Conservatives Good, Republican Party Bad
[NOTE: IN RESPONSE TO THE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISMS AND COUNTER-EVIDENCE OFFERED BY READERS BELOW, I RETRACT AND DISAVOW THE POST BELOW. I EXPLAIN WHY HERE.]
A theme of The Righteous Mind and of The Happiness Hypothesis is that wisdom is found on both sides of any longstanding dispute. Morality binds and blinds, so partisans can’t see what the other side is right about. Studying moral psychology has helped me to step out of the “matrix” of my previous liberal team and appreciate the wisdom of social conservatives and libertarians.
But with that said, the last 2 weeks have pushed me to be more explicit about criticizing the Republican Party. First came the extraordinary Washington Post essay by Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, titled: “Lets just say it, the Republicans are the problem.” Mann is center-left and Ornstein is center-right, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. They are fed up with the press’s fear of seeming biased, which leads journalists to say that both parties are equally to blame for the dysfunction in Washington. But as long-time and highly respected congress-watchers, they believe that the Republican party since Newt Gingrich’s time is mostly at fault for damaging our governing institutions. Here’s a key quote:
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
The essay comes from their new book: It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism
Mann and Ornstein have been friends since graduate school. I think this is an important point. As I say in The Righteous Mind, personal relationships open our hearts and therefore our minds. They allow us to listen to ideas, and I think this makes the team of Mann and Ornstein a national treasure. Their wisdom is likely to be greater than any partisan — or centrist — operating alone.
The second challenge to the “both sides equal” thesis came in Tom Edsall’s powerful NYT piece, Finding the Limits of Empathy. Edsall reviews data from my team at YourMorals.org, including data analysis by Ravi Iyer, showing that liberals and conservatives who DON’T care about politics are NOT different on their level of empathy, but as people get more partisan, the liberals go up on empathy and the conservatives go down — they get more hard-hearted.
Against that background, Edsall analyzes the recent comments by House Minority Leader Eric Cantor, suggesting that it’s not fair that 45% of Americans pay no income tax, and so perhaps it would be fair to “broaden the base” and make all people pay some income tax. (Even though the poor pay around 16% of their income in taxes when you bring in all the regressive taxes that they pay, from sales tax through wage taxes.)
This bothered me. I can understand that the Republicans are committed to fighting all tax increases. Many have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge, which even prevents them from closing tax loopholes. I can understand “no new taxes.” But Cantor (and rep. Pat Tiberi and others) are happy to consider raising some taxes on the poor, or of shifting more of the tax burden onto the poor.
It seems, therefore, that their stance against new taxes may not be a deeply principled stance. It may be self-interest: no new taxes on the rich. Or, as Edsall suggests, it may reflect a kind of moral class warfare in which the rich are seen as the good people — the providers — while the poor are condemned as the bad people — the lazy free riders. If Edsall is right then this would reflect the abandonment of one of the most cherished American ideals, shared by liberals and conservatives alike: equality of opportunity. Republicans traditionally favored a hand up, not a hand out. They may now favor neither, because they think the poor deserve to be poor.
I have been trying so hard to give the Republicans the benefit of the doubt, given that I spent my whole adult life as a Democrat and know that I am emotionally biased against the party of George W. Bush. But the Mann and Ornstein book, plus the Edsall article, have changed my mind. I now say explicitly that while I find great wisdom among conservative intellectuals from Edmund Burke through Thomas Sowell, I think the Republican party deserves more of the blame for our current dysfunction. (But I’m open to counter-arguments, if anyone can point to a good counter-argument against Mann and Ornstein.)
I first articulated my new position — Conservatives Good, Republican Party Bad — near the end of my interview with Tavis Smiley, below:
Watch Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.
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What Evangelicals can Teach Democrats about Moral Development
Anthropologist Tanya Luhrman has a great essay in Today’s NYT, explaining the difference between the secular liberal approach to morality (based on care, given by government) and the evangelical approach (based on self-improvement, carried out within the family and the congregation):
When secular liberals vote, they think about the outcome of a political choice. They think about consequences. Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes.
