Ideological identities and wise reasoning

This post continues the comment portion of the last post on liberal and conservative identities. The comments here primarily focus on the summaries drawn by the research authors on those participants who self-identified as conservatives. The conservative participants equated conservative beliefs with American values. Many equated liberals with socialism or as heading toward socialism. They saw the liberal outgroup as un-American. Although none of the self-identified liberal participants used the word socialism, many conservative participants thought socialism was a threat. Conservatives saw political conflict in the United States as a battle between two ideologies, American and non-American. They perceived themselves as defending America against an un-American liberal aggressor.

These and other comments illustrate that to a large extent conservatives/ and the Republican Party are rather tribal. The conservative ingroup is much more cohesive than the liberal ingroup. It is also much more antagonistic toward the liberal outgroup than the liberal ingroup is toward the conservative outgroup. Possibly the liberal ingroup may be moving to a position like the conservative ingroup relative to behavior toward an outgroup. I will comment on this later in the post.

Conservative cohesion

The comparative greater cohesiveness of the conservative ingroup and its greater antipathy to the liberal outgroup has developed over a long period of time. As I will eventually explicate in future Part 1 (antecedents) posts, one can trace an aspect of conservative tribalism and outgroup antipathy to before the 1930s Depression. Seminal works, first, of Ludwig Mises and, second, of Friedrich Hayek promoted a view of market capitalism as necessary to individual freedom.

Further, they both exhibited a strong dualism. On one side exists unfettered, free market capitalism. On the other side exists everything else – socialism, communism, totalitarianism, fascism, and so on. In their view, no middle ground exists. Any intervention in market capitalism belonged in this second side, severely antagonistic to the free market. The ambiguity of the phrase “market” helped Mises and Hayek promote their stark dualism. This permitted them to use different meanings of the word market depending on circumstances and conditions.

Eventually, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and the Chicago School of Economics of the 1950s and 1960s and James Buchanan’s public choice theory of economics about the same time continued the overarching principles laid by Mises and Hayek. Their economic theories influenced Goldwater and Reagan. They also led to the development of significant multiple national think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, as well as many state-based think tanks, like the Mackinac Center in Michigan.

Additionally, businesses and wealthy individuals created conservative foundations to fund conservative advocacy groups, such as the Koch Family Foundations, the Bradley Foundation, and the Coors Foundation. Conservative “talk radio” came along followed by Fox News, creating an unmatched communications and media network that promoted and spread a conservative message. Finally came the advent of conservative social media.

In current times, this thought network significantly facilitated the creation and development of groups/coalitions like the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus. The intensity of these core conservative/Republican Party advocates produced an unrestrained no-compromise political behavior, ranging from voter suppression, egregious gerrymandering, and the elimination of the regular order in Congress and many state legislatures. All this produced a take-no-prisoner form of hardball politics. As of now, there are no liberal counterparts.

I am not saying that the conservative thought network agrees on all aspects of thought content. However, they were and are much more cohesive than the much weaker liberal thought network. The core of this conservative cohesiveness was and is its antipathy to the outgroup. They all voice support for the market, for capitalism, and for individual liberty if these terms are not defined very sharply.

A liberal thought network?

While liberals developed some similar aspects of a thought network, the liberal network could not come close to matching in terms of quality, quantity, and financial resources, the conservative thought network. For example, there are few state-based liberal think tanks and there are no significant liberal counterparts to conservative talk radio, Fox News, and a highly organized or effective use of social media.

Many factors disadvantage the liberal thought network, but several seem particularly significant. One is the absence of an overarching ideology. Liberals focus on specific issues and do not connect these issues into an overall ideology. They generally do not see themselves as a group. They shy away from authoritarianism, focusing on their individual belief systems. They have no strong focus on a singular outgroup. Consequently, liberals are nowhere as cohesive as conservatives.

It’s possible that this is changing for liberals, perhaps fueled mostly by response to the Trump presidency. Their increasingly strong antithetical outgroup is Trumpism. My sense is that the core of this outgroup antagonism is partly traditional. This includes being opposed to tax cuts for business and the wealthy, environmental degradation, and a conservative culture that make little room for the reality of our nation’s pluralism and diversity.

But some of the growing outgroup antagonism is new. Liberals tend to view the state positively, important to making lives better for many. Trumpism advocates in many ways the deconstruction of the state. Liberals seem to care more about rationality, analysis, and empiricism. Trumpism is more anti-intellectual than any modern presidency. Liberals tend to care about people (although conservatives might dispute much of this), while Trumpism seems not to care about people, showing little sympathy and no empathy. These last three points (deconstruction of the state, anti-intellectualism, and weak sympathy and empathy) are new. These aspects of Trumpism generally were insignificant in prior Republican administrations.

