Great Questions Raised at CT Forum on Civility

From left to right, The End of Civility? panelists David Gergen, Gina Barreca,
Connie Schultz (screen), Stephen Carter, & Christopher Buckley

Now that our first Forum of the Season, The End of Civility? is over, it's truly "the end of civility" - in one sense, at least.

However, there's no end to the questions we all have about civility. We were inundated with audience questions for the panelists during Intermission - many more questions than we could possibly address in the Q&A during the Forum's second half. For now, we can only imagine Stephen Carter's response to the question, Who are we to judge what is civil behavior? or Christopher Buckley's facial expression when asked, In 20 years, will there be anyone left who knows what civility is?

Here are just a few of the thoughtful and provocative questions that we're continuing to think about and discuss. We hope you do the same!

• Is incivility a leading or trailing social indicator?
• How is the loss of civility linked to a sense of hopelessness, a sense of loss of the "civil contract"?
• How can we be a moral leader around the world when we exhibit such vitriol and lack of civility in our public discourse?
• Is an attitude of "we're all in this together" a central element of a civil society? Have we lost that?
• How do we break the cycle of ever-increasing incivility, disrespect, and intolerance?
• Don't you think there's a huge correlation between the lack of religion and the lack of civility?