Intolerance, not polarization, the root of political paralysis
Published January 28, 2015
by Clive Cook, Bloomberg Views, published in News and Observer, January 27, 2015.
For the next two years, the chances are good that the U.S. government will be almost completely paralyzed. After the midterm elections, power is more perfectly divided between a president and Congress that detest each other. Each sees its main job as blocking the other’s ambitions. The Republican majorities on Capitol Hill will pass bills to make a point; the Democratic president will veto them.
The State of the Union address and the response to it set the pattern. The president laughed contemptuously at Congress, and Congress contemptuously laughed back. The prospect is for more of the dysfunction the country has already endured, carried to another level.
What are the roots of this dysfunction, and what’s the answer? Many frustrated centrists blame an excess of ideology. The fundamental problem, they argue, is strongly held opinions at the increasingly distant ends of the political spectrum, with politicians and voters aligning themselves more closely around those poles.
Increasing polarization – an observable fact in the U.S. – obviously makes government more difficult in a system based on divided powers. So the theory is true in that trivial sense. The deeper question is, what’s driving the increase in polarization? Here the popular story may get things backward. Ideology isn’t driving polarization; polarization is driving ideology.
The salient characteristic of America’s widening political divide – despite appearances to the contrary – isn’t that liberals and conservatives disagree about everything. It’s that they dislike each other for their views and ways of life, and don’t care to disguise the fact. Partisan sorting by region and locality is both an expression of this trend and the reason it’s likely to continue. In their daily lives, metropolitan liberals and rural or suburban conservatives have no need or occasion to meet, much less get on with one another – and, increasingly, that’s exactly how both sides would have it.
In the U.S., progressives and conservatives are defined as much by culture as by politics – by the kind of jobs they do, the kind of clothes they wear, the beer they drink, the music they listen to and the TV shows they watch. As the tribes coalesce, political differences are seized upon and exaggerated as badges of identity. The cultural sorting comes first, the political polarization second. Intellectual in-breeding then drives the tribes farther apart.
To be sure, liberals and conservatives have different political values and attach different weights to the values they have in common. This has been intriguingly documented by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. And both sides seem convinced that the differences are growing. The question is whether these competing values are really as incompatible as both sides want to believe.
Even if they were, some kind of accommodation would have to be found. But I’m asking whether the differences are as fatal to political discourse as the tribes, intent on cultural segregation, choose to believe.
Every kind of practical politics is about trade-offs (and still would be even if the entire country was ideologically aligned). Ideas about the proper role of government, for instance, have to balance concern for individual liberty against collective well-being. Almost nobody thinks that individual freedom is all that matters, or that collective well-being overrides every other concern. Almost nobody believes in laissez faire; almost nobody believes in central planning.
As individuals, most Americans, like most Europeans, make sense of the world through ideological compromise. What’s the alternative? Once you accept that a balance has to be struck, that no single value trumps another, and that getting it right can be difficult, it’s harder to see somebody who disagrees with you as standing outside the realm of what’s permissible.
Democracies don’t need agreement. They do need tolerance of disagreement. The politically engaged – progressives and conservatives alike – mock the disenchanted majority for asking, “Why can’t we all just get along?” In one way, they’re right: Politics divides, and it should. In another way, they’re wrong. Getting along doesn’t require milquetoast moderation, flaccid centrism or “moving beyond left and right.” However, it does require some willingness to compromise, some curiosity about what might be valuable in the other side’s point of view, and some minimal attention to the civic virtues of tolerance and restraint.
Without those virtues, which have never been more out of favor, it’s easy to get locked into the dysfunctional cycle that Washington exemplifies. In any system of democratic government, you’re in trouble once blocking the other tribe’s agenda assumes greater importance than advancing any aspect of your own. In the American system of government, it’s fatal. That’s where things now stand – and the most worrying thing is that the politically engaged, almost without exception, are fine with it.
Bloomberg View
January 28, 2015 at 8:45 am
Frank Burns says:
The dysfunction in any organization is easily determined. It's the top leadership that's the problem. Obama's inadequacies in leadership and compromise have become our problem. If we had a proper leader, we would not have this dysfunction.
January 28, 2015 at 11:09 am
Norm Kelly says:
Starting with the wrong premise typically leads one down the wrong path. Having not yet finished reading this post, it seems obvious from the beginning why it appeared in the N&D.
'The Republican majorities on Capitol Hill will pass bills to make a point'. Perhaps this isn't true. Perhaps it's just possible that Republicans, put into majority by a majority of voters across the nation, are doing what they were sent to Washington to do. Perhaps the Republicans are doing what's right for the nation, what's right for the majority of citizens, what's right by stopping the invasion by illegal aliens. Attempting to stop socialized medicine is not just the right thing to do, but it's also the fiscally responsible thing to do. Preventing the king from allowing amnesty to people who chose to break our laws is the right thing. Attempting to get the national budget under control is the right thing. Stopping central planners from violating the Constitution by taking power/control away from states is the right thing. So, starting with the premise that Republicans are simply trying to make a point is the wrong premise and should be corrected immediately.