When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become — what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short. Rick Santorum won praise by saying (as he did during the Values Voters Summit in 2010), “Go into the neighborhoods in America where there is a lack of virtue and what will you find? Two things. You will find no families, no mothers and fathers living together in marriage. And you will find government everywhere: police, social service agencies. Why? Because without faith, family and virtue, government takes over.” This perspective emphasizes developing individual virtue from within — not changing social conditions from without.
As I tried to explain in chapter 8 of The Righteous Mind, the utilitarian individualism of the secular left turns off most voters. The thicker, more binding morality of social conservatives is more broadly appealing. It may even be a better recipe for producing more virtuous, self-controlled citizens, who end up creating the best consequences for the nation as a whole. This is what I was trying to describe in chapter 11 as “Durkheimian utilitarianism” — it’s a way of maximizing overall welfare that takes human nature into account.
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On telling parents to f*** themselves
I have received many emails from readers which exemplify or reject one or more of the six moral foundations. I recently received the text below, which is the most forceful rejection of the Authority foundation that I have ever read. I post it here, with the author’s permission, and without comment, as an example of an anti-authority ethos. I have edited it only to preserve the author’s anonymity.
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Dear Mr. Haidt:
I am currently reading your book, The Righteous Mind, and this is my response to what I have read so far.
I am living proof that conservatives’ and liberals’ values are worlds apart.
In your anecdote [on p. 142] about the Jordanian taxi driver who planned to return to Jordan to rear his child because he never wanted to hear the child tell him to fuck himself, you said that few American kids would actually say something so “awful” to their parents, even though they might communicate the sentiment obliquely. I don’t think it would be “awful” for them to do so at all. I think that any adolescent who does not on occasion tell his parents to fuck themselves (whether explicitly or obliquely) is in need of assertiveness training. I have been chatting with a man who grew up in the Bible Belt. He said that his father had still whipped him when he was in his late teens. I said, “Why did you let him?” He said, “What else was I supposed to do?” I said, “Tell him to fuck off.” He said that he would never have thought of of doing that. I found his attitude incomprehensible. I don’t believe that the Ten Commandments were delivered to Moses on tablets of stone, and I never cease to wonder what made the ancient Jews believe that God wanted them to “honor” their fathers and mothers. If I were trying to make up a precept that made no sense, I would be hard pressed to think of a better one. Although I was good to my mother in her declining years, I would have hit the ceiling if anyone had ever suggested that I was obliged to do anything for her.
When I was a child, and someone said to me, “Respect your elders,” I always asked, “Why?” The question was not rhetorical. By what logic does youth owe deference to age? The reverse is true. Older people ought to be able to bear discomfort and inconvenience better than kids or teenagers. While I usually offer my seat on a train or subway to a child or teenager, I would not dream of offering it to an older person. I once offered my seat to a toddler. His mother took it, and I demanded that she give it back. I let her know what a pig I thought she was, too. In my view, a mother who would sit and let her child stand deserves to be spat upon. On one occasion, when I gave up my seat to a kid, I scolded a nun for not giving him hers. “What kind of miserable excuse for a religious are you,” I asked, “that you wouldn’t give your seat to this boy? Aren’t you supposed to be the servant of all?” (She said nothing. What could she have said?)
Authority in the classroom? Teachers are hired help. They are in no way entitled to deference. We give them authority to maintain order. Doing so is a service to students, because no one can learn if order is not maintained. Teachers, however, have no right to exercise authority for any other purpose. In the 1960s, when I was an undergraduate, a professor whose class I frequently cut said to me, “Mr. ____, I expect you to be in class.” I said, “Mr. Smith, you forget who’s working for whom.” I left his classroom and did not return until the final exam. He gave me a D for the course, but I valued my self-respect much more than my grade. (It was, of course, unethical for him to have graded me on the basis of anything other than my mastery of the course content; but I did not choose to do battle.)
For over a decade I have been teaching a class (part-time) to graduate students in library and information science. I am appalled by the deference that some of them accord me. A few refuse to call me by my first name, even though I call them by theirs. They say things like, “Do you mind if I miss class next week?” and “Do you mind if I turn this assignment in late?” I always say, “First, I don’t mind; and second, I don’t know why you would care whether I minded or didn’t. You pay me.” What is the origin of the idea that a teacher is an authority figure?
