Don't confuse the tool with the end result.

WHO WOULD ACCEPT the assignment of arguing against civility in public discourse?

Anybody who sat through a morning session of Barren County Circuit Court one morning in November 1977, that's who.

A criminal trial of some sort was going on. I can't recall the details of the case, but it would be hard to forget the lofty tone of the lawyers. The rhetoric was elevated considerably by an unusual circumstance.

The defense attorney was a former county judge. The prosecutor was a former district judge. These offices apparently confer a title for life in Barren County, for they referred to each other as "Judge" throughout the proceedings.

The trial judge, sensitive to the niceties of the profession, called them "Judge" as well.

Watching them refer to each other as "Judge" left no doubt that civility was alive and well in that courtroom. The health of justice was another matter entirely.

In my experience, that's the way it usually is with civility. Civility is a splendid quality. It is admirable in many respects. And civil discourse is preferable to uncivil discourse, all things being equal.

But all things aren't always equal, which is why civility is what you might call a secondary quality -- desirable, but not an end in itself. It is, for instance, no substitute for justice or decency or intelligence or common sense or fairness. It certainly is not substitute for having something to say. And civility often is used as a smoke-screen, a diversion that masks the absence of these and similarly important qualities.

So why do editorialists continue to put so much value on it?

Part of the reason is that we mistake the nature of our jobs. We envision them as being somehow more upper-crust than they are. When we close our eyes, we see ourselves engaged in a second-rate melodrama (probably of British origin) in which the most blood-thirsty of conflicts is fought out in clipped accents.

("Madam, I assure you that the interests of my clients are purely honorable and that they would do nothing in building this temple of Commerce that would degrade this laudable wetland in the slightest."

"You, sir, are a cad and a poltroon, an unworthy blot on the escutcheon of the noble clan of Real Estate Lawyers.")

But the bigger reason for the fascination with civility is both simpler and more deadly: It's safe. The telephone never rings with readers complaining that an editorial was too civil. No publisher's brow contracts into a fearsome scowl because the editorial page has a penchant for unseemly politeness. The surest way to stay out of trouble is to say nothing, politely.

Needless to say, that's also a sure way to persuade people to stop reading our pages, too.

I'm not suggesting that we cast aside civility in our writing. But I do think it's probably best to regard civility not as an end in itself but as a technique to be used as the situation warrants.

There's no need to be civil to a crook trying to get the best; of widows and orphans -- although an adroit writer can use a cold politeness to effect in a savage attack. And there's no reason at all to be anything but polite in many, perhaps most, of pieces we produce for our pages.

But to be civil purely for the sake of being civil? Leave that to the three Barren County judges and their cohorts. They are on the job every day in thousands of venues across the nation, churning out all the florid and misleading civility the Republic can stand.

NCEW member David Holwerk is editorial page editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader.