Miranda Devine asserts that it is time we made good manners all the rage and mentions the new fad for ‘civility’, being promoted by a variety of groups on the political right.

Might I suggest that civility begins at home. Devine herself is one of a group of right-wing print commentators (others are PP McGuinness and Piers Akerman) who routinely substitute abuse for argument. The same phenomenon is found, in even more marked terms, on radio and in the blogosphere. (For those with the patience to follow it, there was a long discussion of this in Ozblog circles recently. You can start here

More interestingly, this emphasis on civility contrasts markedly with derision of ‘political correctness’, understood to mean the substitution of approved euphemisms for accurate but hurtful descriptive terms (‘gravitationally challenged’ for ‘fat’ to take a standard, if apocryphal, example of the style). As far as I can see, the PC program demands an extension of civility to groups who were previously denied it. The problem is that new euphemisms wear out pretty fast unless they are accompanied by a change of attitudes. It’s much easier to substitute, say, ‘disabled’ for ‘crippled’, than to change the attitudes which are associated with those terms.

The well-known excesses of PC, and the obvious nastiness of many advocates of ‘civility’ can be summed up by saying that it’s all very well to talk the talk, but you also have to walk the walk. Civility is a highly desirable social quality, but it can only be sustained if it’s backed by genuine goodwill towards other members of the community. I can’t say I see much of this from Miranda Devine, or from other recent converts to the cause of civility.

Note: There’s more on this from Ken Parish