| In the Fall of 2002 and Spring of 2003, the US Government prepared to go to war in Iraq. As it did so, there was a campaign to pass resolutions opposing the war in city councils across the country. The public conversations that sprang up around these resolutions provided naturally occurring discourse that displayed citizens' tacit understandings of both war and democracy. By examining the deliberations surrounding the resolution campaigns, this dissertation explores how citizens deliberate in ways that are harmful to and productive of legitimate civil judgment.; Public deliberation is essential to the functioning of legitimate democracy and best understood in the form of public conversations. Civil styles of discourse are conducive to developing shared meanings of both war and democracy. Uncivil forms of discourse undermine the unity necessary for the development of discursive public opinion. |