In 1960, when I was a teenager,, I was listening to JFK’s inaugural address and heard him say, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” I became so enraged that I ran out of the house into a snowstorm and walked around for an hour, trying to cool myself off. For years thereafter I felt a visceral hatred for Kennedy. “Why should I give a damn about what I can do for my country?” I thought to myself. “Governments exist for the benefit of their constituents.” I always snicker when I hear someone use the expression “Our country.” (I prefer to say, “This country”). I live in the United States for the same reasons that I live in [my state]– because I was born here, I’m used to living here, I have friends nearby, and–so far–I have not had any compelling reason to leave. (Rick Santorum’s election to the presidency might constitute such a reason.) I have no emotional attachment to the United States as a political entity. I think such an attachment would be irrational. By strictly rational criteria Canada would be a better country in which to live.
If I were to send copies of this message to some of my conservative relatives, however, our relationship would be damaged severely. So I won’t. We shall go on simply agreeing not to discuss politics. Therein lies the problem that you define, but a realistic solution eludes me. How can I give respectful attention to positions based on values that I find abhorrent?
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Are lib and con Yin and Yang?
In ch. 12 of The Righteous Mind I argue that left and right are like Yin and Yang — both see different threats, push in different directions, and protect different things that matter, and that are at risk of getting trampled by the other side.
There’s an extraordinarily good and civil debate going on about my claim in the reviews of my book at Amazon.com.
It starts with a review by a conservative reader, The Independent Whig, who loves the book but argues that conservatism is already balanced — among all 6 foundations — so they don’t need liberals to provide more balance. (See Independent Whig’s full blog here.)
Two other readers–James Wagner (liberal) and SanPete (center-left?)–then go on to discuss and debate the question. This is one of the most thoughtful, respectful, and helpful discussions I’ve seen about political psychology anywhere on the internet. I’ll just post my responses to the discussion below, but please do see the discussion to see how the arguments develop.
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[Response from Haidt]:
This is among the best, most constructive and civil discussions of politics I’ve ever seen on the internet. In briefest form, my responses to the discussion are:
1)Yin/Yang: I do mean it exactly as SanPete puts it, and I got the idea from the yin/yang nature of the openness dimension. It’s the idea expressed in the Mill quote in ch. 12: “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.” Independent-Whig is right that conservatism is, in theory, more balanced. And this is why Jesse Graham and I have found that liberals have more difficulty understanding conservatives than vice versa. But in practice, no side can be so balanced that it is able to push both ways and get the balance right. As long as there is partisan conflict, each side is going to circle the wagons and push against the other side. And that is generally good: it’s like a cybernetic control system where you need a force pushing both ways. If all you ever have is Buckley’s conservatives standing athawart history yelling “stop,” then conservatives don’t end up making the changes that are needed to respond to changing circumstances, and to address the needs of the powerless, who generally to get shut out and shut down unless someone is looking out for them.
2) On why I focus my message mostly on liberals: SanPete got it exactly right: “this book is largely based on Haidt’s own experience and reflections, and since he was a liberal reacting against his own mistakes, and the mistakes he see in his profession dominated by liberals, that’s the primary perspective of the book.” This is exactly right. This is what I’ve been thinking and arguing for years. I hardly ever get the chance to meet or talk to conservatives.
3) On what liberals should do: I agree with James Wagner that liberals can “change their spots.” I think it’s hard for any particular individual to do so. But I do hope that American liberals, as a tribe, will do so. Indeed, the reason I seem so hard on liberals is that I think they changed their spots in the 1960s and 1970s in a bad way – the turn to the “New Left” led the left away from the morality of most Americans and into some positions that I think are hard to justify, morally. If we think of liberalism as a tradition stretching back to the 18th century, then I am a liberal. I want liberals to change their spots BACK to a configuration more in harmony with their grand tradition. I am confident that this will happen as the baby boomers age out of the population. I think that libertarians and conservatives all have a piece of the grand liberal tradition, and the left needs to read writers from these groups to re-discover many great ideas that they lost touch with in the 1960s.
