Andrew Sullivan: Is There Still Room for Debate?

I like Sullivan's approach. While he addresses his comments to liberals everyone could benefit from his ideas.

Andrew Sullivan: Is There Still Room for Debate?

Dave Rubin On Where Liberals And Conservatives Can Agree, And Can't

An interesting read.

Dave Rubin On Where Liberals And Conservatives Can Agree, And Can't

Further thoughts on the Fragile Generation

In my earlier post on the fragile generation the interview has this quote from Jonathan Haidt.

In his forthcoming book Misguided Minds: How Three Bad Ideas Are Leading Young People, Universities, and Democracies Toward Failure, Haidt claims that certain ideas are impairing students’ chances of success. Those ideas being: your feelings are always right; what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; and the world is divided into good people and bad people. ‘If we can teach those three ideas to college students’, he says, ‘we cannot guarantee they will fail, but we will minimise their odds at success’.

I agree with Haidt about the first two ideas that the current generation seems to believe. To me the first idea, that feelings are always right, stems from the lack of teaching kids the ability to think critically. Way back in the mid 1980s a friend and I designed and taught an adult continuing education course on critical thinking. At that time we could see that our adult students had never been exposed to thinking in a methodical, logical way. It makes sense that if people don’t have even a rudimentary grasp of logic and arguments they are subject to subconscious biases and to the push of emotional reactions.

I’ve read a number of books over the last ten years that explore how we form opinions and how we are unconsciously influenced by many biases. I recall reading about one study in which some of the participants read a series of words related to being elderly. When they were later given a series of physical tasks to perform they completed them more slowly than the control group that had not been exposed to those words!

As I explain it to people we like to think we’re being detectives when we’re really lawyers. By that I mean a detective tries to find out who committed a crime by objectively collecting and piecing together the evidence. A lawyer, on the other hand, tries to build a case, either to defend their client or to prosecute the defendant. The studies I’ve read about show that we often come to a conclusion about an issue then go looking for confirming data. We tend to ignore or discount data that doesn’t fit our conclusion.

I agree with Haidt with his identifying the second prevalent idea that what doesn’t kill us makes us weaker. This idea seems to be rampant among what some call the derisively call the “snowflake” generation. I think this is tied to the first premise. That is, if you don’t have the tools to think critically then we’re threatened by ideas with which we disagree.

My main objective is to touch on his third point: that the world is divided into good people and bad people. I’m sure Haidt will explain this more in his upcoming book and that he isn’t saying there are no evil people. Being familiar with Haidt’s work, I believe he is saying that people are too quick to lump those who disagree with them into the evil camp. I’ve seen it happen many times where you’re demonized if you disagree with someone politically. Liberals think conservatives are evil and vice versa. I’m not saying everyone does this but a lot do. It has happened to me during the 2016 presidential election. A couple people have quit talking to my wife and me when we disagreed with them.

I’m assuming Haidt would agree that there are some evil people. The clearly obvious examples would be Hitler, Mao and Stalin or murderous sociopaths. But these are extreme examples. In our daily lives we rarely deal with people who are truly evil. They might buy into ideas or policies that we believe ultimately hurt people. For instance, conservatives and libertarians believe gun control disarms the poor who might live in high crime areas. Liberals believe gun control protects us from those who, in the liberal’s eyes, can too easily obtain guns. Conservatives and libertarians think welfare benefits eat away at the incentive for people to find work while liberals think welfare is needed to compensate for the victims of an economy rigged in favor of the rich and powerful. Neither side in these debates are necessarily evil. But I’ve seen it happen too often where you get slapped with the evil label for disagreeing! I assume Haidt’s book will delve into this in much more detail.

Before closing I’d recommend using something called steel manning and taking the ideological Turing test. Steel manning is opposite of a straw man argument which involves distorting what an opponent is saying then refuting it while the original argument wasn’t really addressed. Steel manning means we take the opposite approach of the straw man argument: you try to strengthen the argument of the other side before trying to refute it. To do this means applying what has been called the Turing ideological test where you try to state the argument of the other side as fairly as possible, as if you actually are taking that stand, then addressing it. I think if more people tried to do this we would have more civil and productive disagreements.

