I would say a major weak spot of all three, qua political activists, is that they are typically bad at achieving their stated goals. Libertarian activism has mostly done a terrible job of advancing liberty, conservative activism has mostly done a terrible job of conserving civilization, and progressive activism has mostly done a terrible job of helping the oppressed. You can point to exceptions for all of these, but for every one of these there are like 10x as many instances of the activists trying to reproduce their prior success and failing or even backfiring.
The good thing is that there is far more advancement of liberty, preservation of civilization, *and* amelioration of oppression in recent history than can possibly be explained by political activism. It remains an underrated strategy to study why that happened and try and make more of it happen instead of doing conventional political activism. But conventional activism makes people feel more righteous and more responsible, so it will keep being overproduced.
There are a lot of different ways of measuring success rates of activism, and different approaches would yield very different scores than you hand out. The results can totally flip depending on how much weight one assigns to instrumental vs terminal goals (even if you take stated goals like 'liberate the oppressed'* seriously); or to actions at tactical, operational, strategic levels; or to absolute performance vs "grading on a curve" methods like relative performance vs competitors (or just competitors within your same weight-class), or 'efficiency' giving extra points for getting big results with small resources.
The same problem arises in analysis of military effectiveness in war, or security effectiveness in general, or more abstractly performance in all competitive games.
In war, the strategic objective and terminal goal is to win the war. But history is loaded with examples of leaders and units who lost their wars but had obviously superior average performance in battle.
If you put more weight on tactical gains, progressive activists get high marks. If you put weight on efficiency, the libertarians punch well above their weight. If you put weight on strategy, the conservative legal community / FedSoc types are in a class of their own. If you are talking about establishing structural advantage and "long march through the institutions" grand-strategy, the progressives make Genghis Khan and Alexander look like chumps.
*You say that progressives have done a terrible job of helping the oppressed. If for the sake of argument you accept their claims about who is oppressed, and the self-evaluation of those people about whether their interests are helped by progressives measured by their disproportionate support of progressives, then that's clearly false, indeed, the opposite of true. The progressives have helped these people -tremendously- to the tune of capital-T Trillions of dollars in value they would not otherwise enjoy without various major progressive interventions in the culture and economy. You can't penalize them for not having yet won the war, cured the disease, and successfully ended all the """oppression""". And after all, they themselves say the struggle against oppression may be like the struggle against weeds, requiring constant effort, constant vigilance, etc.
Fair points. I guess I'm trying to start from a point of view of charity, i.e. assuming people on all sides are generally well-intentioned and that they actually want the high-level things they say they want. When it comes to things like "who counts as oppressed and how do we tell if they are actually helped" I am implicitly viewing differences of opinion through the lens of mistake theory rather than conflict theory.
Of the possible cynical critiques of this, the one I find most persuasive is the Hanson/Simler "elephant in the brain" critique, i.e. people across all political tendencies do *not* actually want the high-level things they say they want, instead deep down they just want to win their local status game, and they do that through self-deception which makes it easier to fool others. And the strategies you describe are indeed very effective at winning those local status games!
This. It may be worth studying but the reality (or silver lining) likely is that, within a pretty wide range, certainly wider than the difference between American progressives, libertarians, and conservatives, it probably doesn’t matter too much what institutions we create to govern and coordinate society.
* Libertarians do not want to face the fact that humanity is not very libertarian
* Progressives do not want to notice that the true motivations for their 'caring' values are mostly proxies for something else - an essentally narcissistic desire to feel nice about themeselves in a cost-free way
* you misrepresent conservatism by defining it as implaccably opposed to social change. The 'father' of modern conservatism is Edmund Burke.....SLOW, CAUTIOUS change. My main beef with my fellow conservatives is the tendency of many to retreat into fatuous conspiracy theories. It is Cock-up not Conspiracy that makes for our human societal tragedy.
* Feminism cannot face up to the fact that young women are most sexually attracted to 'dark triad' type men.
I think humanity is far more libertarian than most people in any of the three groups is willing to acknowledge. Even a majority of people in favor of higher taxes think their own taxes are too high. Almost everyone believes government interferes in their own lives too much even if they want more rules to limit how others behave, mostly to keep people for harming themselves or people they see as oppressed.
