Unconscious Bias and Humility

Daniel Kaufman is a professor of philosophy at Missouri State.  He is a frequent video-blogger on Bloggingheads, and I enjoy his conversations.  After a wonderful recent conversation he had with David Ottlinger on the philosophical roots of classical liberalism, he provided me with this link to a piece he wrote on liberalism and the Harvard Implicit Bias Test, which he argues is vague and only helpful as cannon-fodder for the PC police (I'm paraphrasing).

I agree with him that the test itself is of limited utility in that it can't possibly give you much detail into what, why, how or where specifically your biases lie, beyond a general score that you might have some. But it is scientific in that it measure responses to  certain stimuli.  It is logical that you would be able to measure unconscious bias. In behaviorism, we would look at it in terms of stimulus control, where certain stimuli have been paired with behaviors (either thoughts or actions) which have then been reinforced. In my practice I do a lot of desensitization with children who have very heightened emotional responses to various environmental stimuli.

I do agree that the test could be misused, its results overblown with some kind of moralistic, shaming agenda. But personally, I found it fascinating. I readily expect myself to have all kinds of biases against gays, blacks, women, fat people - you name it. I found it a simple confirmation of what I already know to be the case.

My stance has always been that we need to remove the shame and stigma from bias - to accept that it is simply part of living in our society , and in many ways a natural human process coming out of how we learn. It is in many ways a helpful heuristic, but it has its downsides, and we can take steps to correct for it. For instance, the more I know about stereotypes, I can then notice them coming into my mind and I can recognize them.

My favorite example of this is the tendency of some people to become upset about "black english". I've seen facebooks memes arguing that you should say "ask", not "axe". However, this is is highly selective and racially biased. I've never once seen such memes directed towards colloquial english spoken by ethnic whites, who constantly speak in "poor english". We say "ummana" "instead of I'm going to", or "whataya" instead of "what are you".

If you are a hyper-grammar partisan, OK, maybe. But I think this is a case of ethnic stereotyping and shaming. I think the vast majority of bigotry is simply an extra sensitivity to the foibles of out-groups; you have a lower tolerance of it because it is easier to spot and an easy target of ire when your grumpy, afraid, stirred-up, etc. But it's totally human, and helpfully remedied with reflection.

I wish more PC-minded liberals would be more forgiving and lighten up. I wish more anti-PC people would be more forgiving and a little self-reflective. This combative stance is unhelpful I think in light of the fact that we are all subject to unconscious bias, and we can just try to be better people. Lord knows we all are constantly trying to be kinder, nicer, more forgiving, etc. in other areas of life.

Politics, Language and Thought

As I look at conservative and liberal politicians, pundits and lay commentary, a pattern begins to emerge in which certain attitudes and cognitive "styles" seem to be more common to one side or the other.

The right seems to like certainty - as opposed to nuance, "masculine" forceful presentation and domineering conviction - as opposed to "feminine" softness and passive listening, or "openness". These seem strongly associated with traditional versus progressive social identities.

My guess is that many conservatives might disagree with that framing. Would they see any truth to it, though? Just by looking at the type of personal styles and approaches to governing and speaking, are there any patterns that they might see between liberal/conservative attitudes and personal presentations, especially that have policy consequences?

I think I see evidence for my framing. I also think you can find a lot of the language both partisan sides use that supports it as well. Conservative and liberal citizens seem to have divergent ways they see and talk about the world. 

George Lakoff, a liberal linguist who has done much to popularize this discussion, at least on the left, identifies a set of words significant to partisan politics, drawn from speeches and writings.  Among conservatives, the following words are given primacy:

character, virtue, discipline, tough, strong, self-reliance, self-reliant, individual, responsibility, backbone, standards, authority, heritage, competition, earn, hard, work, enterprise, property, reward, freedom, intrusion, interference, meddling, punishment, traditional, dependency, self-indulgent, elite, quotas, breakdown, corrupt, decay, rot, degenerate, deviant, [and] lifestyle.

And among liberals:

social, forces, expression, human, rights, equal, concern, care, help, health, safety, nutrition, dignity, oppression, diversity, deprivation, alienation, corporations, corporate, welfare, ecology, ecosystem, biodiversity, [and] pollution.

However, a study of the actual use of these words in political ads failed to find much of a correlation between the identified conservative language and conservative ads.  However, there did seem to be a correlation between identified liberal language and liberals campaign ads.  The author hypotheses that this need not undermine Lakoff's thesis, but rather illustrate the different dynamics involved in the efficacy of political advertising.

I've been reading this paper that looks at how psychologists and sociologists have tried to examine the issue over the past half century. However I'm pretty skeptical of their findings. For instance, they seem to want to suggest that there are personality types that lead to conservative or liberal thinking. Yet the personality types they identify are rather vague: conservatives = more conscientious, liberals = more "open to new ideas". But it would seem that conservative or liberal thinking leads to these dispositions. Furthermore, the tribal, identity-driven aspects of liberal and conservative communities reinforce norms that foster these dispositions. For instance, in one part of the study they cataloged the possessions of self-identified conservative and liberal grad students, and found correlations, such as more liberal students having more ethnic music in their CD collections. Yet are these students really more "open" people, or are they part of a liberal identity that has pushed them to go out and explore ethnic music? This normative pressure may indeed result in them being more "open" to different ideas, either cultural, political, etc., and thus seem to be more "open" people, but it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about an innate personality. Likewise, their findings that conservative rooms tended to be cleaner and have more sports memorabilia would seem to be evidence of conscientiousness and preference for tradition, yet these too are cultural, normative artifacts.

I'm curious how conservatives would see the issue. The psychological and sociological research appears to have been dominated by liberal researchers. Yet there is something to culture, ethnicity, normal and political partisanship. If not innate (likely), there do seem to be quite different normative pressures involved. Especially as society seems to have become more polarized, I think it is an important issue to investigate. As people become more politically polarized, both in community networks and even geographically, these norms would seem to be even more self-reinforcing. There almost seem to be many structural inevitabilities at work. Is this pattern a natural evolution of a heterogenous, democratic, wealthy nation, in which people's natural, tribal inclinations are perpetuated by their ability to self-select into political and cultural tribes?

Kicking and Screaming

I've written about this before, but I'm always struck by the sense of antipathy conservatives have towards discussions of race or hatred.  I know conservatism is nuanced. But it is a movement nonetheless, with standard talking points and rhetoric that act as stand-ins for large assumptions and intuitions.

It's an empirical claim, too (I'm sure someone has done the research).  Do a Google search and you will come up with very little in the way of conservative thoughts on race that aren't merely about defending perceived liberal critiques.  I mean real, good-faith attempts to try and understand what racism (and hate, for that mater) is. 

It seems a subject better left alone. Yet it is a problem - the "other" - that rears its ugly head again and again. The more we know about it, the more we can keep from falling into old patterns of thought. Far from being some thing that is "over", it is all around us.

There is a narrative about power imbalances, out groups, etc. that I embrace, as do most liberals. That's how we can see a deep resemblance between racism and antipathy of homosexuality by religious followers, and consider the embrace of a hateful textual interpretation as rooted in larger historical oppression. Of course, we don't stone people to death, as it says to do in the bible. Yet why don't we apply the same "intuition" to its homophobic passages, dispensing with them as needed (along with all the other idiotic biblical "teachings")? Because we have yet to truly call homophobia out as the hate it is, just like sexism or racism.

As far as I can tell, it is a fact that conservatism isn't interested in connecting these dots. Whereas literally thousands of books, magazine articles, academic papers and studies have been written by the left on these dynamics, inspired by and in turn inspiring progressive cultural protest movements.

