Thucydides, et al.
Carlin, David R. Jr.
cusation of treachery, the denigration of an adversary's intelligence, the shouted abuse, and the shameless goading of interviewees. It began, perhaps, with the elegant sneers of a William F....
...It began, perhaps, with the elegant sneers of a William F. Buckley, Jr., and has escalated to the verbal brawling of the "McLaughlin Group...
...In other words, it is an intrinsic good, not a utilitarian good...
...THUCYDIDES, ET AL...
...Without civility there is no sound civic body...
...Nor the next day when the senior senator rises to defend himself on the floor of the Senate does any member of the opposition rise to express regret or apologize...
...There is no better symbol, by the way, of that societal ideal and of our drift toward it than President Reagan's "Star Wars" proposal...
...For those trying to comprehend the goings-on at Chicago's DuSable High School, I recommend Plato (who is, by the way, the least tragic great writer the world has yet produced...
...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
...I can't find a flaw in the argument, and I suspect my resistance to it may be founded on some anachronistic sexual or educational prejudice...
...without civility there is no civilization...
...Second, because it teaches Thucydides in its strategy course...
...If the automobile is a better means of transportation than the horse, then let's dismount and get behind the wheel...
...They forced open the exits and frantically and precipitately threw themselves down the slides...
...it is an end, not simply a means...
...But things have gone far beyond that...
...And one characteristic of a means is that, at least in principle, it can always be replaced by a better means...
...So far we are talking about programs supposedly aimed at informing the public and providing a forum for public discourse of serious issues...
...They need a bonedeep knowledge of the limits of human foresight and calculation, of the role fortune plays in human affairs, and of the mysterious links which exist between bad luck and moral shortcomings...
...You remember DuSable: that's the school in which students having parental permission are provided with contraceptives on campus...
...Generally speaking, the fans of high school birth control clinics think of themselves as liberals, while the fans of lie detector tests think of themselves as conservatives...
...Power travelers on the shuttle between New York and Washington have long been known to avoid eye contact with acquaintances so that they were free to push and shove past them in the race for seats and quick exits...
...Call11 Apn~ 1986:201ing things by their right names is the beginning of wisdom...
...The peak is probably reached in the good guy vs...
...Paul, Minnesota...
...There is certainly an interaction...
...Regardless of what they as officials may think of school-age sex, the fact is that there's a w.hole lot of it going on among DuSable students, much of it without benefit of contraception...
...THE EDITORS I alone convinced -- threw a public fit...
...Honest dissenters to administration policy must face attacks like that of the president's speech-writer who proclaims their party to be" with Moscow, the co-guarantor of the Brezhnev doctrine in Central America...
...Chicago school authorities assert that their aim is neither to encourage nor to condone sexual activity among high school kids...
...Him," said one man intent on getting off, "he's a goner anyway...
...I suspect there's a common denominator between this DuSable High School program and President Reagan's plan of a few months back to have Secretary of State George Shultz take a lie detector test...
...In one case, departing passengers refused to give way to a rescue squad trying to reach a man who had suffered a heart attack in flight...
...Webster defines civil as "marked by public order" and "quiet and peaceable in behavior" -- the opposite of the "uncivilized and primitive...
...Catherine's has christened its new center of research and scholarship for women as the Abigail Quigley McCarthy Women's Center in recognition of the author's "outstanding testimony to the potential of women...
...Likewise, if contraception is a more economical and effective way than chastity of keeping high school kids unpregnant, then let's replace the arduous and lengthy task of inculcating chastity with the quick and easy task of passing out contraceptives...
...The M.C.s of quiz and game shows twit the contestants unmercifully in order to draw laughs...
...If passing out pills, condoms, etc., in school can at one stroke cut down the pregnancy rate, the drop-out rate, and the tax rate, isn't this a socially and educationally meritorious venture...
...It is difficult to know whether public behavior has made the media presentations acceptable or whether the presentations have made acceptable incivil public behavior...
...bad guy performance on Tom Braden and Robert Novak's "Crossfire" show...
...I didn't really understand what he meant, and I regret to say that I still don't...
...Incivility is now the accepted mark of supposedly rational discussion on national issues...
...A few years back, when Stansfield Turner was president of the college, certain folks (no doubt the same enemies of the English language who got President Reagan to call his MX missile the "Peacekeeper") wanted to rename the place the "Naval Peace College...
...It is no accident that the words "civil," "civic," and "civilization" sound alike...
...In an even more recent news story we were told of passengers still on the ground in New York, who were alarmed by signs of engine fire, and ignored the directions of the flight crew trying to enforce a safe and orderly evacuation...
...All I can say," says the principal, "is we're trying to keep some young ladies in school and off welfare...
...But Thucydides isn't the only classical author relevant to an understanding of the contemporary scene...
...They spring from the same root and they, and what they describe, are closely related...
...And if national security secrets are better maintained through lie detector tests than through loyalty to one's country and to oneself, then down with patriotism and personal integrity and up with the universal lie detector examination...
...Think of the Washington area personality defended by his hearers when he said that if Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death had given us a national holiday, killing four more blacks would give us a whole week off...