Both steel manning and the ideological Turing test take a lot of work! It means trying to think like your opponent then coming up with your response. Unfortunately, we tend to take the easy way out. Haidt has said in his earlier work that humans are still fundamentally tribal in nature. Once we form an allegiance to a tribe we talk the language of our tribe (see Arnold Kling’s The Three Languages of Politics) and look at the other tribe as the “enemy.”

Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror | The Weekly Standard

Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror | The Weekly Standard

Camille Paglia continues to be one of my favorite writers. While I don't agree with her choice of the politicians she endorses I do agree with much of her analysis of the current political scene. Here is one quote from her recent interview that I believe captures the essence of the difference between the elite and Trump.

There seems to be a huge conceptual gap between Trump and his most implacable critics on the left. Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of "compassion" (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) and yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers. These elite Democrats occupy an amorphous meta-realm of subjective emotion, theoretical abstractions, and refined language. But Trump is by trade a builder who deals in the tangible, obdurate, objective world of physical materials, geometry, and construction projects, where communication often reverts to the brusque, coarse, high-impact level of pre-modern working-class life, whose daily locus was the barnyard. It's no accident that bourgeois Victorians of the industrial era tried to purge "barnyard language" out of English.

The revolt of the public and the “age of post-truth” | the fifth wave

The revolt of the public and the “age of post-truth” | the fifth wave

I found this essay to be rich and highly thought-provoking. It talks about the nature of narratives, the relationship between the elite and the public and the political battles over what constitutes the truth.

Ways to Burst Your Filter Bubble - Bloomberg View

Ways to Burst Your Filter Bubble - Bloomberg View

Tyler Cowen offers some ideas for how we can overcome confirmation bias, "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses" per Wikipedia.

Cowen introduces the subject as follows:

Often readers send requests, and last week I was asked for “Good Rules to Avoid the Filter Bubble.” My correspondent meant, how to avoid reading too many of the people he agreed with, maintaining a balanced perspective in a time of increasing polarization. Of course, a “balanced” perspective isn’t always a more correct one (sometimes one side really does have more truth on its side). But still it seems valuable to understand the views of others, and to keep in mind the limitations of one’s own.

The sad thing is, this isn’t as easy as it might sound.

He offers several suggestions. My personal favorite is the ideological Turing test in which "you could write out the views of a Trump or Clinton supporter, or of some other point of view contrary to your own, in a way that would be indistinguishable from the writings of supporters." I also rely on Arnold Kling's Three Languages of Politics because I think his model helps identify the main focus liberals, conservatives and libertarians use when expressing and defending their positions. (Quick summary. Liberals talk about the oppressed/oppressors. Conservatives refer to civilization vs. barbarism while libertarians see things in terms of rights versus coercion.)

For a more detailed analysis of confirmation bias and other factors that affect our ability to be objective check out Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker.

Interesting Oscars Comment: Related to Kling’s Three Languages of Politics

I’ve written a number of times about Arnold Kling’s The Three Languages of Politics. Basically he says that each of the three main political groups in the U.S. prefer to use a language that centers on an axis. Liberals talk about the oppressors vs. the oppressed. Conservatives worry about the effects of barbarism on civilization. Libertarians coach their positions in terms of freedom versus coercion.

With this as background a comment was made during the acceptance speech for best movie at the Oscars by Marc Platt, a “La La Land” producer. His comment was lost in the drama that unfolded shortly after he made this comment due to the award being given to the wrong film. I don’t know if Platt is familiar with Kling’s book. (Probably not.) Or if he was trying to appeal to conservative in his phrasing. (Also probably not.) But I found his statement a potential use of Kling’s ideas to express an idea that could span the two groups, liberal and conservatives.

Here is what he said with the key text highlighted: “Here’s to the fools who made me dream: my uncle Gary Platt; my mentor, Sam Cohn; my parents; my children; my wife Julie, on whose shoulders I’ve stood for 40 years because she insisted I reach for the stars. And to the Hollywood community that I’m so proud to be a part of. And to the Hollywood and the hearts and minds of people everywhere, repression is the enemy of civilization. So keep dreaming, because the dreams we dream today will provide the love, the compassion and the humanity that will narrate the stories of our lives tomorrow.”

I know he uses repression rather than oppression but I think the terms are close enough. Oppression involves keeping a person or a group of persons down while repression deals with the ability to express oneself. In any case, I find it interesting how Platt starts off with the liberal’s preferred term of repression to tie it to a conservative’s preference for civilization. I’m sure Platt would argue that a “civilized” world needs to allow freedom of expression, not the traditions conservatives want to protect such as religion.