It makes sense. Conservatism in general has always been interested in maintaining the cultural status quo. The fact that this has often meant maintaining racial, sexual, gender, class dynamics seems at best (to the more liberal right) a sort of unpleasant sacrifice, at worst (to the far right) a happy constant.

Modern conservatism is of course much more enlightened and comfortable with the cultural change that has unfolded, with people like Sarah Palin calling themselves feminists - a concept that only a decade ago would have had Phyllis Schlafly pissing her pants. (I'm not sure, does Limbaugh still talk about "feminazis"?). And thankfully most of us can agree that interracial marriage is OK, and that diversity is important in the workplace.

So Glenn Beck has his rally and honors Martin Luther King, which is wonderful because the attendees genuinely honor his memory. However the irony is lost that conservatism was brought kicking and screaming onto the right side of history (that the whole notion of a conservative rally actually honoring a black leader seeming odd speaks volumes about current racial make-up of the Republican party). Conservatism still seems largely about whites talking to whites about whites. When minorities are mentioned, they tend to be cast as "the other", whether it's illegals, Muslims, gays or other non-conformist whites.

I mentioned "thousands" of books being written by the left that explore dynamics of race, identity, etc. Obviously the vast majority of people on the left haven't read them. But they have been influenced by those who have, and identified with the story being told. Something in them responded to these ideas. As they looked at the world, these ideas resonated with what they saw.

So what is it about the liberal impulse that sees black, latino or gay pride and is moved, not just to re-examine their own preconceived ideas, but to go out and try and convince others? Because all of this cultural progress doesn't happen by magic. It takes sustained effort, by thousands, millions to push new ideas and ways of thinking.

And what is it about the conservative impulse that recoils from this kind of progress, feels threatened by it? When conservatism began to push back against "political correctness", or "multiculturalism", it was a direct response to liberal advocacy of social change. Sure, some of it was about perceived over-reach, but it was rarely couched in sympathy with the larger project of cultural progress. It was defensive of what it felt was a direct attack on it itself.

Again, this goes back to a lack of openness to exploration of the roots of oppressive cultural dynamics. Political correctness was always about critically examining preconceived cultural assumptions and biases. It was a direct outgrowth of the liberal impulse to look at out-groups and the historically disempowered and find leverage points in society from which fundamentally hateful and oppressive ideas, cognitive failings, were perpetuated. Why do presidents have to be male? Why do the important voices in literature need to be white? Why are jokes about out-groups funny? Why aren't there more minorities in ads? Etc., etc. The conservative response to this, to the extent that there was one in the media, was relentlessly negative.

Something about cultural conservatism seems to be in a permanent state of timelessness. The now is always now. Things seem taken for granted that had to be fought for relentlessly. Sure, we all agree that racism is wrong. But that obvious assertion didn't happen over night and took vast amounts of work to overcome. The same with sexism. We're getting there with homophobia. Go back 20 years and conservatism was virulently anti-gay. I imagine in a decade conservatives will take it for granted that homosexuality is perfectly natural. Heck, they might even hold a rally and honor Harvey Milk!

That'll be the day.

Winning

In a recent discussion with a conservative, the following statement was made:

"The most important decisions in life don't require a high iq to make. Go to school. Don't do drugs. Show up for work on time every day. Don't reproduce before you're able to care for a child, Etc. Not following these simple rules turn people into losers."

This really seems to cut to the core of disagreement between liberal and conservative attitudes towards social inequality. Putting aside general circumstantial situations, why do some people seem to make such poor choices, and others make such better choices?

You've probably noticed that I have a running suspicion that conservatives are more inclined to believe that people have more free will than liberals. However, this is disputed. Yet I think this statement fits my claim.

So, the basic concept is that these important decisions are not difficult, don't require a high IQ, and thus the right course should be chosen more than it is. In other words, people who make the wrong choices are "losers", doing so by choice.

My critique of this is as a determinist. I believe that while people make choices, their ability to choose is enforced by prior learning and development. Basically, people are going to make the choice that they feel most compelled to make. Because this compulsion is real, no matter what options are in theory available to them, in reality there is only one option - the one they are most compelled to take.

For instance, two dieters are faced with the choice of eating a piece of chocolate cake, and only one is able to resist it. They both have the same number of choices, yet depending on their internal make-up - prior learning and development (and the interplay between these and genetics) - they will experience different levels of compulsion. While the right decision makes rational sense - if you are on a diet, you shouldn't have the cake! - humans are much more complex. And again, this complexity is rooted in our development. Chances are if you ask the successful dieter to tell you how he did it, he won't be able to explain it - he just did it. Likewise, the dieter who failed likely wouldn't be able to tell you why she failed - she just couldn't do it. Both wanted to resist.

There are definitely "losers" and "winners". There are people who work really hard and do everything they can to get ahead, while others take easier routes. And just like the dieters, how do we know how some people manage to succeed, while others don't?

There's actually a considerable degree of research on this! It is impossible to draw a 1:1 line of causality between any one factor, as humans are infinitely complex. But there are general factors that can be isolated to provide pretty good predictors of successful behavior. For instance, you take two groups of 100 people, and you can find behavioral correlations that will show clear patterns. Social researchers, psychologists and economists have found numerous connections between life circumstances, personality traits and behavioral characteristics that predict one's chances of being successful in life.

I don't think that conservatism seems to embrace much, if any of this research. There seems to be an odd cognitive dissonance, where even if the research or evidence shows predictive relationships between development and behavior, it is somehow waved away with the idea that people can always choose to "follow the rules".

Some conservatives who embrace the research, who might simply object to the idea of government programs intervening to help people, on the grounds that it doesn't work, or contributes to unsuccessful behavior, don't seem to have any thoughts on how we might help people who lack proper development. Problems exist that have existed, that exist now, and will likely continue to exist should we do nothing. Is there not a moral requirement that we, those of us who understand the problem, no doubt having had the gift of being taught how to be successful, act to help them, out of a sense of fairness? What would this plan look like, from a conservative standpoint? For every kid out there growing up with terrible disadvantages, what plan do conservatives have for him, who will be more likely to grow up to fail, and likely sire more failure-prone children?

Is the assumption that there is nothing that we can do? Because I can actually make a pretty good case that the availability of social programs does at least some good, in that it can provide just the sort of relief that many people need. I've witnessed it first-hand over and over, and there are statistics to back me up. It of course is not perfect. Many people are beyond help, and I'll admit that some may even be given improper incentives - although I think that case has yet to even have begun to be constructed.

So to the extent that this is an evidenced-based debate, and we are accepting the large amount of data and research out there on the subject of individual success, it seems we are left with questions of behavioral analysis and public policy. I'm open to new types of programs and approaches, but conservatives don't seem to have anything to offer, other than old arguments attempting to defend their right to basically do nothing and leave things at that.

Reality and Bias

 A new book purports to find evidence of widespread liberal "bias" in the media.

"In at least one important way journalists are very different from the rest of us—they are more liberal. For instance, according to surveys, in a typical presidential election, Washington correspondents vote about 93-7 for the Democrat, while the rest of us vote about 50-50 for the two candidates.
What happens when our view of the world is filtered through the eyes, ears, and minds of such a liberal group?
As I demonstrate—using objective, social-scientific methods—the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it really is. Instead, we only see a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see."

A longstanding critique from the right, the left's snarky rejoinder: “reality has a liberal bias”.  Yet this is often demonstrably true, not only in terms of whether liberal claims can be substantiated, but in the very way in which the left traditionally approaches truth questions.  Liberalism is biased towards expertise, towards scientific inquiry, critical deconstruction of cultural norms and dominant paradigms.

