The current Candidate Diary Wars bring to mind my experience during the 2004 election year while employed as the principal of a tiny, private American school housed in a French public school. Our ~50 students (representing about 30-35 families) were about two-thirds American ex-pats; the rest were from about eight other anglophone countries.
Normally, election years present excellent opportunities for history, poly sci & civics teachers to foster research and debate among their students. So bitterly rancorous and divided was the situation in our tiny school, however, that I did something I never thought I would ever have to do: I forbad political discussion in our classrooms and in the school (and host school) generally. "Why" is below the fold.
Our situation as a tiny American school (herein called "L2M") housed in a French public school was already unenviable well before the general election in 2004: Bush's invasion of Iraq was not well thought of in France, and occasionally some of the students in the larger host school thought that Bush's illegal and immoral actions entitled them to hassle any and all American students, whether Bush supporters or not. Fortunately, this kind of behavior seemed to be confined mostly to reasonably legitimate venues--debates in classes--and did not make itself manifest in public life generally. Still, I felt constrained to issue the following advice to parents in one of my weekly missives:
Parents, especially as US elections draw near, please encourage your kids to be a little more discreet in their public comportment. American kids tend to talk a little more loudly (this is a cultural issue having to do with the fact that we tend to stand a little further apart when conversing than French kids do) and are perceived as being somewhat rowdier in public places. We have thus far not received any reports of unpleasantness on the tram and such, but emotions are already running higher than normal here at school and are bound to become moreso as Nov. 2 arrives... and likely thereafter, depending on the outcome. Drawing undue attention to oneself is, quite simply, not advisable.
Had it been only the case that non-L2M students were hassling L2M students, then perhaps I could have let things ride. But L2M students were crossing over the line with other L2M students, and the rancor in our own classrooms soon started spilling out in the hallways and even off-campus --for example, in the hallways of the English-language church in town where many of our families worshiped. (It did not help, by the way, that our history/civics teacher had very strong partisan opinions which she was not shy about sharing. She was also not subtle in her interactions with students generally, but that is a tale for another time.) So I banned political discussion in the school, period. As I explained to our parents:
Just as public opinion Stateside is very polarized politically at the moment, the same is true here in L2M. We have ardent supporters and detractors for the two main party candidates among us. Although I am not one to squelch earnest, dispassionate conversation, we have already had kids insult one another about their personal or family’s choice for president. I ask you parents to please talk to your child(ren) about the need to respect each other, regardless of divergent political views, and especially about the need to keep any such conversation centered on issues. Regardless of outcome, we will all continue to have to be together and to work together thereafter, and best not to have a history of insult and hurt feelings to have to work through on top of it all!
In view of the extraordinary amount of vitriol I have been reading of late--sometimes in the candidate diaries themselves, but far more often in the comments attached to those diaries, and given the enormity of the task ahead of us this election year, let me repeat a slightly modified version of the last line above:
Regardless of outcome, we will all have to work together thereafter, and best not to have a history of insult and hurt feelings to have to work through on top of it all!
While the comic xkcd disproved the axiom of attracting more flies with honey rather than with vinegar, the same is not true of human feelings. Name-calling and insults do not win converts to any cause; quite the contrary. And while it may not be fair to decide for whom to vote based on how the candidates' supporters conduct themselves, I have certainly read quite a number of comments that seem to be saying that their votes are being thus influenced.
(I recognize that there may well be plants and trolls abounding, and hopefully the admins here will be extra-vigilant in uncovering and banning people who are pretending to support candidates while acting like ill-mannered buffoons on-line. That said, it is incumbent on us as responsible voters to vote based on the merits of the candidates and their positions on the issues we hold dear, rather than to allow manipulative supporters--both true and false--to use our feelings to sway our rational and considered allegiance.)
My teachers, parents, and students did not especially like the ban on political discourse, and I didn't either. I was very disappointed that I could not trust my history/civics teachers to conduct the kinds of dispassionate and informed discussions and formal debates that I had participated in when I was in high school. I was sad that non-American kids were targeting our students, but much more unhappy that the level of intra-school partisanship among our own students (and their families) obliterated the possibility of rational and sensible political discourse.
I hope it is clear that I am not calling for a ban on discourse here; for one thing, the vast majority of dkos participants are adults, not minor children. I am asking, however, that we all conduct ourselves as mature adults and try to reign in the impulse to insult those with whom we disagree... so that people will feel that spending time here is still worthwhile.
Update: With regard to the comment raised re: First Amendment rights, let me clarify that this ban was informal at best: there could be no sanctions imposed, nor were there sanctions imposed, for any subsequent partisan political discussions. However, the "ban" did serve to calm things down considerably, and I stopped having to comfort middle-school kids who were coming to my office in tears because their classmates / friends were telling them how stupid or awful they were because their family was supporting one candidate or the other.