Just Be Nice by Stephen L. Carter Stephen L. Carter is a professor at Yale Law School and has written extensively on such topics as affirmative action, the judicial confirmation process, and the place of religion in our legal and political cultures. The following argument was written for the Yale Alumni Magazine in 1998, and was later included in Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy, ©1998. When I was a child, attending grade school in Washington, D.C., we took classroom time to study manners. Not only the magic words we have already discussed (“please’ and “thank you’) but more complicated etiquette questions, like how to answer the telephone (“Carter residence, Stephen speaking’) and how to set the table (we were quizzed on whether knife blades point in or out). And somehow nobody—no children, no parents— objected to what nowadays would surely be viewed as indoctrination. Today instruction of this sort is so rare that when a school tries to teach manners to children, it makes news. So when the magazine U.S. News & World Report ran a story in 1996 about the decline of civility, it opened with what it must have considered the man- bites-dog vignette—an account of a classroom where young people were taught to be polite. Ironically, this newsworthy curriculum evidently teaches a good deal less about etiquette than we learned back at Margaret M. Amidon Elementary School in the sixties, but that is still a good deal more than children learn in most places. Deportment classes are long gone. Now and then the schools teach some norms of conduct, but almost always about sex, and never the most important ones: Do not engage in harassment and Always use a condom seem to be the outer limits of their moral capacity. The idea that sex, as a unique human activity, might require a unique morality, different from the general moral rules against physical harm to others and harm to the self, is not one that public schools are prepared to entertain. Respect for rules of conduct has been lost in the deafening and essentially empty rights-talk of our age. Following a rule of good manners may mean doing something you do not want to do, and the weird rhetoric of our self-indulgent age resists the idea that we have such things as obligations to others. We suffer from what James Q. Wilson has described as the elevation of self-expression over self-control. So when a black student at a Connecticut high school was disciplined in 1996 for wearing pants that drooped (exposing his underwear), not only did he claim a right to wear what he liked, but some community leaders hinted at racism, on the theory that many young African American males dress this way. (The fact that the style is copied from prison garb, which lacks a belt, evidently makes no impression on these particular defenders of the race.) When I was a child, had my school sought to discipline me, my parents would ...

1. Just Be Nice
by Stephen L. Carter
Stephen L. Carter is a professor at Yale Law School and has
written extensively on such
topics as affirmative action, the judicial confirmation process,
and the place of religion in
our legal and political cultures. The following argument was
written for the Yale Alumni
Magazine in 1998, and was later included in Civility: Manners,
Morals, and the Etiquette
of Democracy, ©1998.
When I was a child, attending grade school in Washington,
D.C., we took classroom time
to study manners. Not only the magic words we have already
discussed (“please’ and
“thank you’) but more complicated etiquette questions, like how
to answer the telephone
(“Carter residence, Stephen speaking’) and how to set the table
(we were quizzed on
whether knife blades point in or out). And somehow nobody—
no children, no parents—

2. objected to what nowadays would surely be viewed as
indoctrination.
Today instruction of this sort is so rare that when a school tries
to teach manners to
children, it makes news. So when the magazine U.S. News &
World Report ran a story in
1996 about the decline of civility, it opened with what it must
have considered the man-
bites-dog vignette—an account of a classroom where young
people were taught to be
polite. Ironically, this newsworthy curriculum evidently teaches
a good deal less about
etiquette than we learned back at Margaret M. Amidon
Elementary School in the sixties,
but that is still a good deal more than children learn in most
places. Deportment classes
are long gone. Now and then the schools teach some norms of
conduct, but almost always
about sex, and never the most important ones: Do not engage in
harassment and Always
use a condom seem to be the outer limits of their moral
capacity. The idea that sex, as a
unique human activity, might require a unique morality,
different from the general moral

3. rules against physical harm to others and harm to the self, is not
one that public schools
are prepared to entertain.
Respect for rules of conduct has been lost in the deafening
and essentially empty rights-talk of our age. Following a rule
of good manners may mean doing something you do not want
to do, and the weird rhetoric of our self-indulgent age resists
the idea that we have such things as obligations to others. We
suffer from what James Q. Wilson has described as the
elevation of self-expression over
self-control. So when a black student at a Connecticut high
school was disciplined in
1996 for wearing pants that drooped (exposing his underwear),
not only did he claim a
right to wear what he liked, but some community leaders hinted
at racism, on the theory
that many young African American males dress this way. (The
fact that the style is
copied from prison garb, which lacks a belt, evidently makes no
impression on these
particular defenders of the race.)

4. When I was a child, had my school sought to discipline me, my
parents would have
assumed the school had good reason. And they probably would
have punished me further
at home. Unlike many of today’s parents, they would not have
begun by challenging the
“The illusion that all
desires are rights
continues its insidious
spread.”
teacher or principal who thought I had done wrong. To the
student of civility, the relevant
difference between that era and the present is the collapse of
trust, particularly trust in
strangers and in institutions. My parents would have trusted the
school’s judgment—and
thus trusted the school to punish me appropriately—but trust of
that kind has largely
dissolved. Trust (along with generosity) is at the heart of
civility. But cynicism has
replaced the healthier emotion of trust. Cynicism is the enemy

5. of civility: It suggests a
deep distrust of the motives of our fellow passengers, a distrust
that ruins any project that
rests, as civility does, on trusting others even when there is risk.
And so, because we no
longer trust each other, we place our trust in the vague and
conversation-stifling language
of “rights’ instead.
Consider again the boy with the droopy pants. To talk about
wearing a particular set of
clothes as a “right’ is demeaning to the bloody struggles for
such basic rights as the vote
and an unsegregated education. But the illusion that all desires
are rights continues its
insidious spread. At about the same time, a fired waitress at a
restaurant not far from Yale,
where I teach, announced a “right’ to pierce her face with as
many studs and rings as she
wishes. And, not long ago, a television program featured an
interview with a woman who
insisted on the “right’ to be as fat as she likes. Rights that are
purchased at relatively low
cost stand a fair chance of being abused, simply because there is
no history behind them,

