truth instead of victory at all costs, they’ll take that spirit of free speech and mutual respect into the public square.

And we'll all be better persons for it.  Did readers of Critique of Pure Tolerance really think calling people reactionaries would force acquiescence?

I'm probably doing the subtleties of the arguments in Critique of Pure Tolerance some violence when I summarize it that way.  But if you're going to suggest that open inquiry and tolerance of opposing points of view is repressive, because it gives people doing things you dislike the opportunity to defend those things, even (or especially) if you view yourself as on the side of the angels, or whatever their secular equivalents are, and they are standing in your way, and you therefore have the obligation to suppress them and their arguments, sooner or later the suppressors are going to come for you.

Now they have come.  "Is anybody surprised that denying coherent beliefs might generate incoherence, or counterrevolution?"