Rules of Civility: Evenhandedness

There is nothing less polite than a one-sided political discussion. Civility demands that more than one perspective be included in any discussion. Of course, there's also nothing less polite than an anarchic free-for-all of ideas. Civility thus also demands that no more than two perspectives be included in any discussion. And finally, there is nothing less polite than an unbalanced discussion, where one perspective is judged lacking based on detachment from evidence or rationality. Therefore, it is imperative that both sides be accorded equal deference.

In the society of learned gentlemen who nobly lead us, the task of expressing political ideas is carried by the parties, and, it is our collective good fortune that they are two in number. No more and no less. This provides a simple way to tell, without fail, if a political discussion is balanced. Does it include the opinions of members of each party without favor or scrutiny.

Paul Krugman is a man of intelligence, and summarizes the rules of political discourse quite aptly:

What he’s doing – and what the whole Beltway media crowd has done – is to slot Ryan into a role someone is supposed to be playing in their political play, that of the thoughtful, serious conservative wonk.

 So far, so good. Elsewhere, however, he crudely mocks our most noble gentlemen of learning, "professional centrists,"as

people whose whole pose is one of standing between the extremes of both parties, and calling for a bipartisan solution.

This kind of thinking leads to solutions where everyone wins and, more importantly, no one has to feel bad about themselves. Of course, Krugman also views this kind of gentlemanly discourse as a problem, which reflects the fact that, despite his intellect and erudition, he is deeply uncouth.

I mention Krugman not to reward his insolence with attention, but to alert readers to his breaches of decorum, particularly with regard to Congressman Paul Ryan, whose policy proposals could, I suppose, be evaluated in terms of their substantive content and likely consequences, but are far more politely discussed as positions equally meritorious to all others (all others, of course, being of necessity a category of one).

Krugman is leading the pack with his impolite scrutiny of the Path to Prosperity, having the gall to suggest that Ryan is being deliberately deceptive and that some number of persons, including people who have never interviewed Paul Ryan, might suffer.

I could do this in detail, but you can learn everything you need to know by understanding two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million.
Of these, $4.6 trillion is the size of the mystery meat in the budget. Ryan proposes tax cuts that would cost $4.6 trillion over the next decade relative to current policy — that is, relative even to making the Bush tax cuts permanent — but claims that his plan is revenue neutral, because he would make up the revenue loss by closing loopholes. For example, he would … well, actually, he refuses to name a single example of a loophole he wants to close.
So the budget is a fraud. No, it’s not “imperfect”, it’s not a bit shaky on the numbers; it’s completely based on almost $5 trillion dollars of alleged revenue that are pure fabrication.
On the other side, 14 million is the minimum number of people who would lose health insurance due to Medicaid cuts — the Urban Institute, working off the very similar plan Ryan unveiled last year, puts it at between 14 and 27 million people losing Medicaid.
That’s a lot of people — and a lot of suffering. And again, bear in mind that none of this would be done to reduce the deficit — it would be done to make room for those $4.6 trillion in tax cuts, and in particular a tax cut of $240,000 a year to the average member of the one percent..
But Obama is very rude for pointing any of this out.

I can state my unequivocal agreement with that last sentence Krugman wrote, so there may be hope for him yet. Unfortunately, his incivil example is encouraging others.

Charlie Pierce:

Once in Congress, however, he has been transformed into an intellectual giant despite the fact that, every time he comes up with another "budget," actual economists get a look at it and determine, yet again, that between "What We Should Do" and "Great Things That Will Happen When We Do" is a wilderness of dreamy nonsense, wishful thinking, and an asterisk the size of Lake Huron

For shame, Charles. I shudder to think we both hail from Worcester County!

Gin and Tacos:

Yet the most alarming aspect of Mitt Romney's "bold" decision to cave to the big GOP money and shackle himself to the anchor that is Paul Ryan is the repeated references to his new partner's considerable intellectual gifts. Given that we now live in a world in which shows about Honey Boo Boo and married couples with 19 children are on something with the gall to call itself "The Learning Channel", it makes sense that Paul Ryan would qualify as an "intellectual". But it is a Book of Revelations-level warning sign of the misguided Moderation Worship among the bobbleheads of the Beltway media that in their desperation to say something good about the cargo cult of nihilists that is the modern GOP, they have decided that Paul Ryan is a deeply intellectual man of ideas and principles – a leading thinker of his day.

I do not know this "Honey Boo Boo," but I know I don't like where this is going:

Whatever the psychology, there is not enough alarm at the fact that our media have decided that the quiet, weasely, dead-eyed weirdo who likes to write manifestos (!!!) of his Darwinist view of the world must be, by virtue of his lack of car salesman / televangelist bluster, a genuine, bona fide Intellectual. If he's not politician handsome or articulate, surely he must be brilliant; to conclude otherwise would be to admit that his ancestors' money got him elected. Somewhere in Janesville, Wisconsin an equivalent man without wealth and means looks at Ryan on the TV during his night shift at Shoney's and laments, "That could have been me."

If this keeps up, we may not only forfeit the wonders of our wonderfully organized system of political discourse, but we may find that young gentlemen of learning abandon the noble pursuit of political journalism, leaving the rest of us to figure things out for ourselves.

Fortunately, Mark Halperin knows the value of polite discourse.  When Mitt Romney makes jokes that pander to a subset of low-information voters who believe that Barack Obama is not an American citizen, it is precisely the same thing as Barack Obama making a joke that ridicules those low-information voters. Thank goodness Halperin isn't afraid to say so, without fear of vicious mockery.  Sometimes politeness needs courageous defenders.