In politics, common decency still matters

Among the worst features of today’s politics is its pervasive crudity. Democrats and Republicans don’t just compete for electoral power and disagree on policy. They question motives, hurl insults, and seek not just victory but utter domination. They exude mutual contempt.

Are rank-and-file partisans simply emulating their leaders? Or are ambitious politicians just giving voters what they want? The causal arrows point in both directions, but I hold our leaders more responsible. Politics is their vocation, or at least a significant avocation. By definition, they hold their positions because they attract followers. They ought to set a better example.

That’s why I spend an increasing share of my time encouraging current and prospective leaders to engage each other constructively, not destructively, through such programs as the North Carolina Leadership Forum, the E.A. Morris Fellowship for Emerging Leaders, and the North Carolina Institute for Public Leadership (IOPL).

In these endeavors, I am myself a follower of those who came before me. Some leaders I revere, such as former President Ronald Reagan and former Gov. Jim Martin, shared my political views. Others didn’t. Among the latter was Bill Friday, one of the founders of IOPL.

“It is quite clear,” Friday once said, “that the greatest need in our state and country is for a generation of leaders” who possess “moral principles and ethical standards” as well as “an unshakable commitment to courage and fairness manifested with grace and courtesy and decency.”

On that he and I agreed, but not much else. I am a conservative. He was a progressive. Still, we had many productive conversations and worked together on a few important issues where our views converged.

I was recently reminded of how I first met Mr. Friday, who was for 30 years the inaugural president of the University of North Carolina system. When he retired from that job in 1986, I was an undergraduate at Chapel Hill. The following year, I teamed up with my twin brother David and other conservative and libertarian students to found a monthly campus magazine, The Carolina Critic.

Did we manifest “grace and courtesy” in its pages? Not as consistently as we should have, I admit, although our staff did include a left-wing columnist and our editorial approach was playful, not nasty. Still, for the first few months we published The Critic, we got along fine with the many faculty and students who disagreed with us.

That came to an end when some campus group decided to systematically censor us. As Critic staffers deposited stacks of magazines in the library or other distribution sites, they’d come behind us and throw away every issue before prospective readers could get to them. When we complained about this to university administrators, they shrugged it off. “Isn’t your magazine free?” they asked, hardly disguising their delight.

Bill Friday, no longer president but still often on campus, responded very differently. He sought me out, expressed his disapproval of their actions, and insisted that students of all persuasions ought to be able to express themselves freely.

Years later, when I was running the John Locke Foundation, he reestablished contact. Sometimes he’d called to ask a question. Other times, he called to rebut an argument I’d made on television the previous weekend. Our conversations were sometimes spirited but always respectful. I was privileged to be included in the initial class of the William C. Friday Fellowship for Human Relations. I was also privileged to appear on his TV program “North Carolina People” and to join the IOPL faculty.

How was I reminded of this? Because one of my fellow signatories to the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles, Ben Rothove, is editor-in-chief of The Madison Federalist, a student publication at the University of Wisconsin. In recent months, left-wing groups have been, you guessed it, systematically throwing away stacks of Rothove’s magazine.

Here’s hoping someone in Madison responds the way the late Mr. Friday did to me. Leadership matters. So does common decency.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.

“In politics, common decency still matters” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.