'The president laughed contemptuously at Congress'. Possibly because he believes he's king instead of president and Congress has done nothing in 6 years to prove him wrong. Congress has basically given this numbskull a pass, he's claimed that he won so his rules apply, and has proceeded as if this is true and proper. And when the occupier decides he is king, his willing accomplices in the media just go along with him and don't question either his authority or his motives. No news reporting from media types, just go along sycophants. When a majority of voters pushed the nation in the opposite direction, did the occupier hear? Nope. He has specifically stated that he does not care what the majority of voters decided, and he's hell-bent on continuing to drive the nation in HIS chosen direction, even if that means he violates the U S Constitution.
'The question is whether these competing values are really as incompatible as both sides want to believe'. Is this a trick question? Of course these competing values are completely incompatible. Socialism can not survive in the presence of freedom. Freedom can not survive in the presence of socialism. Socialism has proven to be a failure where & when it's tried. The premise of socialism is flawed. You can not continue to take money from producers to give to non-producers, you can not continue to promote incompetent people to positions of responsibility and expect continued production. Socialism says that everyone is equal, and therefore equally qualified. When socialism promotes someone simply because they are 'disadvantaged' that person, and the organization surrounding them, are doomed to failure. Need an example outside of Europe? Look at the community organizer occupier. He believes in socialism, has done what's possible to implement socialism, and what we end up with is a government take-over of the health insurance industry and the college loan program. We have socialists in Congress who openly state that they want to take over the oil/gas business and make them public companies owned by the central planners. Has this worked in Europe? Nope. Yet our 'leaders' continue to push it. Freedom has created the best, most welcoming, most prosperous nation in the world, ever. Because of freedom, our nation has helped increase freedom around the world, as well as increasing wealth around the world. Can socialism compare? Nope. So the competing values are completely, totally incompatible. This is not opinion, it is fact. Socialism needs to be defeated at every turn, not compromised with. How do you compromise with socialized medicine, as one example?
When 'the opposition' lives with their head in the sand, playing ostrich, how do you compromise with them? How do you negotiate with them? How do you have an intelligent debate/conversation with them? Perfect point: 'Almost nobody thinks ... that collective well-being overrides every other concern. ... almost nobody believes in central planning'. If this were only true! We have a very large number of DemocRAT Congress people who believe exactly this. We have Demons in Congress, and other demon pols, who have stated exactly this. Go back to the statements from libs that want to take over the oil/gas business. Go back to comments from libs concerning Obamacancer. They have specifically stated that this is step one in a complete take-over of the entire medical industry. How about the statements from libs like Billary & Warren that say private business does not create jobs; how about the belief of libs that unemployment and food stamps spur the economy. This is called central planning. Billary has stated that it takes a village to raise a child. This is repeated by media types as if it's gospel. What does this mean? It means that government takes priority in the lives of children over parents. Libs/central planner types BELIEVE that when your kids leave your house to attend government monopoly schools, they BELONG to the central planners and parents do not have to be informed about anything that goes on within the school. Take Communist Core as a perfect example of this. Parents are continuously ignored when it comes to concerns about reading material forced on young kids by the 'standard'. Sexually inappropriate topics are forced on young kids because it fits the goals of central planners and they will be damned if they will let parents get in the way of their agenda! The person who makes statements like nobody believes in central planning, or the collective overrides everything else is someone who walks through life with closed eyes, denying truth in order to accept their agenda. And the person who makes comments like this wants us freedom-lovers to also close our eyes and accept their agenda. It's not possible to compromise or negotiate with this type of person. Witness the lack of compromise by the current occupier.
I am forced by law to put a helmet on my kids when we go bike riding. Because of central planner, personal interference believes of libs. Some lib parent somewhere, probably California or Chapel Hill, decided that they wanted to protect their kid at all costs from everything in life, and therefore it was a good idea to force their beliefs onto everyone else. This is the way a central planner, lib, socialist mind works. They have no room for compromise. Whether it's a good idea for my kid to wear a helmet or not is a decision that is taken out of my hands for the good of the collective. Smoking cigarettes is illegal in restaurants. It's a legal product. The restaurant is a privately owned business. But the choice of appealing to a specific client base is taken away from the owner of the business and placed in the hands of kindly libs, the central planners, to force the owner to prevent smoking in their own business. What part of this is compromise? How does one compromise with this type of attitude?
Gotta work for a living. Too much wrong with this post, obviously written by a lib/central planner type, to be bothered reading & responding to the rest.
January 28, 2015 at 11:51 am
Richard Bunce says:
Well at least he did not call for more government infringement on persons First Amendment protections... that's progress.