What about the libertarians? They probably would say that the best way to prevent repression and protect civilization is by protecting individual rights.

Book Recommendations to Change Minds (on both sides)

Arnold Kling links to a post by Cass Sunstein titled Five Books to Change Liberals' Minds. Sunstein, a legal scholar and professor at Harvard Law School is also known for his book (co-authored with Richard Thaler), Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Nudge discusses how public and private organizations can help people make better choices in their daily lives. The authors argue that “People often make poor choices – and look back at them with bafflement! We do this because as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself.”

While I agree with Sunstein that achieving objectivity is much, much harder than most people realize, I have philosophical issues with the government trying to steer me into making choices that officials deem are better for me. I'd rather that private institutions apply these ideas for a number of reasons that I won't go into here.

Having said that, I like Sunstein's intro to his post.

It can be easy and tempting, especially during a presidential campaign, to listen only to opinions that mirror and fortify one's own. That’s not ideal, because it eliminates learning and makes it impossible for people to understand what they dismiss as “the other side.”

I see examples of this insular thinking all to often. We all gravitate to news sources that reflect our conclusions. Liberals prefer PBS or MSNBC while conservatives glom onto Fox or the Drudge Report. Personally, I occasionally visit “enemy territory” not just to see if there is a valid alternate view or explanation but also to understand how the opposing side thinks so that maybe I can communicate my ideas better or (horrors) maybe modify my position!

The books he recommends are:

“Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditions Have Failed,” by James Scott

“A Matter of Interpretation,” by Antonin Scalia

“Side Effects and Complications: The Economic Consequences of Health-Care Reform,” by Casey Mulligan

“The Righteous Mind,” by Jonathan Haidt

“Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes,” by Robert Ellickson

Of these five I've read one and a half. Read all of The Righteous Mind and started Side Effects and Complications but haven't finished it yet. Other books have barged into my queue! Haidt's book instantly lodged itself onto my short list of favorites. Highly recommended!

Kling in turn offers a list of books.

On education: Goldin and Katz, “The Race Between Education and Technology” and Elizabeth Green, “Building a Better Teacher.”

Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. [I've read most of it and agree with Kling's recommendation. It has a lot of information on the subconscious influences on our objectivity and decision making.]

Joseph Henrich’s “The Secret of Our Success” - “a good reminder that there are other social norms in the background that are important. Another book on the importance of culture is Peter Turchin’s 'War, Peace, and War.'”

On economics: L. Randall Wray’s “Why Minsky Matters” and George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, “Animal Spirits”. Scott Sumner’s history of the Great Depression, “The Midas Paradox” [Another one on the towering pile of books to be read.]

On family life: “Our Kids,” Robert Putnam who “coined the phrase 'bifurcated family patterns.' Isabel Sawhill’s “Generation Unbound”

Kling’s Three Axes: How Do Conservatives Explain Communists?

A reader on Arnold Kling’s blog asks this interesting question about his three axes model of political language as it applies to communism versus conservatism.

“how does conservative opposition to Communism (in the second half of the 20th century) fit on the civilization-barbarianism axis? I’m not sure that the Soviet Union or communist China are really thought of as “barbarians”. It seems weird that the main competitor in a space race can be a “barbarian”.”

I’ve been thinking whether there are key concepts that lie at the root of the axes Arnold has identified. I’ve been considering whether the desire for order explains the civilization/barbarism axis, autonomy for the libertarian freedom/coercion axis and equality for the liberal oppressor/oppressed axis. When the question came up about how Communism falls into this I thought at first that this might refute my attempt to identify the underlying premises. I say this because a totalitarian regime seeks order too although it is not based on the religion or tradition foundation that conservatives favor. However, I’d say the ultimate purpose of the order communism imposes is to achieve equality. “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs” is the statement that captures the intent behind communism. Anyway, food for thought.

Politics and Narratives

I've written before about the work of Jonathan Haidt who has influenced my thinking on morality and politics. This essay by The Independent Whig does a nice job summarizing Haidt's work while also touching on the role of stories. In fact here is a quote from early in the article.

The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor, and every ideology has its own story in the form of “grand narrative” that describes the social world from the perspective of that ideology.

He then outlines the Grand Liberal and Grand Conservative narratives.

Anyway, I recommend reading this essay.

