Emily Post was (I believe) an early 20th century socialite who wrote a famous (or, some would say, infamous) book on Ettiquette, not to be mistaken for Civility, in that the former is too rigid to make any accomodation for Common Sense. In fact, we would argue, that's exactly the point. The "rules" were created and declared to be above question by all "proper" people, by somebody who lived a life of privilege that she had done nothing to earn. They are nothing more than a tool to keep people in their place, where they may be easily manipulated into giving the supporters of these "rules" what they want on bended knee. (1)

Naturally, one of the "rules" is that one isn't allowed to remind the snobbish supporters of these alleged rules that they are nothing more than a revisionist version of a codification of some of the customs of one of the last peoples in Western Europe to have attained civilization. "Isn't it curious", one might ask, "that some take it for granted that Anglo-American customs are the measure of civilization, and seem to think that it should go without saying that those whose cultures predate theirs by centuries or even millenia should discard their own ways, and adopt Anglo-Saxon ones, instead? Why Anglo-Saxon ones, and not, say, German or French or Greek ones, as any of these three would have a far stronger claim to being the prevailing culture in the Chicago area?" Say that, or in any way offer a philosophical critique of some of those customs, and some will order you to be quiet. "Polite" people don't question the order of things. To which we say "then what is needed is a bit less 'politeness' and a little more courtesy, because the two don't seem to mean the same thing, any more".

Anglo-American customs didn't rise to prominence because they were universally admired in our region and freely chosen based on their own merits. They rose because those pushing them were the biggest bullies on the block, and those who didn't pay some lip service to the quirks of an ever dwindling over-privileged minority did so at risk to their own careers, and, sometimes, to their physical well-being. When those of us who question their ways are told to be silent in the name of "politeness", usually by ill-educated people who offer no intelligent defense of their positions, what we see, at best, is the attitude of the conqueror who has enjoyed his privileges for so long that he has come to take them as his due. He plays on the ingrained fears of the descendants of those his so-called "Nativist"/"Know Nothing" (2) ancestors brutalized, becoming as much of a bully, and a barbarian as they ever were, while holding onto the illusion that his is the voice of civilization!

How "courteous" is it, not only to do that, but then to try to stifle any discussion of what it is, that one has done? This, in a society which speaks of its belief in the value of free speech? From these arbitrary "rules", imposed on no more of a basis than "because we said so", to the speech codes of Political Correctness is a short step. It's the same Barbarian code of honoring the pecking order and trying to isolate the one imposed on from potential support. But more and more of us are saying "no". Our customs and and our traditions will be our own, whether others like it or not, and if they wish us to change those, they're going to have to do a lot better than offer Ettiquette's argument of "because we said so".

Such an argument never merited respect and, to be realistic, it no longer merits fear, either. Anglo-Americans are no longer even close to being a plurality in this country, much less a majority. The rest of us dominate the professions, the military, and, with the rise of start-ups and turn-over in the American corporate world, we shall soon dominate the Business world as well. The unchallenged Anglo-Saxon hegemony in America was never justified on grounds of morality or reason, only on terms of brute force. Now that brute force is on our side, we do well to remember this, and find the sense to realize that some implicit theats should simply be laughed off.

Question : "Is any of this relevant?"

Answer: Obviously, you must have thought that it was. Otherwise, why did you choose to click on the link leading to this page?

To answer that question more broadly, one must ask oneself what a discussion is for. Presumably, we should be trying to get at the truth when conducting them. "And so you should remain civil", might come the reply. Perhaps. But what is Civility?

The reality is, as we go out into the real world, that what we will encounter will not be a polite, "Socratic" discussion. Many, seeing that a discussion is not going the way they'd like, won't hesitate to try to reclaim lost ground by lying, when asked a question, if the lie they tell might push the conclusions to be drawn from their answer in a direction which they'd like. As even flawless deductive reasoning can not overcome bad starting assumptions, for the process of discussion to work as it should, we, the participants, must give ourselves permission to deal with that reality, even though we can't possibly do so without becoming "unfriendly", because the reality that somebody has been dishonest in an inherently uncomplimentary one.

Etiquette must give way to Reason not because, as Postmodernists would assert, we arbitrarily prefer our ways to those of the Emily Post crowd, but because those ways don't work, and never could. (3) One thing that reason will tell us, is that an argument, ultimately, is a form of communication, and communication only works when we listen. The psychology of those who are listening matters immensely. So, when the audience has been manipulated, to bring this fact up is not only valid, but essential. One rightly seeks balance, not by trying to manipulate the audience more effectively, but by exposing the methos used, so they will not be as effective.

When one of those methods is that of intimidation, in the name of balance, the opposition must assert itself, because the results of intimidation linger, and are cumulative. It is only be neutralizing those results, as one gets the listener to recognize their presence and think about what made them possible, that we can set the stage for communication that is unhampered, not only on a conscious level, but on a subconscious one as well.