I think we're a bit at crossed purposes here. Yes, in the terms you describe libertarianism you are quite right. What I meant in my comment was a comment on the broad spectrum of human nature as revealed in its long history....man's enduring appetite for rules; for religions (including secular ones like climate alarmism and 'social justice' etc); for censoriousness.....and so on. Libertarianism goes hand in hand with naive optimism in my view, in other words.
I often feel alone in my optimism for the future. If libertarian=optimism then my anecdotal evidence is against people being libertarian. But if a libertarian feels he is in a small minority, wouldn't that weaken his optimism? (I can't decide if I mean that seriously or tongue in cheek.)
Either way, people are also tribal, social, approval-seeking, etc. That seems like a stronger driver of what you list than whether they are libertarian. For example, Freakonomics says a majority of people put solar panels on their roof face that is most visible, not most efficient.
Maybe the problem with this whole discussion is that - a lack of clear definition of each of these philosophies - has resulted in us all talking at crossed purposes. Yes, libertarianism will always break on the rocks of tribalism - this is what I was saying (in other words).
Yes to different rules for oneself. I acknowledged that we see tend to see raping, pillaging, and somewhat lesser crimes differently depending on who does it. But I in no way meant authoritarian rules.
"Conservative" hasn't meant anything for a long time and it gets worse every year. Being opposed to the progressives these days often bears no relation to anything Burke thought, and is positively radical and anti-Burkean on those matters where the progressives triumphed long ago and made reversing those entrenched mistakes too painful to achieve. "The Right" probably is better these days, being a factious and quarrelsome weak coalition of single-issue counter-revolutionaries.
You are just plain wrong here. Conservative (with a small c) means - in the Western context - Burke and more recently Kirk and Oakshott among others. Sure the word may get misapplied by sloppy people but then so can ALL words. Words like 'Love', 'Hate', 'Truth', 'Lies' all get misused but that doesn't make them meaningless.
"Conservative" hasn't meant anything for a long time and it gets worse every year.
Couldn’t agree more. The barbarism / civilization axis may actually be the one thread holding together this weak coalition, but even that is fading as disagreement increases about what civilization means and what aspects are to be preserved.
Liberals assume that everything good that has ever happened was the result of social reforms, but that's not actually supported by history. Most of the good things that have happened over the last 200-300 years were the result of science, technology, or socioeconomic changes that were not policies and no one opposed them, nor did anyone vote for them - they just happened. Nobody opposed water filtration or the polio vaccine. Conservatives oppose things, that's what makes them conservatives, but they have mostly opposed bad things and only occasionally opposed good things.
Conservatives have often opposed liberal social policies, but those policies generally had negative aspects that conservatives foresaw, so they weren't all wrong. Even civil rights laws had unintended consequences that most people would agree have been negative, though it may be hard to say publicly.
As to your other example - "equality" between men and women - that is so huge a thing that none of us can possibly say what it foretells, or even what it really means.
Arnold Kling generally avoids commenting on current events right away, but in the wake of the Congressional testimony of 3 women college presidents a few days ago, using the issue of giving women equal rights to illustrate the drawbacks of conservatives opposing social change may be an example of bad timing. On his daily video this morning, Scott Adams, paraphrasing Greta Van Susteren, said that the testimony of these 3 college presidents set back the women's movement 50 years. Also, their selection was likely the result of exclusionary DEI criteria, and they exemplified the 'crisis of competence' in this country. And yes, I am in the habit of listening to Adams -- he can be annoying, especially on topics where he lacks expertise, but on many issues I find him to have better instincts than those of most 'fantasy intellectuals,' and at least he is funny at a time when having a sense of humor is a useful antidote to the absurdity of life in America these days. Finally, with reference to the college president example, the vestiges of feminism in me make me wonder whether men deliberately choose incompetent women in leadership roles to make themselves look better by comparison.
Arnold wrote: "What conservatives are reluctant to discuss is what went right with social change up until the point when the claim it all started to go wrong." Here's a response: the civil rights movement led by MLK initially sought equal rights before the law by breaking up Jim Crow, which was a state imposed system of discrimination. However, it soon became apparent that this was not going to solve the many pathologies of black culture nor result in equality of outcomes. The movement was abruptly corrupted by being re-engineered into political allocation of preferences. The ideal of equal treatment became nothing more than moral cover for grift.
