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Readers Write: Charm is no better than incivility; Gun rights vs. gun wrongs

Letters to the editor for the weekly print edition of April 2, 2012: One reader argues that the call for more 'charm' as a remedy for incivility is misguided, as charm can be mistaken for superficiality. Another reader faults partisan media programming for preventing Americans from disagreeing agreeably. A third reader 'has no quarrel with gun rights,' just with 'gun wrongs.'

Charm vs. civility

In his March 5 Upfront column, "Can debate get heated with no loss of cool?," Clay Collins cited Monocle's idea that "charm" might begin to reclaim ground for civility in "international politics and business," and considers the idea promising. I wonder.

The language of assault and conquer certainly dominates today. Like a series of body punches, it may produce submission or retaliation, but probably not assuagement or compromise. By appealing to the lowest emotional denominators, uncivil speech hardens any process it is part of even when, in its raw candor, it hits on the truth. It can make unpalatable the very truth it contains.

Charm sounds appealing, but might it be just the other end of the decorum spectrum? It has its limitations and drawbacks, too. Charm is so rare now in public speech that the majority of Americans might mistake it for superficiality, affectation, or even ironic cynicism, and laugh it off.

Americans give short shrift to elegance and wit; nowadays we're accustomed to the rough and sarcastic, even when it's vulgar. If charm ruled public discourse, I worry that truth might become confused with stylistic mannerisms and incite even more scorn.

Incivility and charm are extremes. In my view, we would be best served by a plain speech that is modest and respectful, yet emphatic and candid.

Ricks Carson

 Atlanta 

The March 5 cover story, "The civility gap," examines the lack of common courtesy among Americans.

This has been caused in large part by one key factor: Partisan reporters on TV news channels and radio talk shows have convinced many Americans that their opinions are 100 percent correct and that people who disagree with them are "evil, idiots, and stupid."

Somehow Americans must understand that people can disagree without being disagreeable.

Roy Wetherington

 Tifton, Ga.

Gun rights and gun wrongs

Regarding the March 12 cover story, "Inside America's Gun Culture": I have no quarrel with gun rights. I do, though, with gun wrongs. Guns are an accident or an intention waiting to happen. In the wrong hands they are a threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

News accounts rehearse daily the unintended, often brutal, consequences of our return to the Guns-R-Us culture of our formative, "Manifest Destinied" years. The Second Amendment right we honor (and should continue to), which few exercise (for purposes such as self-protection, hunting, and sport) cannot threaten the rights of the rest of us.

How can we ensure the safety of the many without destroying a Second Amendment right only some choose to use? Where's the national dialogue? It's overdue.

Ron W. Smith

Providence, Utah

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

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