Demonizing the Opposition – An Example

Kevin Vallier at Bleeding Heart Libertarians comments on a post by Robert Krugman in which he dehumanizes conservatives in order to justify his approach for ignoring anything they say. The context of Krugman’s post is to explain why Republican evangelicals can support Trump who doesn’t align with their conservative principles. According to Krugman,

What happened to conservative principles?

Actually, nothing — because those alleged principles were never real. Conservative religiosity, conservative faith in markets, were never about living a godly life or letting the invisible hand promote entrepreneurship. Instead, it was all as Corey Robin describes it: Conservatism is

a reactionary movement, a defense of power and privilege against democratic challenges from below, particularly in the private spheres of the family and the workplace.

It’s really about who’s boss, and making sure that the man in charge stays boss. Trump is admired for putting women and workers in their place, and it doesn’t matter if he covets his neighbor’s wife or demands trade wars.

As Vallier says, “Krugman’s opponents aren’t just wrong: they oppose fundamental moral and political values (equality) that any reasonable, decent person should accept. How are Very Serious Progressives like Krugman to share a country such individuals? Krugman’s answer is clear: support state power to crush conservative policies and criticize their intelligence and character.”

I’ve been harping recently on Arnold Kling’s e-book Three Languages of Politics but to me Krugman provides a clear example of the preference that Kling has identified for liberals to explain things in terms of the oppressed versus the oppressors. Trump and conservatives don’t believe what they do (and who knows what Trump really believes?) because they’re mistaken. Oh, no. It’s because they want to maintain their oppressor status. So that absolves progressives of the need to fairly answer positions taken by Republicans or conservatives. After all, these right wingers are the enemy and sub-human and therefore don’t deserve to be treated fairly.

There are several problems with this. First, this will continue the polarization that almost everyone decries. Second, Krugman implicitly alleges to be able to read the minds of everyone who claims to be a conservative. In other words, anyone who espouses conservative principles by definition doesn’t really believe what they’re saying. He can somehow divine that their real intent is to oppress people. Not just some conservatives. All of them. Nice, huh? This in turn leads to the third problem: intellectual laziness. Your principles are protected behind the insular force field of demonizing the opposition. Essentially this mind set boils down to: “Move on. Move on. There is nothing to hear folks. This is just a crazy right (or left) winger ranting. Our ideas are so indisputably and blindingly correct that anyone who challenges them just proves how subhuman and despicable they are.”

Soccer: The Liberal Sport?

During the recent World Cup Bernie Goldberg published an article Why Liberals Like Soccer More Than Conservatives that repeats the two usual arguments I've heard. One, that soccer is boring because there isn't enough scoring. And, that soccer appeals to liberals because it shows that America isn't as exceptional as some would like to think. To support this he quotes Peter Beinart, a "liberal journalist and professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York" who says that people who like soccer typify "a more cosmopolitan temperament, more of a recognition that America has things to learn from the rest of the world, and in fact maybe we have to learn from the rest of the world if we're going to remain a successful country."

While Goldberg probably is right that liberals tend to like soccer more than conservatives I think he is painting with a brush that is far too wide. He seems to be saying "I don't like something simply because liberals do!" Now that's being objective!

Speaking as more of a libertarian I think there are reasons for liking soccer that can appeal to conservatives too. 

1. In soccer players are free to decide how they're going to play the ball and with their teammates. They have more freedom than some American sports like football and basketball which is heavily controlled and scripted by the coach. 

2. To play well soccer a player needs to have both a high level of skill and tactical awareness since they're literally thinking on their feet with no football or basketball time outs or breaks like innings in baseball.

3. The sport doesn't favor one body type. There have been short soccer stars and tall ones. Some are exceptionally fast while others make up for lack of speed with the ability to fake a defender with their moves. While you could argue that this supports egalitarianism it doesn't mean soccer pushes for equality of results but for equality of opportunity to excel. 

4. Because scoring is very difficult in soccer each goal holds more value. With the offside law scoring requires a highly coordinated, skillful attack that can use powerful shots or delicately placed ones. 

5. If soccer was anti-individualist why are some of its stars such as Beckham, Messi or Ronaldo known around the world and command salaries in the tens of millions of dollars?