Consequently, at least some liberal elites and perhaps some liberal non-elites are becoming more cohesive around a strong antagonism toward an outgroup, an outgroup of conservatives and Republicans as represented by Trumpism. What this might entail is increased political polarization.

Increased political polarization

This gets to the heart of this commentary. How damaging will this increased polarization be for the country? One can make an argument that strong political party conflict is positive, a strength of American democracy. However, I think it difficult, perhaps impossible, to make the argument that extremism is positive, a strength of American democracy.

One can argue, and scholarly analysis show this to be largely true, that the Republican Party began in the mid-90s its earnest march to extremism. This includes among other items the “Gingrich revolution,” the “Hastert rule” (generally, only proposed legislation supported by the majority of the Republican Party would get a floor vote, even though the legislation would otherwise pass), the political weaponization of the debt ceiling, and the destruction of the Senate as the world’s greatest deliberative body. If liberals and, especially, the Democratic Party, successfully move to match this kind of extremism, American democracy’s future look bleak.

What I found disheartening in the summary of the conservative participants was their commitment to an overarching ideology and their strong antipathy to what they perceived to be an un-American outgroup. The implication I drew from this is that the move away from this form of extremism would have to be made by the Republican Party leaders, it would not and could not come from the ground up. But the Republican Party has reached the point where it no longer tries to mobilize a broad stratum of voters beyond “the base.”

If the liberal participants become as ideological as conservatives, and the Democratic Party becomes as extreme as the Republican Party, there is no room for inclusiveness and compromise. The only options are constant intransigence or a version of democratic authoritarianism. For in our historical, practical system of government party leaders are the ones primarily responsible for inclusion and compromise, for ensuring some sense of responsiveness to most voters much of the time.

Wise reasoning

This leads me to the concept of wise reasoning. Research suggests wise reasoning can reduce intergroup conflicts by increasing the willingness of participants to consider diverse viewpoints. The wise reasoning framework contains four principles (see earlier post): (1) intellectual or epistemic humility, (2) acknowledging uncertainty and change, (3) perspective-taking of diverse viewpoints, and (3) efforts to integrate different viewpoints.

However, many barriers to wise reasoning in the political sphere exist. Social media has become particularly important in politics today, generally benefitting conservative and radical right positions. It is difficult to see political use of social media exhibiting wise reasoning given social media’s attention to emotions and its echo chamber reinforcement.

Cable news may be a more appropriate venue for the exercise and modeling of wise reasoning. The “town hall” format where one candidate engages a diverse audience seems to work well. I think it gives the audience an opportunity to see a candidate as a real, complex person and not the stereotype personality that often appears in television media. The viewing audiences of CNN and MSNBC, for example, contain conservatives and independents although liberals dominate. The same can be said for Fox News: while the audience is almost wholly conservative, some viewers are independents or persuadable conservatives. Unlike party elites, cable viewers may more likely possess some intellectual humility. They can consider if not enact perspective-taking of diverse viewpoints, especially with a good moderator.

Another probable barrier to wise reasoning in politics is legislative gerrymandering. Intense gerrymandering places people of similar political persuasion in the same legislative voting district. Gerrymandering has an echo chamber consequence whereby people have fewer opportunities to hear or consider different perspectives. Perhaps more harmful is its tendency to produce electoral winners who cater to a narrowed constituency. And as elected leaders they may become increasingly less humble intellectually, further limiting their desire or ability to embrace the three other characteristics of the wise reasoning framework.

It’s possible that returning to regular order in Congress, with its subcommittee hearings, committee hearings, floor discussion and votes and compromise-producing conference committees may help bring about wise reasoning. Likewise, setting a floor above simple majority for life-long appointments to the federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, could help facilitate wise reasoning.

In closing

I will close by stressing the importance of party leaders, especially at this point Republican Party leaders, to slow if not stop the derailing of American democracy. To me, it is remarkable how congressional Republican leaders have lacked the courage to attack if not actually prevent the backsliding of democracy. Perhaps living in a tribal bubble generates the lack of courage.

Denying Trump a second term may signficantly lessen Trumpism. But even if Democrats remain in control of the House, a longer-term demise of Trumpsim probably will require the retirement of Trumpist leaders in the Senate. This includes the majority leader and his leadership team as well as most committee chairpersons. Currently, 19 of the 24 Senate committees are chaired by senators from the 13 states that constantly since 1980 have voted Republican in the presidential elections. This electoral Republican core suggests that the Trumpist nature of the Senate likely will continue absent the Democractic Party taking control of the Senate.

If Republican hardball politics started more than 20 years ago, what may be needed is a longer transition to political world adept at wise reasoning. However, the conservative ideology became the ruling ideology with the election of Reagan. Further, the conservative thought network began developing many years before Reagan’s election. A firm move away from Trumpism and from a take-no-prisoner politics toward a politics based on wise reasoning may be a long time in coming.