The extent to which any of these are the paths to truth, then truth can be said to have a liberal bias. Although that’s not really accurate. Better said, liberalism has a bias towards truth. So, for instance, when a journalist points out that a business is polluting a river, is it liberal bias? When most illegal aliens are found to be exploited when all they wanted was a chance at a better life, is it liberal bias? When global warming is found to likely have devastating effects, is it liberal bias? When evolution is found to be absolutely true, is it liberal bias? When gays are – newsflash! – found to be normal, healthy people, is that liberal bias?

Conservatism is ultimately about common sense. And sometimes common sense is right; even a broken clock is right twice a day. But to the extent that conservatism is biased against expertise, or critical analysis, or relativism, or the deconstruction of tradition – in other words the machinery of free thought – then conservatism is biased against truth. As Buckley put it, to “stand athwart history and yell stop”, even alas, when that history is truth.

In the end, there is no such thing as a bias towards truth, only away from it. To be biased is to be operating outside the parameters of truth-finding. To the extent that conservatism rejects the very process of truth-finding, preferring instead to rely on such subjective and non-rational epistemologies as tradition or common-sense, it is biased against truth. And to the extent that the media is concerned with truth, then conservatism is often biased against the media itself.

Determinism and Social Justice

For a number of years now, I've labored under the assumption that a belief in determinism implies a left-wing sense of social justice.  The logic of this assumption is laid out in the essay by Tom Clark, Progressive Policy Implications of Naturalism.

 I think there is a correct response to an assumption of determinism, and conservative policy isn't it. So how is this different than ordinary disagreement with conservative policy? Well, because it comes directly from a denial of free will. I say this in the sincere belief that were free will not true, I would have to seriously reconsider my liberal policy assumptions.

So, what does this actually mean? Let's take a basic illustration of social inequality: high rates of the poor and minorities in prison, and high rates of successful people having come from relatively successful families.

The simple free will argument on this is that both were just as able to choose their lot in life, so their unequal position is morally defensible and not something society need worry about. The standard determinist position is that they were both created by circumstance, and thus their unequal position is not defensible, and therefore society ought to try and help them.

Two nuanced versions of the free will positions might go something like this. A) These life circumstances must be addressed by stronger intervention. B) Though they have free will, there are life circumstances that make life more difficult for some than others. However, at the end of the day they must find their own way - this is how people learn to succeed.

A more nuanced determinist might say that though these unequal positions are determined, it is simply not within our power to do very much about them, at least no more than a properly free-market might allow for them to be better-determined.

So into these positions on free will come assumptions about behavior and the efficacy of government. But what does the question of free will have to say about these assumptions? My argument would be that it answers them definitively.

In order for this to be true, the small-government determinist must be wrong on his understanding of determinism. I might start this argument by acknowledging that determinism requires us to be morally concerned with inequality, in so far as that it is being determined by some system, it is wrong. Our difference lies in how to effectively address that inequality, governments or markets, broadly. (I think it might be relevant to here point out an argument pointed to on these boards by sugarkang, in which the fact of inequality itself actually provides a behavioral mechanism for determining individual change. I would only argue that this effect is not so strong, as evidenced by the degree to which it seems to have little effect at all.)

I would argue that determinism implies that individual thought is entirely* a product of circumstance. (* I will leave genetics out of this discussion because while there is human genetic variation, it isn't relevant to the question of social equality broadly) As such, it is his every interaction with society - family, peers, culture, neighborhood, schooling, political structure, etc. that affords him his every thought, and therefore action.

This places moral responsibility for the individual squarely at the hands of society, every moment. While he feels he is thinking freely, he is completely tied to his past interactions with the society around him, in no less a manner than as an animal in an ecosystem. Now, while it is true that many behavioral outcomes, determined as they are, will only come about through a certain degree of individual autonomy, and his interacting with the "invisible hand" so to speak, of social interaction. Even if we wanted to, there is simply no way we could account for and control every aspect of his determination so as to give him the greatest possible sense of liberty and satisfaction (how's that for irony?!!!). In fact, most of what we think of as positive human experience is a function of a sort of free-market of social interaction.

But nonetheless, we are are still morally accountable. I think we recognize this implicitly when we set out to be altruistic even when there is no clear immediate reward; we believe that we are a part of a larger, invisible hand of society that will do us all good. It is through these acts that we demonstrate - if only to ourselves - our fealty to the greater moral good.

So, if true determinism implies an intense responsibility for our fellow man, as morality itself, having been shorn from the individual and attached to the determining society at large, we must be all the more careful and scrupulous in our endeavor to provide optimal levels of human good.

And this may be where it gets the trickiest. My claim is that, given the obvious fact that there is such inequality, and that that inequality almost by definition results in such massive amounts of potential for human suffering, that relatively high levels of state - the pinnacle of social codification - intervention. Here I might make appeals to numerous specific cases of inequality resulting in real human tragedy. I might make the case that neither history nor logic provides evidence that a more free market approach to reducing social inequality will do much of anything to reduce these problems, and that government intervention will at least reduce their pain.

Yet what am I doing but appealing to flaws in behavioral or policy assumptions? In the end, is my argument, that determinism implies left-wing, or statist economic policy, resting primarily on the claim that determinism simply implies a more robust empathy for the plight of the unfortunate?

Maybe. I suppose I feel I've made the case that determinism implies a high degree of moral concern. Maybe I'm just skeptical that free market solutions are really sufficiently that. I suppose it is in no small part an expression of bad faith. I simply can't see how the work that needs to be done, work predicated on the thought that these people are as much my own personal responsibility (and each of ours), as my own kin. And what would I not do to make sure my own family has health care? Or a proper education, and a degree of equality?

A Few Thoughts on Liberals vs. Conservatives

Liberals tend to be more broadminded and socially-critical, thus open to change. This is why we see so many more go into academics and journalism, as well as be on the forefront of cultural change. Many intelligent conservatives are likely mistaken for fools because their stubborn attachment to tradition is see as non-intellectual. Argument from tradition is, after all, a logical fallacy - even if the idea itself is correct. I think in general conservatives tend to suffer from more cognitive biases and fallacious thinking. This critique comes directly from liberal social-critique, and applies much more to social conservatives, however economic conservatives tend to have similar intuitions.

For their part, conservatives do ad hominem differently. For them it is more a question of liberals as traitors, as whiners and sneaks, know-it-all snoots, do-gooders and freaks. Conservatives tend to embrace traditional social orders. This is why they are so comfortable with the pyramid shape of much of business, with its hierarchical class system and clenched fist. Getting ahead means following orders and pleasing authority. From a traditional vantage point the ground is more firm, less prone to disruptive or tangential thought. This provides great confidence, pride, and stability, yet less capacity for deconstructive analysis and free thought. Accordingly, liberals are not to be trusted, like rebellious children, always attacking foundations and nipping at the heels.

Interestingly, conservatives can rely on tradition to enforce their ideologies. Liberals, seeking change, must rely on legal enforcement. This seems to set up an endless dynamic of liberals getting bothered by traditions and changing them through law, and conservatives feeling threatened by new laws they disagree with.

Dining with the Rich, p.II - "Opportunity"

I think there are two related issues between the liberal and conservative perspectives on inequality and opportunity in America:

- the degree to which extant inequities in power structures tend to remain, if not solidify without intervention. In the extreme*, this might require revolutionary, literal redistribution of wealth. At the margins, it might simply means provision of quality libraries. The trouble is the massive squishy middle where there are a variety of interventions that can promote self-efficacy. Yet to be comprehensive and not tied to grab-bag charity work, a guarantee of equal access can be practicably made only by the government. The most obvious example of this is public education, which can then extend in terms of real efficacy to any variety of programmatic responses such as early childhood, parenting classes, childcare support, drug treatment, counseling, etc. (all of which of course must prove themselves but there is no reasons why they can't be completely effective in theory and there are indeed many such examples of effective programs).

