George Will has a great op-ed in the Washington Post this morning. The gist: In a society of entitlement and social autism, no one appreciates manners any more.
Sociology discerns connections, and there may be one between the fact that teenagers are relaxing from academic rigors by enjoying sex in the school auditorium and the fact that Americans soon will be able to watch pornography and prime-time television programs such as "Desperate Housewives" -- and, for the high-minded, C-SPAN -- on their cell phones and video iPods in public.
The connection is this: Many people have no notion of propriety when in the presence of other people, because they are not actually in the presence of other people, even when they are in public.
With everyone chatting on cell phones when not floating in iPod-land, "this is an age of social autism, in which people just can't see the value of imagining their impact on others." . . .
"People," says [author Lynne] Truss, "are happier when they have some idea of where they stand and what the rules are." But today's entitlement mentality, which is both a cause and a consequence of the welfare state, manifests itself in the attitude that it is all right to do whatever one has a right to do. Which is why acrimony has enveloped a coffee shop on Chicago's affluent North Side, where the proprietor posted a notice that children must "behave and use their indoor voices." The proprietor, battling what he calls an "epidemic" of antisocial behavior, told the New York Times that parents protesting his notice "have a very strong sense of entitlement." . . .
Because manners are means of extending respect, especially to strangers, this question arises: Do manners and virtue go together? . . .
Actually, manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related -- as a foundation is related to a house -- to the word civilization.
