{"id":136,"date":"2005-11-20T18:48:50","date_gmt":"2005-11-20T22:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=136"},"modified":"2005-11-21T22:07:50","modified_gmt":"2005-11-22T02:07:50","slug":"bad-manners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"Bad Manners"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Will<\/a> writes in today\u2019s *Washington Post*:<\/p>\n

>Actually, manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related — as a foundation is related to a house — to the word civilization. <\/p>\n

Nevermind the specious analogy. The real surprise is that one of the most mannerless of newspaper opinion mongers utters it. But we should thank him. We\u2019ve been looking around for a new analogy. The principles and practices of informal logic (those first scientifically studied by Aristotle) are like manners (and to some degree the rules of punctuation) to the extent that they seem much to *our* dismay to be \u201cunenforceable.\u201d But unfortunately, if it\u2019s the case that<\/p>\n

>a nation’s greatness is measured not only by obedience of laws but also by “obedience to the unenforceable”<\/p>\n

as Will himself affirms, then we are in deep trouble; for civil society\u2013a society of *cives* who persuade by reason rather than force\u2013is grounded sound reasoning. The citizens who argue\u2013especially those gifted with semiweekly spots on op-ed pages of world-wide circulation\u2013have a special duty to be on their best behavior in their discursive interactions with others. That such has not been the case with this particular author is amply demonstrated by the archives<\/a> of this website. <\/p>\n

We would certainly agree that \u201cmanners are means of extending respect, especially to strangers.\u201d And for this reason we bristle at the following:<\/p>\n

>It is politeness to the league’s customers who, weary of seeing players dressed in “edgy” hip-hop “street” or “gangsta” styles, want to be able to distinguish the Bucks and Knicks from the Bloods and Crips. Stern also understands that players who wear “in your face” clothes of a kind, and in a manner, that evokes Sing Sing more than Brooks Brothers might be more inclined to fight on the floor and to allow fights to migrate to the stands, as happened last year.<\/p>\n

The suggestion that the clothes caused the fight (and only one fight in all of the games–hockey anyone?), or made the fight more likely is as unmannered as judging a person by the way he or she dresses. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Will writes in today\u2019s *Washington Post*: >Actually, manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related — as a foundation is related to a house — to the word civilization. Nevermind the specious analogy. The real surprise is that one of the most mannerless of newspaper opinion mongers … Continue reading Bad Manners<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}