*I'm thinking of countries where a kleptocracy has virtually impoverished everyone and must be removed by force.

- the degree to which opportunity is actually accessible to all. This is tied directly to the one I mentioned previously. We could tie ourselves in knots trying to determine how much self-efficacy any given adult individual has in America. But I think we can make some pretty assumptions based on a lot of very predictive data. The degree of efficacy results directly from an individual's human and social capital.

This however, would contradict your statement: "a middle class existence is within the grasp of everyone with a reasonable enough intelligence level." Clearly, the poor are not of below-average intelligence, at least to the degree to which their income is reflective of any marginal lower IQ.

The real problem lies not in IQ, but one's ability to realize their potential. To do this requires bringing all of the faculties to bear necessary to make the choices that will lead to success. For example, being in excellent shape is within most people's grasp. Yet why aren't they? It isn't that they are stupid. There are just too many competing factors involved in maintaining an excellent health regiment.

Returning to the larger issue of income, people are similarly confined by their capacity for self-realization. Yet this confinement is far more extensive and multi-faceted than mere habits of diet and exercise. For starters, there is a very close link between high school graduation rates and income. It isn't causal - it is certainly possible to be successful despite dropping out of school. But what the link does is point to the incredible power of other indicators that have already begun to act before citizens reach adulthood, and yet have effects that last their entire lives.

People simply do not magically invent their own capacity for habits of mind, etc. that allow them to succeed. These are skills that they have been able to develop over years, and upon adulthood can begin to leverage into success.

Now, it is all well and good to acknowledge this, and then seek ways of increasing agency in society, whether through cultural change, government intervention - whatever. But there are also systematic barriers - "channels" if you will - that provide sort of invisible scaffolding that allows some to reach higher, and leaves others more greatly marginalized and with fewer options.

So, these would basically fall into the realm of social capital. But, as opposed to structures like family or culture, which can be influenced by society at large, these would rather be more infrastructural, and within the larger designs of what kind of society we want to create.

One of the largest, most problematic of these structures is the unintended result of our system of property, specifically property values. What ends up happening is a clustering effect which ultimately has a profound impact not only on individual communities but society at large. When you have large degrees of inequality between neighborhood property values, you get communities with large disparities in human capital. In the rich neighborhoods you get selection for relatively well-adjusted*, motivated, educated, knowledgeable, intact families, etc. - basically high levels of social capital. Yet each point of social capital is not static. They build exponentially, leveraging one and another to to create a sum vastly more useful than its parts.

You can see where this goes with poor communities, where the same holds true, yet in reverse. There is a relative lack of social capital - education, worldly knowledge, motivation, psychodynamic integrity (mental illness, dysfunction,), etc., and each individual piece leverages against one another, building exponentially until the results become catastrophic. This snowballing of capital disadvantage has an overall effect of placing an active downward pressure on communities. Not only are there practical, day-to-day effects on activities, but stress levels increase, contributing to health and behavioral problems. If you think losing weight is difficult, try doing it with massive increases in stress hormones due to not being able to afford rent, getting laid off, your car breaking down, your kids fighting at school, your boyfriend running out on you, etc., etc. Any single lack in social capital advantage becomes extra burdensome in the presence of an overall lack. Whereas something like drug addiction or abuse in a wealthy community can be lessened in its destructive power by the presence of family cohesion, financial stability, in the absence of social supports, it can have much more dire consequences.

Of course, these are extremes. Most of us fall somewhere in between, possessing some mixture of the above. But this does not make any of the elements of social capital any less crucial to the understanding of how "opportunity" works.

Dining with the Rich

A common critique of theleft  is that they want to punish the rich, or that they are jealous of them - "Eat the rich" is a slogan they decry as emblematic of this supposed class envy. I suppose that could be true, but it would be hard to prove. 

Instead, I think a more serious response would acknowledge the usual claims about inequality. First, a large gap in incomes is usually indicative of other inequalities, such that income mobility - or freedom, in a real sense* - is limited. There could be any number of reasons for this, i.e. in typical post-colonial 3rd world countries ownership of land, wealth and access to power is distributed highly unevenly. Even in 1st world countries, there is a high correlation between access to social capital and wealth.

A second claim, and it largely follows from the first, is that tax structures should take into account this social capital dynamic, and assume that greater incomes were born from greater access to capital. Thus, tax burdens should be progressive.

Third, and this is somewhat separate from the concept of social capital, but it is simply true that those with greater incomes can afford to pay more in taxes without as considerable a cost to their standard of living. Because basic things like rent, food, utilities and transportation make up the largest portion of lower-income families' spending, taxes will eat into that much faster than they would upper-income spending - the bulk of which, at progressive rates - is concentrated more in luxury amenities and investment capital.

Because there are many things that a government does that will not be done in the private sector, it must generate revenue somehow. Income inequality, and philosophical beliefs regarding it would need to factor in. 

So those are just a few of the issues involved in the critique of income inequality, and policy response.  I have no doubt that envy does play some role in this - who does not want to live like a king?  Yet there is a difference between jealousy when things are perceived to be fair, and jealousy when things are not.  I suppose in an ironic twist, conservatism's philosophical apology for inequality might indeed provide a soothing rational and justification for those who might otherwise feel they are on the losing side of an unequal class structure.  Conservatism in this way would serve as a sort of  - to echo Marx - "opiate" for the pain of extant power imbalances.

(* The issue of freedom and liberty may be concepts that the left should be more vocal on, from a messaging standpoint. The right uses them to great advantage, leveraging their historical and patriotic import, and in no small way slanders the left as anti-freedom and anti-liberty. Yet the left could just as easily stand behind those terms in criticizing the right for the same thing, albeit for different philosophical reasons.)

The Party of Amnesia

In a recent bloggingheads conversation Michelle Goldberg made this remark to Rebecca Traister regarding Sarah Palin:












This is an interesting question and one I wish more on the left were interesting in taking on.  A commenter wrote:

She's young enough and grew up in a way to have basically been raised in a society that didn't buy into a lot of traditional sex roles and which could admire plenty of what people like Steinem did or have said.  So her feeling this way but having little knowledge of actually feminism as a movement is hardly surprising.

I was glad to see someone brought it up in the threads... the idea that the right has a knack for being on the wrong side of history and then developing a sort of amnesia in which maybe they were not only always on the right side, but at least, well, they are now and it's the left who's making the problem worse by always bringing it up!

Just recently I was debating someone who was seemingly convinced that racism has always been a bipartisan affair, evidenced by the southern democrats.  I think a lot of conservatives have this sort of whitewashed view of history, probably culminating in the idea that because Lincoln, a Republican, freed the slaves conservatives are the original civil rights pioneers.

This is absurd for a variety of reasons.  The two parties have stood for very different things over the years.  (I've always been baffled by this to a degree - if anyone can point me to some good writing on race and the parties, I'd be grateful!)  But I think the more serious way to follow race is through the prism of left and right, the concept of traditional power structures and the amelioration of imbalances (often via government).

So in this sense, the right has always been about favoring status-quo hierarchies, which happen to have been white, male, Protestant, heterosexual, etc. (these labels weren't pulled out of some arbitrary liberal hat).  And the left has been about challenging them. 

This is why my mother, as a hippie college student in the late 60's, traveled into the south to demonstrate solidarity with the struggle for civil rights.  She knew that it was also about something larger, which was also why she was wearing goofy clothes, using contraception, experimenting with drugs, and basically rebelling against the established social order of the day. 

That wasn't happening on the right.  More generally, that doesn't happen on the right.  It has become pat for conservatives to accuse liberals of group-think - the real conformists.  But while ideological captivity will always be found any movement, it's just silly to try and argue that the left isn't about subverting the dominant paradigm (remember that bumper-sticker?), and the right about hewing to it.