John Tierney's article, Soccer, a Beautiful Game of Chance, in the NYT, points out that Major League Baseball and the National Football League, the two primary American sports, have the egalitarianism of equality of outcome inherent in their organizational design. By that he means that both leagues have salary caps to even out the haves from the have nots and that the player drafts in both leagues favor the teams which didn't do well in the previous season. Sounds an awful like Marx's "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs," doesn't it? 

Meanwhile soccer teams in Europe compete to secure the best star players by outbidding each other. And there are no salary caps. In the premier leagues of England and European teams that fall to the bottom of the standings can be relegated to the next lower division while teams that fight their way to the top of the next lower league can be promoted. Being relegated or promoted has huge impact on the finances of the team and the club owing it! Isn't that an example of fierce competition? Where does relegation/promotion happen in America?

The overall story about soccer is much more complicated than Goldberg admits. If soccer really did appeal only to liberals and folks in socialist countries why is it big in relatively free countries such as Canada, Switzerland and Australia as well as socialized countries such as France, Sweden and Italy?

My point is that Goldberg and others like him (such as Ann Coulter) latch onto one point about this sport to further their political agenda without acknowledging there could be other, valid reasons for liking soccer. (Just as Beinart makes the same mistake from the left side.) They grossly oversimplify soccer in the overpowering desire of scoring an easy point (so to speak) by taking an easy but misguided shot.

When facts and narratives collide. (When facts contradict beliefs, challenge the facts.)

The title is meant to catch your eye. I'm not saying that thinking objectively means we should deny facts that challenge our beliefs.

I generally don't start political discussions with people I know disagree with me. I don't enjoy getting into arguments partly because I know there is no true “winner” in these disagreements. As a libertarian in liberal Massachusetts that means I almost never start such discussions because few people share my point of view.

For instance, during the NFL football season my wife and I watch the games at a friend's house where the wife is as avid a fan of the Patriots as my wife. However, I knew that our host, let's call her Jane, is fairly liberal. During the election she had signs along her driveway for Elizabeth Warren. Need I say more? Sometime after the election Jane brought up politics even though she had a good hunch that I didn't agree with her. I said that I was neither a Republican nor a Democrat but a libertarian. Our talk was quite civil for a while until Jane said she didn't understand why the economy wasn't doing better despite the stimulus package. I told her that every one of my customers have said that they are sitting on tons of cash but don't want to hire people. (In my job I often meet with the treasurer or CFO of my accounts.) Why? Because they're afraid of what additional regulations will be coming and the effects of ObamaCare when it starts being implemented. Jane burst out with “Bullshit! I don't accept that!” She stood up, added that she also didn't think the wealthy or businesses were really responsible for job creation, then started to storm out of the room. I said, “It looks like this conversation is over.” (To give her credit Jane did apologize later for her outburst although she didn’t change her mind.)

This incident opened my eyes to an interesting facet, not just of liberalism but probably of all ideologies: the denial of facts that contradict cherished beliefs.

In this case pointing out that businesses were reluctant to hire people challenged the policies and politicians that Jane supports. It also violated the liberal narrative. This narrative says that the wealthy and business owners have infinite resources that can be taxed and regulated without negative consequences. I think there also is the belief that we have the right to tap these resources because the rich and business owners didn't earn their wealth. After all, they didn't build that, as Obama angrily asserted.

I recall seeing a skit on Bill Maher’s show in which a conservative is sitting inside a sound-proof bubble while Maher and another liberal shout “truths” at the conservative. Conservatives feel the same about the filter liberals have installed in their ears. Rather than get into all of this here I highly recommend Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. Haidt explains how each side (including libertarians) focus on certain aspects of morality while filtering out others so that both sides in a debate talk past one another.

By the way the very next day I was at the airport when I heard a story on TV about the $1 trillion US companies are sitting on rather than using it to expand their business. The reasons given were the exactly same reasons I cited to Jane.

The Totally Normal Blog: We Are All Pauline Kael Now by Michael Prescott

Michael Prescott talks about how we tend to select our sources of information that favors our opinions in The Totally Normal Blog: We Are All Pauline Kael Now. Recommended reading.

Here is what I posted in response:

Michael, I heartily agree. I know that despite my goal of being as objective as possible (no easy task given our nature!) I naturally gravitate to blogs and web sites with which I agree. Part of it is limited time. Part of it is having a limited ability (and desire) to stomach what the other side is saying. When you talk about the bubbles we build I saw a skit Bill Maher (who I can take in small doses) put on his show in which he had someone representing a typical conservative sitting inside a bubble while he hurled “facts” that the conservative couldn’t hear. I wish I could remember an example but don’t. Must be my built-in defense mechanism. ;-) Maher’s goal was to show how conservatives isolate themselves from uncomfortable facts. I’ve heard similar accusations from the right about the left.

