As defined by Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences, civil discourse is “the practice of deliberating about matters of public concern with others in a way that seeks to expand knowledge and promote understanding.” It aims to build mutual respect and trust.
It isn’t something that should be taken for granted. Civil discourse serves as the thread that ultimately binds people together into polite society versus one of indiscriminate violence. When the thread starts to fray, history shows how quickly repression and violence can enter the void, begetting more of the same. For a long time, discourse has been deteriorating in American culture.
We don’t have to look that far back for proof. Recently, the 24th anniversary of 9/11 reminded us not only of the lives lost, but of the wars and crackdowns on individual liberties that followed. Violence was met with more violence, justified under the guise of homeland security, and we are still living with the consequences. Recently, when a political leader was assassinated, it felt less like an outlier and more like a uniquely American outcome. The inevitable result of decades of rhetoric treating whole groups of people as disposable.
Civil discourse can’t thrive when free speech is used as a weapon rather than a bridge. Words matter.
Now free speech is even further under siege. Turn on the news and you’ll see broadcasts scripted by mega corporations that carefully control what’s acceptable. Stations owned by huge publicly traded conglomerates exert pressure to silence dissenting voices, to try to keep the conversation inside a narrow and dualistic range, one of us versus them. Comedians, commentators, and late-night hosts find themselves on the receiving end of warnings from lawmakers, regulators, and C-suite executives. It doesn’t take a practiced political scientist to see the patterns at work: when speech is controlled from the top down, public dialogue shrinks to little more than sanctioned talking points. Divides deepen. Echo chambers grow.
Violence can erupt when words are twisted into tools for dehumanization. Communities fracture, trust collapses, and a shared common understanding of reality falters. The threads of civil society begin to unwind.
Easton has lived through times like these. During the Revolution, Patriot and Loyalist neighbors who once shared goods, church pews, and who worked side by side saw each other as traitors. Civil discourse collapsed, and blood was spilled right here on Easton’s soil. In 1776, local resident William Prindle discovered through conversation with his hired help that the laborer was in favor of American liberty. When the worker was asleep, Prindle decapitated him with a broad ax, bragging to neighbors that he had cut off the head of a “damned Whig”, and wished he could do so to all the revolutionaries.
That story is a warning. When disagreement turns into dehumanization, when speech is stripped of its decency, violence isn’t far behind. When free speech takes the form of blood and soil rhetoric, often blood isn’t far behind.
Civil discourse is not about politeness. Language used to demean or dehumanize groups of people is not civil, regardless of how it’s presented. The right to free speech requires having the courage to hold space for hard truths without resorting to suppression or brutality. It’s about seeing disagreement not as treason, but as an opportunity to deepen shared understanding, the thread that binds our society together.
That thread is fragile and frayed. If we want to preserve what’s left of it, we have to reclaim civil discourse. Starting at the dinner table, in our town meetings, and with our neighbors. Because once the thread breaks, history shows what comes next. Discourse in America is once again at a tipping point. We all have decisions to make as we move into the future. Do we refocus on what makes all of us human beings, or, as Tyler Childers sings, “Or would that be the start of a long, violent history, Of tucking our tails as we try to abide?”
The Cultural Easton 