None of which gets at how conservatives are able to make the leap from active protesters of civil rights to amnesiac defenders of it.  The commenter is I think correct in identifying how defending tradition can lead one to embrace what has changed when a certain point of momentum has been reached.  But it still doesn't go far enough in explaining how this mindset can happen.

The commenter's example of Palin's relative youth providing her with a sort of innate privilege of feminism is good, and all she would need is to be ignorant of the fact that she owes everything she is to the left's insistence on challenging patriarchy.

But this isn't just Palin.  Modern conservatism as a whole seems to be completely ignorant of what the left has achieved for the concept of civil rights, and that the right was fighting them the whole way.  Everyone can't simply be that ignorant.  There must be deeper, structural reasons for this inability to deal with the reality of history.

For instance, there have been very few conservatives out there even interested in race, aside from as a reactionary politics in which race is "all in the past" and liberals are the only real problem.  But where were the conservative writers in the 50's, 60's, and 70's?  Suddenly, in the 80's we get the growth of the angry white male backlash - ala Limbaugh - and suddenly we're all OK and it's the liberals using race to "get votes" with welfare, food stamps, etc.

Yet meanwhile, for decades, the left had been plugging away.  Starting with rallies and marches - ala King, they then filled out academia in the 70's and 80's, making a systematic dismantling of race, gender, sexuality, etc. an institution in America (obviously the civil rights movement is much older, but this was breaking into the establishment).  Black studies, women studies, etc. all sought to put all of these forms of hatred and oppression under a microscope, seeing them as a cancer upon society and violating the nation's ideals.  They wanted to know what actually happened, why it happened, how it happened and how to stop it from ever happening again.

And the discussion continues.  Racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. are still alive and thriving.  The left believes it has many of the answers, and unfortunately for the right, the blame lies squarely at their feet, in a variety of ways.

The problem is that the right has no response, other than utter denial.  Yet it is a "dumb" denial, in the sense that they aren't really sure what the problem is.  The pat reaction is to simply accuse liberals of baseless attacks.  But this is their only option, because while they know racism and hate are wrong (well, usually. see: gays, immigrants, Muslims), they don't understand the historical nature of hate, and how it works.

This claim would be easy to refute.  Just show evidence of conservatives attempting to understand where hate comes from and how it operates.  Because the right has never been interested in doing this, and they certainly haven't taken the time to read the liberals who have, they aren't familiar with the basic theory.  In academia, everything from psychology, economics, sociology, to neuroscience has weighed in repeatedly, for decades.  A broad literature exists that has many of the answers. 

But to the modern right, you're either a racist or you aren't.  Racism is bad.  Not being racist is good.  But that's about the beginning and the end of it.  Aside from tortured narratives about liberals creating racism among minorities (ugh, that was hard to write), there is essentially zero discussion of the historical context or theoretical foundations - the where, why and how of hate. 

No unconscious memes or biases.  No cultural patterns or sociological pressures.  No economic systems of power.  No entrenched classes or power hierarchies.  Trying to have a conversation about race with those so ignorant of basic concepts is like talking to someone with their fingers in their ears.

The Debate Over Agency

Catherine Rampell of the NY Times finds some commentary from the president of Tax Analysts, interesting in that he makes a solid defense of the rich as not being wealthy merely because of luck but because of hard work.

I’m all for a progressive income tax system. And I’m all for a strong estate tax for the idle rich. But the people I know who are well-off work hard for their money. They worked hard in school and worked hard in business. They took risks, which weren’t backed by government safety nets. They created things. And, as they rose, they learned that there are some in this country who like to demonize success — even fear it.

Rampell writes:

But even if the word choice was not deliberately intended to provoke class warfare, it does seem to epitomize one of the key fault lines between liberals and conservatives: to what extent the wealthiest (as well as the poorest) members of society have earned, or rather simply received, their present fates.

I think this is right.  And I think it doesn't get near enough attention.  The deepest divide between conservatives and liberals is their very different views of human agency.  Liberals tend to believe that we are social creatures, largely determined by circumstance.  Conservatives tend to believe we are individuals who determine our own destinies.

But I think much of the confusion lies in the fact that both these sentiments can be true simultaneously.  We can be a society that is held responsible for the outcomes of its citizenry, who are then in turn held responsible for their individual actions.  The two - macro and micro - are inseparable, and part of a broad continuum of shared responsibility.  In much the same way as a parent is ultimately responsible for their child's well being, the child must be held accountable for their actions.

In this way, the rich may indeed have achieved their wealth through hard work and innovation, but their ability to do so was built upon a framework of agency that they were lucky enough to have had developed in them;  their desire to work hard was learned from some prior experience; their ability to take (intelligent) risks was likely due to a combination of learned intelligence and innate personality.  These are all behaviors that should be encouraged and rewarded (to a degree), but we cannot pretend that they originated in a vacuum, that there was not a vast array of human and social factors lining up in just the right way.  The individual simply cannot take complete credit for them.  The evidence for this is just overwhelmingly clear.

Obama Makes History, Public Grouses

Kevin Drum points out that, with the passage of Financial Regulatory reform, Obama will have been the most successful Democratic presidents for decades*. Which he has mixed feelings on:

 Here's the good news: this record of progressive accomplishment officially makes Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. And here's the bad news: this shoddy collection of centrist, watered down, corporatist sellout legislation was all it took to make Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. Take your pick..... Still, if you're a liberal, this is the best you've had it for a very long time. Whether this is cause for cheer or cause for discouragement is, I suspect, less a reflection on Obama than it is on America writ large.

I think this is about right.   And I think Drum is right in blaming the American public for this situation.  Whether Obama could have done more on any his legislative victories is debatable, but the evidence that he has done so much is at least testament to the power of compromise.  What is undeniable is that he has basically faced complete opposition across the board from Republicans, and to some degree from conservative Democrats in his own party.  At the very least there were no easy votes among these groups.  To the extent that Obama made overtures to Republican bipartisanship, which was never genuinely reciprocated, the practical target was likely the persuasion of opposition in his own party.

It's always easy to blame the politicians.  But we must remember that we elect them, and they - for good or bad - generally do what we ask them to.  The current American reality is that voters are angry and confused, and apparently about as interested in progressive policy agenda as the members they have elected.  Our failure to solve our problems isn't Washington, it is us.  We can talk about campaign finance reform and structural changes, but current politicians must still work within that reality.

(*And this in the face of everything else going on.)

Taxation and the Meaning of Wealth

Someone pointed out recently that while Republicans generally claim to want to cut spending and taxes, the truth is that they increase spending while cutting taxes.

And they never want to cut defense spending, which could take relatively minor cuts (say, $100-200 billion) and we'd be swimming in cash.  The fact is that they don't like certain kinds of government spending.  Well, crikey, none of us do!  But liberals don't complain about government "stealing" our money, or out-of-control spending.  We simply demand tax increases to pay for what feel we need.

Those taxes fall disproportionately on the rich.  So, now we're back to the philosophical divide and resentment: if you believe you've "earned" your taxes, you should get to decide where to spend them.  And conservatives like guns.  So if you're a conservative, your values line up with those who are disproportionately paying for government.

The degree to which conservatives only support government spending they approve of, they feel it is their right to do so, as there is a progressive tax system and the rich should have more of a say.  That they decry non-approved spending as "stealing" or "corruption", it seems to go back to a sense of injustice over progressive tax structures.  Even though poorer conservatives pay no more than anyone else, and thus have no right to claim this injustice, because their spending preferences line up with rich conservatives, they "support the cause" so-to-speak.