This is a little off topic but I think a lot of this non-communication is caused by people talking at different conceptual levels. For instance, for Objectivists and libertarians the individual is their foundation. Conservatives talk more about families and tradition. Liberals talk more about it taking a village to raise a child.

As an example of this building your own bubble trend I recently learned about an iPad app called Zite which feeds stories to you in different categories such as politics, science, and psychology. You can vote on which stories or sources you like or dislike. As you vote on the stories Zite refines what it sends to you. After installing it I've tried to avoid completely shutting down sites like Salon, Slate, and others precisely to see what the other side is saying if for no other reason than to see what arguments (such as they are) that they’re using.

So I'd say there are positives and negatives with having the ability to find sources of information to your liking. On the one hand it helps break the monopoly the mainstream new media has had on doling out information to us. On the other it becomes too easy, as you said, to build a bubble that shields facts that might not neatly fit your favored explanatory model (to coin an awkward term).

If I wanted the truth to fail

This article by Holly Munson in the Huffington Post talks about a video by a group called Free Market America which has received over 1,000,000 hits on YouTube. She compares it to an essay by E. L. Doctorow titled Unexceptionalism: A Primer. As Munson summarizes both:

The video opens with a grave-faced narrator: "If I wanted America to fail, to follow, not lead ... I'd start with energy." He then outlines a litany of objectives, such as using public schools to teach schoolchildren that people are causing global warming. The ominous kicker at the end: "If I wanted America to fail, I -- I suppose I wouldn't change a thing."

Then, this Sunday, the New York Times published an op-ed by writer E.L. Doctorow titled "Unexceptionalism: A Primer." The essay begins: "To achieve unexceptionalism, the political ideal that would render the United States indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world, do the following" -- followed by step-by-step instructions, such as, "If you're a justice of the Supreme Court, decide that the police ... have the absolute authority to strip-search any person whom they, for whatever reason, put under arrest." The finale: "With this ruling, the reduction of America to unexceptionalism is complete."

Munson closes her article with a section titled The Analysis.

So what should we make of the arguments made by Free Market America and Doctorow? Are they contributing to the lack of civility in public discourse by demonizing the opponent? Or are they thoughtful arguments, articulated in an effective, albeit emotionally manipulative, way?”

There is room to argue that these are valid exercises in satire.

…

The problem is that when someone equates a particular policy position with The Destruction of America As We Know It, or equates those who hold that position as evil (and/or stupid), they disregard the fact that reasonable people can disagree, and that their opponents probably have decidedly non-sinister reasons for believing what they do.

It's also worth pointing out that both parties are guilty of this -- it's something we all need to work on.

I agree that many people find it much easier to demonize their political opponents rather than carefully, objectively analyzing their positions. Given the name of this blog you can probably guess which way I lean. However I also believe that a video or an editorial essay (or political commercials) are not appropriate vehicles for well constructed arguments. There is a legitimate place for passionate polemics and there is a place for probing debates and detailed analysis. (For the later check out publications by the Cato Institute and Brookings Institute.) I’m concerned that equating the two methods of spreading one's message smuggles in the solipsism of saying no one is right nor wrong. In the process incorrect or unfounded beliefs get treated as equivalent to well-founded ones. The truth gets lost in the process. And we lose.

Why liberals can't understand conservatives – Telegraph Blogs

Why liberals can't understand conservatives – Telegraph Blogs

This article touches on ideas that will be discussed in Jonathan Haidt's soon to be released book, The Righteous Mind. I am looking forward to reading it and reviewing it here. In the meantime Ed West gives a nice preview.

Clashes of Morality: A different view

I’m mentioned Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis as one of my favorite books. He has written a thought provoking artile titled Obama’s moral majority. Haidt, a self-avowed political liberal, does something you rarely see on either side of the fence: admit the other side has some merit. In his article Haidt offers Obama advice on bridging the divide between Left and Right. He makes the following point:

First idea: use all five moral senses. A scientific consensus is emerging that human moral psychology was shaped by multiple evolutionary forces and that our minds therefore detect many—sometimes conflicting—properties of social situations. The two best studied moral senses pertain to harm (including our capacities for sympathy and nurturing) and fairness (including anger at injustice). You can travel the world but you won't find a human culture that doesn't notice and care about harm and fairness.