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(1) When, for example, a man is told that he "must" (not that he may) stand when a woman enters the room, must hold the door open for her (as if he were a doorman), and comply with a multitude of other "small" demands, he is being conditioned, not so subtly, to act as if he were the woman's servant. This is an early form of radical feminism coming in through the back door, one which becomes a lot less charming when the notion of chivalry, which originally gave women a measure of dignity at a time when they were often treated as property, becomes uncoupled from patriarchy, leaving the offering of deference a one-sided affair favoring the woman. Ms. Post, and even more so her latter day followers, are seeking to rewrite the rules in order to secure a position for themselves and it is not one of equality. The man is being taught, not to be reasonable or respectful, but to be docile.

The apologists for "Etiquette", invariably, respond to such criticisms in the only way those of a anti-philosophical bent can: with a bullet-proof attitude. "All this fuss, about asking a man to be courteous!", some will say. But, courtesy is not what is being objected to, here. The introduction of an inequity which our own, and other, cultures have done without quite successfully, through millenia of cultural evolution, is. That, and the arrogant ethnocentricism that goes into equating "civility" with a willingness to abide by one's own customs, in such an arbitrary manner, coupled with a barely veiled personal attack upon the one questioning the custom that comes with this expression of scorn, suggesting that his rationality must be suspect, in response to what we must admit, if we're to be honest, is a rational criticism of these customs.

To behave so discourteously, responding to rational counter-argument, not merely with character assassination, but with character assassination that is so clearly hinted at and then denied in a manner so insulting to one's opponent's intelligence when one is confronted about it, speaking of "courtesy" while so clearly seeking to enrage the person one is speaking to, is the ultimate in irony. To a post-modernist, that probably sounds like high praise, but the genuinely civilized know better.

(2) A reference to the infamous "Know Nothing" movement of the 19th century which, among other things, was noted for its hostility toward what some today would call "Hyphenated" (read: non-anglicized) Americans, and for its often random lynchings of immigrants. "Nativist" is another term used, though, oddly enough, "Nativist" hostility is often directed against the unassimilated (or sometimes even the assimilated) American Indians, who really are aboriginal, and toward "Ethnics" (those remaining visibly non-Anglo-Saxon in every way) whose families pre-date the arrival those of the self-styled "Natives", and sometimes even of Anglo-Saxons in general, into the region by decades or even centuries.

One has the absurd situation of a newcomer getting off the bus from Connecticut, going up to a French-American whose family has been in the Midwest since the 1600s and his Pottawottamie girlfriend, and growing abusive because here they are in "his" country, and they haven't adopted the culture of ... Connecticut, about a thousand miles back, in a place where the French-American (and his girlfriend) most fervently wish he would return to, and find such happiness as he can. Such people may vary between the comical and the irritating, right now, and right here, but have been quite dangerous in places as close as Southern Indiana, as recently as the late 1980s, at the very least.

(3) One should keep in mind that the ultra-rigid Emily Post version of ettiquette was a revision of a formulation, not of the values of the whole of English society, but of one particular segment of English society : that associated with the sort of deliberately useless upper class character who, today, we would call a "dandy". This class, on its own, hardly constituted a viable, self-sufficient society, living as these children of privilege who constituted it did, off the work of others.

A fair description of American "High Society", if there ever was one, with its traditional scorn for the "nouveau riche", ie. those who attained their wealth through their own personal accomplishments, instead of through inheritence. The values of either are not those that went into creating the legacy that these frivolous people have lived off of.

The perversity of the situation which we are describing here, is that it is the values of the productive which are scorned, whereas the values of their spendthrift heirs who run through the legacy their more responsible predecesors created, is exalted. To recapture the spirit of a time and place in decline, in its decadence in the worst sense of the word, is to recapture that decline, which is to say, to do the exact opposite of doing one's part to build a viable society.

The so-called American mainstream was able to buy a little time for itself by living off the efforts of the other, more productive subcultures here. Consider, for example, the demographics of an incoming engineering class. There's hardly a student to be found in it, who came from a mainstream or "white bread" background. These students, many times, will go on to found their own companies, finding that opportunities at existing firms will be limited for those not born into "the old boy's club" (the local upper classes). Having done so, they will then find that under affirmative action, they must hire a certain number of women, no matter how unqualified they will be, and those women with paper degrees in fields of little practical use ... will frequently turn out to be the daughters of these children of privilege, the very ones who locked them out of employment before. In the guise of creating a law to protect the underprivileged, the unacknowledged ruling classes, those born into the circle of association that brings wealth to the unskilled, have insured that a certain share of the money in circulation will always find its way back to them. In these, and many other ways, a wealthy subculture has managed to parasitize the rest of American society.

Parasites don't need to be viable on their own. They just need to find viable hosts. So, the short-term successes of a kleptocracy like the American old-moneyed class says little about the viability of its way of life, should it become normative in a society, as a whole. No wonder free immigration is so popular in some circles in the US - without all of that fresh blood coming in, were assimilation to continue apace, we'd eventually have nobody left who was "crude" enough, to be able to get anything done. It would be a shame to have to choose betwen one's cultural intolerance and one's greed, wouldn't it?

Excuse me while I reach for my violin. I think I'll hold to my own identity, thank you, and I encourage the reader to do likewise.