4) On whether there is some best or correct balance: No. When nations or tribes face constant threats of attack, the liberal configuration would lead a group to get wiped out pretty quickly, so in those environments, more “binding” moralities are more adaptive. But in times of peace and prosperity, I do think human flourishing is best served by a shift in the liberal direction – thinning out the reliance on the binding foundations. I see societies as being like ecosystems, constantly in flux. There’s no obvious best setting, and we argue, as a society, over what our morals should be in each era. This is good and healthy – no one side can simply think about it and get the answer right, because each side is so limited by its confirmation biases. It can become unhealthy when we begin to demonize each other. My highest hope for the book is that it will facilitate healthier, less demonizing debates, such as this one.
Thank you!
Read MoreOn Bloggingheads with Robert Wright
Robert Wright (author of Nonzero, and The Evolution of God), interviews me about the book. We largely agree about the evolution of religion, and about the New Atheists being fundamentalists. Bob is dubious about group selection. He acknowledges it could exist, but tries to come up with individual-level explanations for human groupishness. Bob and I co-taught a class at Princeton. We are on very friendly terms, and this allows our disagreements to be vocal without any risk of it descending into anger. Relationships help open-minded thinking and civil disagreement.
Read MoreNegative liberty likely to trump positive liberty in Supreme Court
The fate of the Affordable Health Care Act comes down to two competing notions of liberty. A front page article in the NYT today put it like this:
If the administration is to prevail in the case, it must capture at least one vote beyond those of the court’s four more liberal justices, who are thought virtually certain to vote to uphold the law. The administration’s best hope is Justice Kennedy.
The point was not lost on Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who concluded his defense of the law at the court this week with remarks aimed squarely at Justice Kennedy. Mr. Verrilli said there was “a profound connection” between health care and liberty. “There will be millions of people with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease,” he said, “and as a result of the health care that they will get, they will be unshackled from the disabilities that those diseases put on them and have the opportunity to enjoy the blessings of liberty.”
Paul D. Clement, representing 26 states challenging the law, had a comeback. “I would respectfully suggest,” he said, “that it’s a very funny conception of liberty that forces somebody to purchase an insurance policy whether they want it or not.”
This is a perfect summation of the difference between the two conceptions of liberty held by Left and Right, which I describe in a footnote in chapter 8 of The Righteous Mind. Here’s a fuller explanation:
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin coined the terms “positive liberty” and “negative liberty” in 1958 as European welfare states were developing new ideas about the relationship between governments and citizens. Negative liberty refers to “the absence of obstacles which block human action.” This is the traditional understanding of liberty—the freedom to be left alone; the freedom from oppression and interference by other people. This is the kind of liberty that, when violated, elicits the psychological state called reactance, which is an angry reaction against perceived pressure or constraint. Reactance makes people do the opposite of what they were pressured to do, even if they were not inclined to act that way beforehand.
Positive liberty refers to having the power and resources to choose one’s path and fulfill one’s potential. Berlin was summarizing a trend in post-war democracies in which some philosophers and activists began to ask: What good is (negative) liberty if you are stuck in a social system that offers you few options? Proponents of positive liberty argued that governments have an obligation to remove barriers and obstacles to full political participation, and to take positive steps to enable previously oppressed groups to succeed.
As Berlin noted, the two forms of liberty sometimes clash. When governments pursue positive liberty for some citizens, it often requires violating the negative liberty of other citizens. Unfortunately, only negative liberty is connected to visceral emotions and instinctive reactions. When Martin Luther King said “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination,” White Americans could feel the urgency of removing the chains. But when Democrats later fought for programs to enhance the positive liberty of African Americans and other minorities – e.g., forced bussing, affirmative action, and welfare – they triggered outrage, protests, and a mass exodus of the White working class to the Republican Party.
I think the Affordable Health Care act is a perfect instantiation of the tradeoff between positive and negative liberty. We must compel some people to buy something in order to help other people live full and healthy lives. Given how much more powerful and visceral negative liberty is than positive, and given that a lot of research shows that judges are human beings — they reason much like the rest of us, following their intuitions and then searching for legal justifications — my bet is that Kennedy will vote to strike down the law, along with the four more conservative justices.
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