Political conservatives in the US, Britain and many other nations value three additional sets of moral concerns. Like liberals, they care about harm and fairness, but they care more than liberals about loyalty to the in-group (which political party cares most about flags and borders?), authority (which side demands respect for parents and teachers?) and spiritual purity (which side most wants to restrict homosexuality and drug use?). It's as though conservatives can hear five octaves of music, but liberals respond to just two, within which they have become particularly discerning. (My research colleagues and I have not just plucked these "senses" from the air; they emerged from a review of both evolutionary and anthropological theory, and were tested in internet surveys, face-to-face interviews and even in the decoding of religious sermons.)

This hypothesis doesn't mean that liberals are wrong or defective, but it does mean that they often have more trouble understanding conservatives than vice versa. Liberals tend to relate most moral issues to potential harms and injustices. They therefore can't understand why anyone—including the majority of Americans—would oppose gay marriage, for example, because legalising gay marriage would hurt nobody and end an injustice. Arguments about the sanctity of marriage or the authority of tradition sound like empty words sent out to cover irrational homophobia. But the culture war is not primarily a disagreement about what's harmful or fair; it is better described as a battle between two visions of the ideal society, one that is designed to appeal to two moral senses, the other designed to appeal to five.

Personally, I believe Haidt (and others) project too much hope in Obama’s ability to transcend party political lines. Based on what I’ve seen he has abandoned his message of hope and has resorted to more traditional party line politics.

I also believe there is another plausible theroy to expplain the differences in how conservatives, liberals and libertarians look at the world ethically. In reading Ken Wilber I became aware of Spiral Dynamics, a model for classifying worldviews based on stages of mental and spiritual evolution. Just as humans as a species have evolved over time, individual humans evolve through stages as they mature. Spiral Dynamics stems from the research conducted by Clare W. Graves, a professor of psychology who originally developed a model based on his research. Don Beck and Chris Cowan expanded on Graves’ work and added colors as a shorthand way to identify the different stages of evolution, which is explained in their book, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change.

The Spiral Dynamics model has 8 colors divided into two “tiers” but I’d like to focus on three colors that are contiguous with each other: blue, orange and green. Blue (also called “Traditional” by Stephen McIntosh) feels there is a Higher Power (typically God) that punishes evil and rewards the good. Blue values stability and order which is accomplished by obeying higher authorities and their rules. Traditional Republicans and conservatives are Blue.

Orange (or “Modern”) emphasize the individual and feel succesful living consists of competing to achieve results. They believe the free market best rewards individuals for their efforts. Libertarians typify Orange. They often form an uneasy alliance with Blue Republicans who also support the free market, sometimes reluctantly because of its inherent appeal to self-interest. Traditionalists support the market because it disciplines businessmen and individuals to pursue not just their own personal interests but “the public interest”. While Blue cherish tradition Orange values individual achievement and freedom.

Green (“Postmodern”) believe humans find love and purpose through affiliation and sharing. Green is more egalitarian, relativistic and collectivist. They also oppose the hierarchies, believing that there are no “higher” or “lower” levels. As a result Green look down on Blue and Orange as inferior. All three levels look at each other as if they’re from another world. In a sense they are: different worldviews each with its own value system. Wilber has written about the “Mean Green Meme” because it reduces morality to one dimension. Or as Haidt writes, they strip out two of the 5 moral dimensions and discard the rest. A healthy Green integrates the best aspects of Blue and Orange.

For more description of the various colors see http://www..spiraldynamics.org/resources_colors_sd.htm.

I know this system might sound a bit New Agey but as I have read and apply this model I believe it has some merit. I think it does help expplain why we see liberals, conservatives and libertarians constrantly talking past each other without making headway. As Ken Wilber would say, Green is not superior to Blue or Orange. A healthy Green honors and incorporates the healthy aspects of Blue (the objective need for rules such as law and order, traditions, etc.) and Orange (individualism, reason, self-interest). There is much more than I can cover here. I encourage anyone interested to the links provided above as well as the work of Ken Wilber. (See also Wilber’s original piece on his quadrants model, which I hope to discuss here in a future entry.)