The citizen's job is to be rude

[lightcastle]

Pursuant to the earlier post, I found the quote I was thinking of.

An obsession with polite or correct public language is a sign that communication is in decline. It means that the process and exercise of power have replaced debate as a public value. The citizen's job is to be rude — to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt. Politics, philosophy, writing, the arts — none of these, and certainly not science and economocs, can serve the common weal if they are swathed in politeness. In everything which affects public affairs, breeding is for fools.

—John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion, 1994

Interestingly, I also found this essay of his on uncertainty that is well worth reading.

It includes this further quote on politeness:

The problem begins when we start confusing middle-class manners with the superficial public smoothness of corporatist loyalty. That is where corporatism and democracy go wrong - when any action which is not polite is considered to be a default in democratic terms. And we're quite far down that road today.