Decency Is the Small Word That Holds a Big Country Together

MTA customer service agent Rodney Smith inside Upper East Side subway station

Source: ABC Eyewitness News, Monday, June 16, 2025

Consider these two recent American news stories.

On July 17, 2025, a 23‑year‑old passenger on Delta Connection Flight 3612 tried to wrench open an emergency exit mid‑air after brawling with a flight attendant, forcing an emergency landing in Cedar Rapids. The Federal Aviation Administration notes that airlines logged 1,240 such unruly‑passenger cases in 2024—quite a high number for a norm that used to be near zero.

Elsewhere on that same morning, and every morning at Manhattan’s 86th‑Street Q‑line subway stop, 71‑year‑old MTA customer‑service agent Rodney Smith greets commuters, offers directions, and doles out verbal high‑fives. Local media call him “the human pause button.” Riders have begun timing their commutes to catch his shift because, as one put it, “he reminds us we’re more than elbows and earbuds.”

In 1954, as Senator Joseph McCarthy smeared yet another American, Army counsel Joseph N. Welch finally erupted: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” The chamber fell still, and the country took stock. In time, McCarthy’s grip broke. Decency—a modest, even mundane restraint—can still puncture national fevers.

America has long taught decency as a civic muscle. A teenage George Washington painstakingly copied 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior,” a Jesuit-inspired list of micro-restraints: don’t gloat over an enemy’s misfortune; don’t turn your back when others speak. Republican self-government, the founders surmised, depends on citizens who can master themselves.

The philosophical roots run deeper. Aristotle extolled epieíkeia—variously translated as equity, fairness, even “decency”—the humane flexibility that tempers rigid rule-following. Institutions that apply law without humiliating those who are subject to it are, in Avishai Margalit’s phrase, “decent.” And John Rawls expanded the term to the global scale: a “decent people” honors basic human rights even if not fully liberal, the minimum floor for inclusion in a just world order. Together, these traditions define decency as the everyday moral minimum that makes social life possible.

Americans sense that this floor is sagging. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 47 percent of U.S. adults say public behavior today is ruder than before the COVID-19 pandemic; only 9 percent see improvement. For years, majorities in Weber Shandwick/KRC research have identified civility as a “major problem” in America, while Georgetown University’s Battleground Civility Poll likewise reports voters feeling their “personal values under assault” and pleading for more respect across party lines.

Work is no refuge. SHRM’s Civility Index—launched in 2024 to track U.S. trends—shows national scores stuck below 50 out of 100, with Q1-2025 data documenting fresh slippage and nearly half of workers expecting civility to worsen. Incivility exacts a measurable toll, costing U.S. organizations over $2.1 billion daily due to reduced productivity and absenteeism. The human costs extend beyond output. SHRM reports links between incivility exposure and poorer mental health among workers in 2025 tracking data.

Kurt Vonnegut once pleaded, when loved ones fought, “Please—a little less love, and a little more common decency.” His joke lands because ordinary slights corrode relationships faster than grand betrayals; relational science now documents that even low-grade disrespect predicts stress, sleep problems, and even attrition.

Politics amplifies the slide. Polling consistently ranks politics as the top driver of perceived incivility, while Georgetown polling shows bipartisan alarm about divisions threatening democratic stability. When disagreement reliably yields contempt, citizens disengage or radicalize—precisely the institutional humiliation Margalit warns against.

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What can we do?

First, make norms visible again. Social psychologists have shown that salience matters: when leaders model respect publicly, audiences recalibrate quickly. John McCain’s 2008 town-hall moment—graciously correcting a supporter and calling Barack Obama “a decent family man and citizen”—became viral civics precisely because millions saw restraint practiced in real time. Second, design for guard rails where needed. Washington’s centuries-old etiquette rules slowed impulses just enough to let regard surface; modern platforms can likewise insert prompts (“Are you sure you want to post this?”) that reduce impulsive abuse—an approach increasingly explored in corporate civility toolkits tracked by SHRM.

Third, protect dignity in institutions. Margalit argues that a society earns the label “decent” when its bureaucracies do not humiliate. That standard gives schools, hospitals, police departments, and HR offices a concrete audit question: Where do our processes inadvertently degrade people? Reform there pays democratic dividends because procedural fairness powerfully shapes legitimacy.

Fourth, measure and manage. What we count, we can improve. The Civility Index provides leading indicators; organizations that pair such metrics with training in respectful communication—listening first, paraphrasing disagreements—see productivity and retention gains documented in incivility research programs.

Finally, remember that decency is not sainthood; it is a humble social technology that lets pluralism function. Aristotle’s flexible epieíkeia, Rawls’s minimal rights floor, Joe Welch’s exasperated plea, and Smith’s subway salutations all preach the same gospel: most days we don’t need heroic virtue—just the willingness to keep one another’s dignity intact.

If enough of us practice such small decencies—handing back a lost MetroCard, lowering our voice at the gate, joining a peace walk—we may again lower the national temperature long enough to argue, govern, and disagree like a republic. Start today: raise a hand, not a fist; ask, as Joe Welch did, whether the next word out of your mouth will leave someone else’s humanity intact.