Professor Carter, welcome.
Surely, every generation complains about the decline of manners and morals. Why is our generation different?
Professor STEPHEN CARTER (Yale Law School): Complaining about civility, Bob, is as old as America, but I think of civility as being like a family fortune. Each generation may say, "We're spending too much. We're spending too much. We're spending too much." Sooner or later, it really is all spent. And if you look at the world today, that's what you see. You see a rise in so-called road rage, attacks on people with motor vehicles; you see a decline in political participation, which many political scientists link to negative campaigning. You see all sorts of signs that in America, we're coming to care less and less about others.ABERNETHY: And how do you define civility? Why do you think it's so important?
Prof. CARTER: A lot of people, when they think about civility, think only of manners, whether we say "please" and "thank you." That's a small corner, but it's not the most important part. Civility, I like to say, is the total of all the sacrifices we make for others, the sacrifices we make for the sake of living in community with others. Those sacrifices are important, because we rub up against each other all the time, all day long. We cannot
live simply as individuals who seek our own desires and self-indulgence.ABERNETHY: So it's more than being nice?
Prof. CARTER: It's much more than being nice. Nice is fine, but civility requires something more. I like to think about it as an extension of the biblical command to love the neighbor.
ABERNETHY: What's the most basic reason or the most basic reasons for the decline of civility in recent times?
Prof. CARTER: There really are two, and they're very closely related. One is the kind of relentless materialism of our culture, the focus not only on money as important, but on the things of this world -- the things we can gather to us, reach out and hold, whether it's career, ambition, or something else. The second, which is related to that, is the explosion of the language of right, suggesting that whatever I desire at a moment is something I should reach out and actually take. These two things together present, on one the hand, temptation -- you ought to take what you want. On the other hand, protection -- you ought to be free to take what you want.
ABERNETHY: I don't understand the first one, though, about the materialism. Why does a lot of the interest in things lead to incivility?
Prof. CARTER: If you think about it, we come into this world as these small, unformed animals. We have instincts and desires. Reach out -- you want a bottle, you reach out and take it. But by the time we're adults, we're supposed to have been civilized so that we no longer feel that the measure of what's right to do is what we desire to do at that moment. Unfortunately, my generation, your generation -- we're somehow failing our young people in the sense that we are not leading the kinds of lives that teach them they shouldn't simply reach out and grab for their immediate desire.
ABERNETHY: Many public officials, as you know, have called for more civility, most famously, perhaps, the mayor of New York, himself sometimes not too civil. Sometimes these appeals have produced primarily laughter. Now, how do you and others calling for civility avoid the charge that you're just kind of being busybodies?
Prof. CARTER: I would be the last person to say that people who are religious are inherently somehow more civil than others, but religion holds forth the promise, at least, at its best, when it really tries to do something other than grasp for power in the world, of helping us to understand a sense of obligation to others and perhaps an obligation to God that can transcend our grabbing for the immediate.