What liberals need to do is forcefully make the case for progressive taxation.  This removes the injustice argument, and opens up the field for a case for the social spending we prefer.  Social spending which, coincidentally, is based upon the same assumptions as is progressive taxation - that is, egalitarianism and an economic philosophy that views wealth as relative to social structure and dynamics.  To the extent that the rich were able to profit off a social structure that allowed them to do so, their wealth cannot be claimed as entirely their own.

The Small Government Utopia

 Jon Chait ponders why conservatives seem consistently unreflective.  They are much less likely to trust facts that don't come from conservative sources.  He points to Julian Sanchez who calls it:

"epistemic closure" -- an intellectual world in which the only trustworthy sources of information are those within your movement.

Chait argues that they are considerably less critical than progressives.

Liberalism is not really an ideology in anything like the sense that conservatism is. Conservatism is an ideology organized around the belief that big government inherently destroys freedom. Contemporary liberalism is the ideology of people who don't share that conviction, though it lacks any strong a priori beliefs to hold it together.....Liberals are not ideologically pro-government in anything like the sense that conservatives are ideologically anti-government -- conservatives view shrinking government as an end in and of itself, while liberals would view expanding government a success only to the extent that doing so furthers some other real-world benefit. I think it's the fundamental distinction between the two parties, and it explains all kinds of asymmetrical behavior -- a loose coalition versus a coherent ideological movement.

But how did we get here?  The way I see it, the right is basically where the left was when Communism was still taken seriously.  That is, the entire movement has swung deeply into the radical end of the spectrum.   But now that Communism was actually implemented in numerous countries around the globe, with disastrous results, the left has been forced to be much more discriminating.  It is no longer possible to dogmatically claim that all business is evil.

Yet this is what the right now does almost to a person.  They consistently claim that "all government* is evil.  They talk about "tyranny" and the "end of liberty", as if any minute now we'll be in Stalinist Russia.  But this is a blatant misreading of history.  In the early 20th century, this fear would have been more plausible, as many countries indeed were "on the road to serfdom", as Hayek put it. 

But in the ensuing decades, socialism was implemented with very different outcomes.  In countries with a weaker democratic base and large scale inequality, Marxism was used as a blunt tool to overthrow the existing paradigm, installing Communism as a hopeful guarantor of social justice.  Meanwhile in countries where power was much more diffuse, and democratic institutions were strong, Marxism simply meant a gradual buffering of enterprise.

When progressives in the early 20th century were promoting communism, they were doing so in the face of a much more abusive and tyrannical capitalism.  It was therefore much easier to fall into dogmatic hyperbole, and at that point communism seemed a benign alternative to a capitalism that seemed irrevocably corrupt.  But today's progressive sees capitalism and communism much differently.  It has witnessed both the undeniable brutality and practical inviability of communism, and the ability of a strong social democracy to soften the edges of capitalism's social and environmental failings.

Modern conservatives have drawn different historical lessons.  They certainly have always understood the dangers of communism.  But they obviously never adequately processed the lessons of untrammeled capitalism.  This sort of historical amnesia is difficult to counter, as so many generations have no passed since we've had the sort of weak federal government they argue for.  And internationally, all modern, successful and wealthy nations are the sort of social democracies they despise.  If one were find a country with an economic system similar to what they claim to want, it would likely be a war-torn failure.  Granted, these countries would not have had the sort of founding stability that might give economic libertarianism a fighting chance.  But the fact that such a system is not taken seriously by any otherwise functioning democracies seems evidence that reasonable people simply prefer a minimum level of social democracy.

And so American conservatism continues to live on in a sort of Utopian vacuum, in which premises are based on a dogmatic vision of a history that is always just around the corner.  Failures of capitalism, such as the recent economic collapse, are instead viewed as the result of government intrusion.  And because no clear evidence of what a modern state would really look like under their version of capitalism exists, straw men can be created to fit seemingly any scenario.

The Science of Justice

Terry Eaglton writes on human nature, justice and morality in The New Statesman:

In fact, the word [evil] has come to mean, among other things, "without a cause". If the child killers did what they did because of boredom or bad housing or parental neglect, then - so the police officer may have feared - what they did was forced upon them by their circumstances; and it followed that they could not be punished for it as severely as he might have wished. This mistakenly implies that an action that has a cause cannot be freely undertaken. Causes in this view are forms of coercion. If our actions have causes, we are not responsible for them. Evil, on the other hand, is thought to be uncaused, or to be its own cause. This is one of its several points of resemblance with good. Apart from evil, only God is said to be the cause of himself.

It is a fairly common occurrence for particularly ghastly crimes to be referred to in subhuman terms.  It is as if by describing the acts in this way we somehow avoid any culpability as humans ourselves.  Surely we could never behave this way.  After a recent case in which a 7 year old girl was raped by a gang of older boys in a housing project, the mayor referred to them as "monsters".  One often hears the sentiment how could they do something like this?, despite the fact that evil things have been done since the dawn of history. 

There is no argument that terrible crimes are, well, terrible.  But what is strange is the persistence of the myth that there is no explanation for why evil is done.  For more than a century we have been collecting data on this very question.  And all of it points in the same direction: that human behavior is the result of a combination of biological and environmental development.  The type of brain you have, and the type of world you are raised in determines what kind of person you will be.

Wise people have always known this.  But until science lead us toward evidenciary claims, there was no real way of arguing it without appeals to nebulous philosophy or theorizing, which were often little more than aphorisms.  Today we know enough that, while unable to determine all of the causes and influences that caused someone to commit a particular crime, we are able to make pretty clear predictions as to what types of environments and brains are conducive to criminal behavior.

I've taught low-income children in Kindergarten as well as high school, and as a class they are much more likely to end up in prison.  The writing was on the wall the minute they walked in the classroom.  They often came from dysfunctional homes in which good parenting was not practiced - despite how loving and well-meaning the parents generally were.  But few were very successful themselves, and had difficulties with drugs, relationships, work - much less raising children. 

The research on early childhood bears this out.  Literally starting before birth, children are absorbing their environment, whether from toxins like lead paint and allergens more common in poor housing, to the mother's stress level and tone of voice.  Language becomes very important for the development of cognition and communication.  Socioeconomic status is a major predictor for how much positive (or negative) stimulus a child will receive before entering school. 

Teachers are then burdened with the task of trying to make up for concentrated communities of disadvantaged children.  As they fall behind in school, whether to lack of emotional development and behavioral control or academic struggle, the beginnings of criminality emerge.  There is nothing more tragic than looking at statistical averages for future success of poor populations.  "If only someone would step in and help these children," you want to ask.  The teachers and administration can only do so much.  Many fathers are in prison or simply absent, and many mothers are working or high - or unable for a variety of reasons to protect their babies from falling down the wrong path.

Yet this is all happening on our watch.  This is us.  This is what humans do in desperate situations.  We would all be exactly the same - facing the same odds of failure.   Instead of neglecting disadvantaged members of society, we ought to be targeting those most at risk for unhealthy behaviors and intervening.  The earlier we get to them, the better chance we'll have to correct their development.

At the same time, the adult population is not, nor likely will ever be, perfect.  There are some pathologies that are likely genetic, and may never be corrected for.  Certain individuals, such as serial killers or pedophiles, we may never be able to diagnose and respond to before they commit their first crime.  Their pathologies are still relatively mysterious, however seem to have a strong genetic component.  In the future, treatments might be developed to reverse their effects.  In the meantime, criminal justice agencies are grappling with appropriate levels of response.  Pedophilia presents a particularly troubling situation because lesser offenses may not call for a life prison term, yet there is no evidence that any "cure" exists.  Management programs have been developed to try and find a balance, but the problem is ongoing.  An encouraging sign is that, despite our traditional inclination to treat them as "evil" instead of mentally ill, we are moving toward a more rational and evidence-based assessment of their pathology.

