I was raised polite.

My parents may have underserved their kids with sympathy, empathy, interest in their ideas, but, man, did they mandate manners. Manners were our mantra, Holy Grail, sine qua non, moral obligation each to each. Please and thank-you, serve from the left/take from the right, await your turn were hammered into consciousness as firmly as the Ten Commandments (King James rendition).

Like any normal kid I privately decried my parents’ principles while publicly doing as I was bid. Why make waves? Instinctively, I and their mother inculcated our kids with manners, though I hope less frostily.

Observing the Nameless One and his litter of DOGEs makes me feel a visitor from Urania. Their every gesture and grunt violates essential decorum. By rights they should have been incinerated by thunderbolts long since, but I guess the Almighty is less hepped on courtesy than we were taught.

Manners may not “maketh the man,” as in William of Wykeham’s (1324-1404) well-worn motto, but humanity is scarcely conceivable without them. What distinguishes humans from other creatures is our ability to converse intelligibly, to learn from one another and grow. My sidekick Henry gets along admirably with other DOGs (without the e), circling, wagging, sniffing nether realms, but their exchange seems not to advance beyond need-to-know, and soon bores both. To converse one must a) speak the same language and b) trust. A common code of conduct initiates confidence we don’t endanger one another. The man who shakes my hand feels less likely to slit my throat. Perhaps I can confide in him a thought or two.

Mankind without manners divides into warring units, intent on survival. It’s a DOGE-eat-DOGE world, where winners are the last guys standing amidst a field of corpses. Lonely, these victors, and ignorant, but hey, better that than dead.

Civilization depends on civility. Before we make or break bread together, before we collaborate for each other’s benefit, we must learn to converse. I blush at my breezy dismissal of my parents’ training, decades too late. Yes, we need passionate purpose, convictions that will not be quelled, but we also need custom and constraint. In my youth I saw etiquette as a tourniquet, stanching the blood; these days, as a conduit.

How to restore courtesy to a world that can’t even spell it? I’m doubtful either the Nameless One or his Musk-rat will invite me to box their ears.

We must suffer the consequences of barbarity to rediscover the attractions of polite society. That’s what’s happening now. The hoodlums have invaded our collectives – our universities, laboratories, legislatures – brandishing their clubs, grunting their grunts, and vowing revenge. It’s the revolting revolt of the stupids, fulminous at the smarties for our disdain. To hell with the smarties, then, and our schools, libraries, kindergartens, courts, museums, fora, science, truth, justice and all our gewgaws and baubles. True revolutionaries brazen like brutes! Why not a guillotine on the White House lawn! Whoopee!

Humanity will wake to its idiocy. Maybe not in our time, maybe not until the citadel of society is hacked to rubble, but we will wake. We will wake because the alternative is intolerable. One day another sweet-faced teacher will ascend a hill to tell us,

and we’ll think, hey, there’s an idea.