On Civility in Politics

Shunning is sometimes appropriate, and politics shouldn’t change that.

Should we shun political opponents? Should we refuse to associate with them, or to serve them in our businesses? The matter with Sarah Sanders getting kicked out of a restaurant has a lot of people staking out what strike me as poorly examined positions on these questions, positions rooted in the silly notion that “we shouldn’t let politics come between us.”

The short answers to the above questions is, yes, of course we should shun political opponents — when their behavior or beliefs are of the sort worthy of shunning. And, yes, we should refuse to associate with them or serve them in our businesses — when their behavior or beliefs are of the sort worthy of such refusal. That their behavior or beliefs are motivated by politics, as opposed to some other value system or ideology or motivation, is immaterial, and arguments to the contrary merely grant ugly political beliefs an unearned and dangerous buffer from the kind of moral opprobrium we find perfectly acceptable when applied to ugly beliefs of other origins.

It is, of course, possible for political disagreement to exist without it stemming from shun-worthy beliefs, and this fact is too often ignored by partisans. But that doesn’t mean that all political disagreement is of an honest…