...It is time that we gave serious attention to the growth and causes of incivility if we wish to live in a civilized world...
...Defenders of the latter will ascribe the name-calling and altercation to showmanship -- which only proves the point about the contemporary American audience...
...Worst of all is the phenomenon of "shock radio" with the disc jockeys and call-in hosts who pander to prejudice with tasteless "jokes...
...On the contrary, their aim is a strictly educational one...
...But both parties, despite imagining that they are separated by a great gulf, are in the same boat -- a boat carrying us toward a societal ideal in which all perfection resides in our machinery, none in ourselves...
...For example, there is chilling evidence of it in air travel in the Eastern corridor...
...Little wonder that retiring senators cite as one reason for their leaving the poisoned and rancorous atmosphere in which most debate now takes place...
...Secretary of Defense Weinberger, by contrast, who, as everyone knows, is much more up-to-date than Shultz, professed to having no reservations about getting hitched up to the polygraph...
...Navy, as the result of instruction taking place only a few minutes from my front door, is peopled by many hundreds of top officers, who have some understaading of the terrible lessons taught by the ancient Athenian...
...A recent Sunday feature in the Miami Herald detailed frightening behavior on the New YorkMiami run -- so many incidents of passengers fighting with, and harassing, each other and the flight attendants that it has become usual for Miami police to meet the plane and remove passengers over whom the crew has lost control...
...To counterbalance their practice at war-gaming, with its bizarre postulate of perfect rationality on the part of all combatants, they need to drink deeply of the Greek tragic view of life...
...But the virus of incivility infects shows meant to entertain...
...ABIGAIL McCARTHY II Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...The senior takes umbrage, as well he might, but it is, of course, good theater and the so-called "moderator" does not cry foul...
...The supposedly genial" Donahue presides over a show on which proponents of unpopular and untrendy stands are often badgered and treated with thinly veiled ridicule by the host and openly insulted by other participants...
...Catherine's College in St...
...The fundamental argument of Plato's Republic is that virtue is chiefly of value for its own sake, not for the sake of the goods it produces or the evils it wards off...
...First, because it calls things by their right names...
...Ages ago, I had a high school teacher who told me that nobody can understand the modem world who doesn't first have a good knowledge of Thucydides...
...Many girls drop out of school, never to return, and they give birth to babies who start life with the compound disadvantage of having only one parent, who is underage, uneducated, and unlikely to climb very far up the socioeconomic ladder...
...Commonweal: 202...
...It was a plan the president had to abandon when Shultz -- whose prejudices are so terribly anachronistic that he wasn't even stunned into silence by the arguments in favor of the tests, let ~ BIGAIL McCARTHY, was recently honored by her alma mater, St...
...And where better to pass them out than in school...
...Accordingly, the pregnancy rate is very high, something like one-third of its female students getting pregnant every year...
...WHAT'S GOOD FOR ITS OWN SAKE i HAPPEN TO LIVE about a mile from the United States Naval War College, located in Newport, R.I., and I'm especially fond of that institution for a couple of reasons...
...Military men ought to have a sense of the dangers of hubris, of the reality of nemesis...
...Reporters shout unwelcome questions at a reluctant president who responds by calling them -- not so sotto voce -- "SOBs...
...Nonetheless, I have always treasured his remark as a piece of golden, if somewhat Delphic, wisdom, and it is a daily consolation to me that the...
...Incivility in all areas of life leads, as it has on the airlines, to disorder and' violence...
...Nothing doing, said Admiral Turner, since teaching and learning the art of war has been the mission of the college since its founding in 1884, and there's no honesty in trying to color it otherwise...
...The one party has a fancy for instruments used by social workers, the other party for those used by policemen...
...Signs of our descent into social anarchy as we lose civility are everywhere...
...That's a line of reasoning which convinces some, but others it only stuns into silence, without really persuading them...
...But living, as we do, near the high tide of a utilitarian civilization, we tend to think of virtue as a means, not an end...
...Tribal anarchy gives way to civil order," is cited as an example of use...
...The historical courtesy which was meant to facilitate civil debate is dead...
...yet I'm not quite ready to endorse the idea that the wellequipped and up-to-date modern high school ought to have a birth control clinic alongside its gym and library (or its "learning resources center," as the library is called by the cousins of those people who like to say "Peacekeeper" and "Peace College...
...We add our congratulations as we also welcome Abigail McCarthy's column back to our pages...
...Novak, often called "the Prince of Darkness" by colleagues and victims alike, shamelessly bullies and shouts down everyone from cabinet members to ambassadors and, of course, members of Congress on whom there is evidently always an open season...
...Thucydides is the right classical author for warriors to read, though Aeschylus might do as well...
...A very junior and undistinguished senator smirkingly breaches traditional senatorial courtesy by accusing a senior senator of always voting to weaken America -- and does so on a Sunday TV forum...
...Perhaps the president should spend a few weeks at Newport reading Thucydides...
...The resulting pile-ups caused serious injuries to the weak and elderly among them...
Vol. 113 • April 1986 • No. 7
