Nice Distinction

Loren Lomasky from the April 1997 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

Enter etiquette. An order of manners substitutes for coercion the authority of custom, for external enforcement self-restraint, for central planning decentralized decision making. Its protocols, euphemisms, and ritual may seem arcane to outsiders, but their effect is to mark off and protect a private domain within which individuals enjoy a limited sovereignty over their own affairs. Rudeness, like big government, is intrusive. And like big government, it is cancerous. Just as the shortcomings of one welfare state program beget another and yet another, so too do thoughtless behavior and rude remarks metastasize. Miss Manners teaches us that "Mind your own business!" is the first principle of good manners. It is also the core of liberal political philosophy.

I fear that I am perilously close to gushing. Miss Manners tends to have that effect on impressionable gentlemen of a certain age. I therefore hasten to note that she falls short of perfection, if only by the diameter of gnat's eyelash. She admits that she has still not come up with an appropriate term to refer to unmarried persons who openly share their living quarters and lives. That is one small blot on her escutcheon.

Another is a lack of sure-footedness in expressing the relationship between etiquette and morality. Sometimes she runs them together. In other passages she tries to distinguish them in terms of respect for human life's sacredness versus its dignity and by distinguishing behavior from expression. I thank Miss Manners for putting forth the effort, but honesty compels me to admit that these dichotomies afford little clarification.

No blame is ascribed to her on account of this failure. I choose to believe that, as with almost every other problem that weighs heavily on the American mind, she could if she wished put forth a solution. Instead she graciously refrains from doing so in order not to usurp the title and vocation of her friend and accomplice, Miss Morals. Always the complete lady!

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