Still, while these difficult cases continue to strain our scientific understanding of human behavior, they represent only a small portion of prison populations, thankfully.  Most criminals are very explainable, and sadly, highly predictable according to socioeconomic status.  However the good news is that we know that interventions are still possible.  The hard part is in crafting public policy that the rest of the public will view as not only effective, but at a cost sufficiently low to sacrifice their tax dollars for.  The moral case is clear: if these individuals have been, for all intents and purposes, created by society, then it is our duty to do everything in our power to help them.  Because as much as they have been created by society, so to have we.  And as our brothers and sisters we owe it to them to share what we have been "blessed" with.

Bigotry on the Left and Right

 In response to a Florida urologist hanging a sign on his door that states,

“If you voted for Obama,” says the taped-up sign, “seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now. Not in four years.”

 some have wondered whether this is yet another expression of racist opposition to universal health care.  The suggestion is that, this being a Southern state, there could be some code operating out of objection to poor minorities' request for services.

I think that, while certainly a legitimate possibility, it's a bit of a stretch based on the information we have.  A larger question is whether this accusation might reflect liberal "bigotry" towards the south, and a rural, traditionalist conservative opposition .

I think it diminishes language when we use terms incorrectly, as sort of pummeling devices. Calling this man racist, with no actual evidence of it, certainly is a disservice to actual racists.


There is a lot of snobbery on the left towards rural, or conservative culture. However, this concern is hyper-inflated by the right, and exploited politically. The whole wine and cheese liberal thing. Calling it bigotry is a bit of a stretch. Speaking of diminishment, this is a complicated story that goes back – well, probably since the dawn of civilization, as soon as you had different classes of labor. It’s about philosophy and cosmopolitanism, education and economic structure.

I think a strong case can be made that the confederate flag is an ugly symbol, that gun owners who want zero regulation are irresponsible, that anti-abortion legislation takes away women’s rights, and that a large number of Tea Partiers are racist (all of the birthers might be placed in this category, with emphasis on those speaking on stage). So, some who hold these views may also feel a sort of class bigotry. But how many of them are compelled by their bigotry to hold these beliefs?

The dangerous thing about racism or other prejudice (and I want to say “real bigotry”) is that it drives political beliefs. So if you think homeless people are scum you oppose services to help them. If you think women are inferior to men you oppose giving them equal rights. Or you’re a homophobe, or a racist, etc. These are also historically groups historically discriminated against, and so (and I realize this is a liberal perspective) there is a legacy social order that needs to be pushed against.

I’m trying to think of ways in which liberal bigotry towards rural traditionalism drives political oppression. As a liberal, I think liberal policy goals are actually trying to help any real victims. But often what is perceived as “oppression” (again, talk about language diminishment) is in fact the inconvenience of not being able to be the dominant cultural form. This would be laws against Christianism where you can’t hang crosses in courtrooms, or heterosexism when gay marriage is allowed and antigay discrimination is outlawed. The gun issue seems odd because what most gun control advocates want to regulate is pretty reasonable – with a targeted social outcome. But a certain type of gun enthusiast has invented this big conspiratorial fantasy about needing guns for protection against the government (please), and seems revanchist. I think there is a somewhat principled case against affirmative action, but it is hardly targeted towards any one class of man.

So in all of those examples, bigotry didn’t seem to be driving any of it. It might be an unfortunate response to some of the political objections, but that’s after the fact. Each of those issues originates as a specific policy goal that has nothing to do with bigotry. I can’t think of any class-bigoted liberal that takes a position on anything because of bigotry.

Yet with what I would call real bigotry (at least in the sense that there are actual policy implications), it is the original driver of policy. One’s views of women, minorities and gays are actively shaping their political beliefs. As I argued before, this is often unconscious, but it is no less troubling from a human rights standpoint. This is why I think its important to have the discussion and take possible cases seriously.

The Misinformation Superhighway

John Chait talks about the "conservative feedback loop".  He gives an example of how a misinformation meme can develop and propagate to political ends.  Trying to determine which side of the political spectrum is more willing to rely on misleading rhetoric seems kind of silly.  However it might be interesting to find some structural forces at work.

On the right, talk radio and direct mail have been major actors. On the left, I think you really saw this in the netroots internet phenomenon reacting to Bush.  In both cases, there was a technological process for delivering this sort of "red meat" to a political base, which becomes self-sustaining.  You see this obviously with FOX, and MSNBC trying to do the same on the left.

Then there is the more tricky business of looking at other, more subtle structures.  Demographics might be interesting to explore.  Then there's the philosophy itself - what it means to be a conservative or liberal, and how each might lead one into a willingness to buy into misleading rhetoric.

There seems to be a strong element of personality type that will take a hard - and sloppy - stance no matter what political movement they find themselves in.  Altemeyer and others look at this when they argue for an Authoritarian model of the psyche.  Yet separating out personality from political movement is difficult.

I think though the strongest factor at work might be either side's feeling of struggle, whether revanchist or simple political determination.  Fundamentalist Christians have always couched things in apocalyptic terms.  Marxist revolutionaries have their classless, multicultural, etc. utopia.   Philosophy, whether religious or political, has a very specific role to play and is dependent upon historical variables.  For instance, gay rights is a major motivator for Christian fundamentalists, yet changing social mores have lessened their sense of urgency.  The fall of communism dealt a major blow to Marxist thought, at least for those who would view communism as a viable Marxist enterprise.  Groups are highly affected by current politics.  In the 90's there was mass rebellion against Clinton, in the 00's it was Bush. 

In the end conservatism seems much more confident in its view of itself as a sort of current utopia. If the liberals just went away the perfect order we've achieved would be fully realized.  Thus state of perpetual defensiveness and revanchism seems to exist.  The only thing standing in the way of maximum liberty is big government.  Such a broad claim invites broad rhetoric, opening the door to error.

Progressives have their own peeves with conservatism, but are less defined by it.  Whereas in the past progressives were defined by a dogmatic opposition to business, most have now come to view it as something to embrace, albeit with caution.  There is a structural point of philosophical nuance here that hinders hyperbole, a sure sign of misinformation.

Post Modernism in Texas

 Plato's Allegory of the Cave - Jan Senredam

So the Texas Board of Education has finished its latest round of rulings on what to allow and what not to allow in public school curriculum.  Every year they take up a new subject; this time it's Social Studies.  An elected panel of 15 (5 Democrats, 10 Republicans), their votes are significant because of the impact Texas has on curriculum adoption.  Textbook publishers look to Texas and California as the standards for how to craft their materials.   Conservative groups, long dismayed with the direction curriculum in general has has taken, have made great political efforts to get like-minded members elected.

It's an interesting issue. I suppose if I were conservative I would welcome the changes. And academia is overwhelmingly liberal, both in its research and faculty viewpoints. This is either because of bias or truth. Modern conservatives are at a terrible disadvantage because of the wide array of expert consensus against their views.

There's simply no way for any one person to be well enough informed to take on multiple academic disciplines. So you end up simply trusting your own ideological predispositions. This is a perfect example of that process at work. While the social sciences are certainly more subjective than the hard sciences (which the TEA and conservatives also have plenty of problems with), neither do they just make things up to fit a specific ideology.

For instance, there has actually been much debate in the past 30 years as to the underlying causes of social dysfunction, and much hard data has been collected. Ms. Cargill laments that sociologists tend to blame society for everything, preferring instead to invoke "personal responsibility". Well, there is overwhelming evidence that society actually plays an enormous role in personal behavior. Her views, while common among conservatives, represent an incredibly antiquated view of human development, and one with basically zero evidence to support it.