6. and thus little pressure to use them responsibly—in short,
because nobody knows why the
right exists. But even a right that possesses a grimly instructive
history—a right like
freedom of speech—may fall subject to abuse when we forget
where it came from.
This proposition helps explain Cohen v. California, a 1971
decision in which the
Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a young man who
wore on his jacket the
benign legend F _ _ _ THE DRAFT. The case arose as the
public language grew vulgar.
The 19th and early 20th centuries offered a tradition of public
insults that were witty,
pointed, occasionally cruel, but not obscene or particularly
offensive. Politicians and
other public figures competed to demonstrate their cleverness in
repartee. (One of my
favorites is Benjamin Disraeli’s explanation of the difference
between a misfortune and a
calamity: “If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a
misfortune. And if anyone
pulled him out, that would be a calamity.’) Nowadays the
tradition of barbed wit has

7. given way to a witless barbarism, our lazier conversational
habit of reaching for the first
bit of profanity that comes to mind. The restraint and
forethought that are necessary to be
clever, even in insult, are what a sacrificial civility demands.
When we are lazy about our
words, we tell those at whom our vulgarity is directed that they
are so far beneath us that
they are not worth the effort of stopping to think how best to
insult them; we prefer,
animal-like, to make the first sound that comes to mind.
In Cohen v. California, the justices were unfortunately correct
that what the dissenters
called “Cohen’s absurd and immature antic’ was protected by
the freedom of speech. But
it is important to add that when the framers of the Constitution
envisioned the rough-and-
tumble world of public argument, they almost certainly
imagined heated disagreements
against a background of broadly shared values; certainly that
was the model offered by
John Locke, by then a kind of political folk hero. It is unlikely
that the framers imagined

8. a world in which I might feel (morally) free to say the first
thing that came into my head.
I do think Cohen was rightly decided, but the danger deserves
emphasis: When
offensiveness becomes a constitutional right, it is a right
without any tradition behind it,
and consequently we have no norms to govern its use.
Consider once more the fired waitress. I do not deny that the
piercing of one’s body
conveys, in many cultures, information of great significance.
But in America, we have no
tradition to serve as guide. No elder stands behind our young to
say, “Folks have fought
and died for your right to pierce your face, so do it right’; no
community exists that can
model for a young person the responsible use of the “right’; for
the right, even if called
self-expression, comes from no source other than desire. If we
fail to distinguish desire
from right, we will not understand that rights are sensible and
wise only within particular
contexts that give them meaning. The Constitution protects a
variety of rights, but our

9. moral norms provide the discipline in their exercise. Sometimes
what the moral norm of
civility demands is that we restrain our self-expression for the
sake of our community.
That is why Isaac Peebles in the nineteenth century thought it
wrong for people to sing
during a train ride; and why it is wrong to race our cars through
the streets, stereos
cranked high enough to be sure that everyone we pass has the
opportunity to enjoy the
music we happen to like; and why it was wrong for Cohen to
wear his jacket; and why it
is wrong for racists to burn crosses (another harmful act of self-
expression that the courts
have protected under the First Amendment). And it is why a
waitress who encounters the
dining public every day in her work must consider the interest
of that public as she mulls
the proper form of self-expression.
Consequently, our celebration of Howard Stern, Don Imus, and
other heroes of “shock
radio’ might be evidence of a certain loss of moral focus. The
proposition that all speech

10. must be protected should not be confused with the very
different proposition that all
speech must be celebrated. When radio station WABC in New
York dismissed a popular
talk show host, Bob Grant, who refused to stop making racist
remarks on the air, some of
his colleagues complained that he was being censored. Lost in
the brouhaha was the
simple fact that Grant’s comments and conduct were
reprehensible, and that his abuse of
our precious freedoms was nothing to be celebrated.
The point is not that we should rule the offensive illegal,
which is why the courts are correct to strike down efforts to
regulate speech that some people do not like, and even most
speech that hurts; the advantages of yielding to the
government so much power over what we say have never been
shown to outweigh the
dangers. Yet we should recognize the terrible damage that free
speech can do if people
are unwilling to adhere to the basic precept of civility, that we
must sometimes rein in our
own impulses—including our impulses to speak hurtful words—
for the sake of those who

11. are making the democratic journey with us. The Proverb tells
us, “Death and life are in
the power of the tongue’ (Proverbs 18:21). The implication is
that the choice of how to
use the tongue, for good or for evil, is ours.
Words are magic. We conjure with them. We send messages, we
paint images. With
words we report the news, profess undying love, and preserve
our religious traditions.
“How we treat one
another is what civility
is about.”
Words at their best are the tools of morality, of progress, of
hope. But words at their
worst can wound. And wounds fester. Consequently, the way we
use words matters. This
explains why many traditional rules of etiquette, from
Erasmus’s handbook in the
sixteenth century to the explosion of guides to good manners
during the Victorian era,

12. were designed to govern how words—those marvelous,
dangerous words—should be
used. Even the controversial limits on sexual harassment and
“hate speech’ that have
sprouted in our era, limits that often carry the force of law, are
really just more rules of
civility, more efforts, in a morally bereft age, to encourage us to
discipline our desires.
My point is not to tell us how to speak. My point is to argue
that how we speak is simply
one point on a continuum of right and wrong ways to treat one
another. And how we treat
one another is what civility is about.