Don’t expect consistency when it comes to calls for political civility. When conservative activists go too far, calls for civility follow. When leftists misbehave and act uncivilly, we don’t hear much about civility.
That’s no surprise because most of the toxic incivility seems to be coming from the left. Many on the left seem to believe that you must be evil if your views on politics, culture, and society differ from theirs.
Take Barack Obama. He claims to be trying to “build a conversation where folks are able to disagree without hating each other.” Yet his “Democracy Forum” includes notorious campus antagonists who sought to stifle voices with whom they disagree.
This is epitomized by a recent AP report about events on Mount Desert Island in the small seaside town of Northeast Harbor, Maine.
According to the travel website Acadia Magic, Northeast Harbor is “famous as much for its summertime residents as it has for its beautiful and protected harbor full of exclusive yachts and sailing vessels.”
Yet, some Northeast Harbor residents are awfully nasty to other Northeast Harbor residents. They are especially nasty toward Leonard Leo, a conservative organizer and philanthropist, and former head of the Federalist Society. He is part of a movement that seeks to preserve what has made America a great nation and a land of opportunity for everyone who has arrived on its shores.
It bothers noisy uncivil leftists in Northeast Harbor that Leo has taken up residence in the town. For good measure, Leo has the gall to become one of the largest supporters of charities on the island, funding the local hospital, library, church, and housing trust.
But to the Leftists in Northeast Harbor, if you disagree with them, you should not be allowed to live in their neighborhood or attend their church. Your charitable donations that provide housing and medical care for the needy should be rejected. And worst of all, you should not be allowed to enjoy the tranquility of your home.
Consider Caroline Pryor, a 65-year-old woman from Northeast Harbor. She participates in loud, nasty protests at Leonard Leo’s home. That’s right, his home. According to the AP:
They came armed with a cartoonish life-sized puppet of Leo, a rainbow arch for runners to pass through, and blue and pink chalk with which they scribbled slogans — “You Are Amazing, Leonard Leo Is Not” — across the road. They rang cowbells as a boombox blasted Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift, and Queen.
As the Associated Press reported, their “goal was lofty: Convince Leo to leave.”
Those same radicals have also tried to convince the various organizations supported by Leo’s charitable giving to return his money. One resident, Susan Covino Buell, actually resigned her position with the Island Housing Trust, a nonprofit that seeks “to boost the amount of affordable housing on the island,” merely because it accepted Leo’s donations.
If Buell believes that charities should consider the politics of their donors, does she also believe that when they are considering who they will help, charities should take politics into account and refuse to help anyone who disagrees with her views?
In America, we have a long tradition of residential civility. We don’t chase people from their homes. Americans view residential life as a sort of commonwealth, where pluralism and courtesy reign, unlike the behavior exhibited in Northeast Harbor.
You just don’t harass people at home, period. Or at their church, or their business, or in their civic involvement.
American history obviously has a few unfortunate examples to the contrary. In 1912, in Forsyth County, Ga., white residents tried to drive every last black person out of the county, and they succeeded. The ramifications of this residential expulsion campaign remained a contentious issue in Forsyth County well into the 1980s, perhaps because it was so squarely at odds with the values Americans place on residential civility.
Burning crosses were the tool to convince blacks to leave in the American South in another era. In Northeast Harbor, they use puppets, cowbells, and Fat Bottomed Girls at 120 decibels.
We shouldn’t seek to purge our neighbors because we hate them or disagree with their beliefs. That behavior has plagued other nations and other times – from the horrors of the Balkans in the 1990s to even modern strife between Armenians and Azeris.
This isn’t to say that the bloodthirstiness seen in those places is on par with the nastiness in Northeast Harbor. Obviously not. But it comes from the same wicked place, the willingness to intimidate and scare off your neighbors because you disagree with them because you don’t want them around anymore. The idea that those with whom you disagree on the Second Amendment or abortion need to be purged from their homes and your neighborhood is an alien concept in America.
“We can’t just act like he is a regular person in our community,” says Susan Covino Buell, who seems to think the legitimacy of charity depends on your politics. That’s where it all begins – when someone isn’t a “regular person” entitled to civility and a peaceable existence at home. Or maybe in his church. Or perhaps his children’s schools.
According to the venomous philosophy of Buell and her comrades, “The Other must go.”
We have both written about the same behavior in Virginia directed toward Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. There, protesters harassed Alito and his family at his home, some wearing Handmaid’s costumes.
But in Virginia, it is a crime to protest at someone’s home: “In other words, civil society benefits by keeping homes about family, friends, and peace and not clowns in Handmaid costumes. If you show up and protest a Supreme Court Justice near their home, you are committing a crime in Virginia.”
Not only is it time to enforce such statutes, it is time for our society to reject such poisonous incivility that destroys domestic tranquility and condemn those who engage in it. If you want to protest over an important issue, do it in the town square, not where individuals and their families live and sleep.
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