John Judis writes of an old progressive concept of "scientific administration":

Louis Brandeis and Herbert Croly--to name two of the foremost turn-of-the-century progressives--believed that the agencies, staffed by experts schooled in social and natural science and employing the scientific method in their decision-making, could rise above partisanship and interest-group pressure. Brandeis’s famous concept of states as “laboratories of democracy” comes out of his defense of state regulation of industry and was meant to conjure an image of states basing their regulatory activities on the scientific method.

One could certainly make the case that a sort of "tyranny of consensus" could arise, in which incorrect, yet widely accepted view is allowed to shape policy.  But this is no different than any other democratic process.  What is different however, is the implicit acceptance of the scientific, academic method, whereby papers are written, peer reviewed, and live or die by the strength of their case among fellow experts.

In many ways it harkens back to the Platonic ideal of a philosopher class which hands down directives to policy makers.  This is in many ways quite anti-populist.  But we do have a democracy, and we are allowed to ultimately judge for ourselves which leaders we choose to follow.  Coupled with a robust media in which all ideas are turned over and examined critically via multiple channels, this seems to me an excellent system.

But of course, I happen to be a progressive, and my own ideological views tend to match up quite nicely with the expert consensus.  While this might make for a convenient bias on my part, it does at least allow me to place great stock in the authority of both academics and journalists.  And in the end this is the most dangerous aspect of modern conservatism's disdain for the media and universities.  Because of their overwhelming liberalism, their very authority is held suspect.  And thus a sort of post-modern relativism takes hold in which truth is no longer verifiable through objective sources.  Rhetoric takes prominence and personal emotion and presumption takes the day.

The Life of A Sheep

Sara Palin is coming under fire for promoting herself as an advocate for disability rights, as the mother of a son with down-syndrome, yet positioning herself against state assistance for families of the disabled, much less the just plain needy.  This is nothing new to conservatives, who have often had to actually had to place the word "compassionate" in their titular ideology, in case one got the wrong impression from their policy perspective.

Trying to decipher the personality differences of conservatives vs. liberals is fascinating, if frustratingly difficult.  There are obviously differences, not only in one's temperament itself but in its larger political philosophy implications.

The best, most scientific examination of this is in The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer.  He finds a lot of very interesting correlations between authoritarianism and current right-wing politics.  He writes that right-wing authoritarians are capable of holding very high levels of contradictory thought.  They are frequently religious fundamentalists.  If empathy is based in part on actually experiencing life in another's shoes, any movement that actively limits one's ability to understand the lives not exactly like theirs, or thoughts not exactly like theirs (this is sometimes proudly referred to as "common sense"), would have a net decrease in empathy.

I imagine it as a sheep that only sees its little green pasture, and so when forced to peep its head out of the fence, it has no context for anything else in its world.  The analogy here would be the white, Christian, "American", traditional gender, etc., etc. type who doesn't really understand other people or cultures - either because they haven't been exposed to them or have actively ignored them (I think it is usually both). 

Those of us who live outside this narrow cultural perspective, or at least have spent our lives trying not to - both by reflecting on the political & cultural implications of having that group be so dominant and by learning about other ways of life, are almost liberal by definition.  This relativistic conceit drives us to continually explore history, science, politics, religion, the arts, etc. from an objective and values-neutral position. 

And this is exactly the critique that you get from right wing authoritarians: that we are too "soft"; that we need to see the world as it "really is" (in black and white), that we make up our morals as we go along; that we make excuses for everyone (we call them explanations for behavior); that we are elitists who look down on provincialism (it's hard not to, once you have left the "province"); that we don't believe in individual responsibility (the whole point was that we began to deconstruct what "individual" really means).

This week on Frontline they ran a very interesting story on the fundamentalist Taliban and Mujaheddin, told from the inside by a reporter with special access.  What became clear was how just how insular they were.  The most motivated among them were indeed "true believers".  The sort of pinnacle of excellence was a single-minded devotion to an entirely specific way of life.  The concept of learning about new things and reflecting upon why they were who they were was anathema to their project. 

Yet one could easily see how powerful this mindset is to the success of a cause.  Free thinking and questioning of authority would be a grave threat.  This is a common feature of cults.  One of the first things required of a new cult member is limited communication with the outside world.  Right wing authoritarians, defined as they are by strict obedience to tradition and fear of the outside, would fall perfectly into this category of thought.

A word popular on the left right now is Christianist, describing just this sort of fundamentalist Christian thinking.  Sarah Palin, along with most of the current Republican leadership, falls directly into this category.  The Tea Party movement, while not specifically religious at all, is of an ideological kin to Christianism.  There is certainly some friction between the two groups in that a good portion of the Tea Partiers are staunchly secular libertarians who want not of the Christianist preaching.  It will be interesting to see how they come to terms with their common ground of angry white nativism, anti-government and pro-traditionalism.

Stubborn Ignorance or Dishonesty?, cont.

On another site, a commenter left me this remark regarding the original post:

Putting together a car engine will never be as distinguished as reading Plato. In any society. One is physical. One is mental. One the body. One the mind. One is active. One is reflective. One animal. One transcendent.

I’ll have to disagree that this would be the case in any society and suggest that this statement itself reflects the bias of a Platonic worldview in which some things are prioritized over other things. Mind over body. The supposedly eternal over the changing and the ephemereal. The purely theoretical over the practical. The list could go on. If you’re a Platonist in your philosophical outlook, it’s easy to see why you would view this as a necessary fact of any society. But not everybody is a Platonist, and it is possible to imagine a society where being a skilled car mechanic is just as valued as being a professor of philosophy.

My response:
I think that’s a good point. I considered for a moment – maybe I should have spent more. And it is ironic that I used Plato as an example!

I guess to just back up a bit, there is abstract/complicated work and there is physical/simple work. Realize I’m being incredibly general here to try and establish a spectrum. There is plenty of physical labor that requires an enormous amount of not only finesse but contextual understanding, just as there are plenty of college graduates who’s work requires very little skill or thought at all.

But at the macro-level, societies tend to devalue working-class labor, and value upper-class labor, which is generally defined as limited manual labor and maximum intellectual skill. I’m the first to agree that this evaluation has much less to do with actual value than other socio-economic and cultural factors. And this is where the real roots of class resentment come in.

In theory, you could have an egalitarian society in which the lowly worker was valued just as much as the pencil-pusher. That was the whole point of communism (ironic, in today’s climate of working-class conservatism). But it’s just so damn complicated to untangle it all!

As a teacher, my greatest philosophical quibble is always the notion that “every child should go to college”. Even allowing the conceit that this might include a quality trade school, there is still the problem that our current economic structure simply couldn’t exist within that egalitarian framework. To put it simply: someone has to clean the toilets!

Of course, the teacher’s goal is always to have every child succeed, any teacher in a poor neighborhood sees that not only does this not happen, but there are numerous social factors at play in actively maintaining inequity. To use another simple phrase: shit rolls downhill.

Now, I think we’re making progress. I’m really excited about all the data piling up on what goes in to creating a robust and successful citizen – and just as importantly, what actively prohibits it. I’m confident that in time, the evidence will eventually reach the larger social consensus required to find the right social structure. Europe is obviously way ahead of America, beholden as we are to primitive religio-economic mysticism.

I think we can eventually offer each citizen a guaranteed baseline level of education and life experiences: a sort of “man is born free + 18 years” that public education was always supposed to promise. But it’s going to take a lot more than simply giving every kid 1/30th of a teacher, 6 hours a day, 180 days out of a year.

Publish Post

Maybe one day the idea of a Plato-reading toilet cleaner able to support a happy family in a nice neighborhood won’t seem so far-fetched.