1. Libertarians don't want to discuss the importance of social cohesion and shared values. The "10% Bee" aspect of humans is something they don't care for and don't think much about, but its implications are far-reaching.
2. Conservatives don't question or acknowledge the degree to which their attitudes are grounded in whatever cultural practices happened to prevail during their formative years. In fact, I'm not even sure this qualifies as a thing which cannot be discussed. Most aren't aware of it in the first place.
3. I could write a dissertation on where I think progressive thinking gets stuck in the ditch, but suffice it to say that group differences are real and important, cultural differences impact individual and collective outcomes, and unintended consequences are real. Progressives seem incapable of acknowledging, much less grappling with any of the above.
Dec 8, 2023·edited Dec 10, 2023Liked by Arnold Kling
2. How to describe ... so as a little girl I wasn't allowed to watch "Charlie's Angels". Or Bond movies. Mother thought they presented women in a bad light. She wouldn't have thought of this on her own, would have read it somewhere.
Overall in the 70s things were egalitarian where kids were concerned. Girls and boys dressed much alike. In movies and TV the girl archetype tended toward tomboy. (Even one of the Angels was a tomboy - I discovered this later, when I finally got to watch a few moments of an episode or two: I remember an Angel, the prettiest one, was undercover as a hot dog vendor, in a plaza, doing a sting I guess, and the camera work snapped from one person to another, and back around again, this sufficing for action, for about ten minutes, and it was super boring though she looked cute in her hot dog outfit.)
Feminism was in full flush and girliness - was mostly just out. Hair was natural, makeup was minimal and meant to replicate a "natural" sunkissed look. "Nails" were no one's obssession, nor something you paid for; at most some girls might paint their own pink. Everybody was skinny then. The idea of altering your body would have cut against the whole aesthetic, at least in young women.
Girls were supposed to try to be smart, although school wasn't that big a deal.
The outdoorsy girl was very much a thing too.
This was the wholesome vestige of hippiedom, I guess.
You can imagine my amazement when I noticed, around 2000, that girls were crying on TV, their mascara melting, over bachelors they'd just met; they were competing and cat-fighting to see who would be top model; they were going on reality shows to win plastic surgery, etc. And the music industry had been given over to a basically amusical genre that chiefly wrote lyrics in which the female archetype was essentially "whore" or "cunt" with every possible degradation.
And it has only gotten stranger since then.
Now does this make me, the most conservative woman in a tri-state area, the Last Feminist?
No, I know you didn't. It is hard to avoid, though, and all part of (mostly) having to live in the world as you find it. I was just having a little fun at the thought. I'm reminded of how ridiculous the National Review used to make itself way back when - but not way back when enough, if you take my meaning - complaining about rock and roll.
Libertarians do not want to talk about the patterns of who supports or opposes libertarian ideas, and relatedly, what is required to sustain the social conditions that support a critical mass of pro-libertarian sentiments and policies.
"What conservatives do not want to discuss is the history of social change."
That's like seen vs unseen fallacy as a condition of history. One pays attention to the changes, but one doesn't even think about the billions of things that *didn't* change, but which could have and perhaps will soon in the infinitely vast space of human cultural possibilities. Is the score for this history -4, 6 out of 10, or a ratio of a million to one? Not to mention that the jury is always still out as regards these changes, and I strongly suspect that future human 'conservatives' will be more than happy to talk about many of them and how they rolled them back.
Possible corollary (someone else may have made this point in a prior discussion): each tribe views the others through their own blind spot/the others' lenses. Progressives see conservatives as barbaric, threatening Enlightenment ideals and institutions; conservatives sees progressives as oppressors, using institutions of academia/media/law to keep others down. Libertarians view conservatives and progressives as blocking social change toward voluntary institutions and as oppressing individual choice.
I hadn't thought of it that way but yes, that's probably true! I'm thinking it's probably not conscious, and is kind of an implicit acknowledgement of the other axes' legitimacy. Maybe even a potential bridge between the tribes.
Progressives have built-in ascendancy because their rationales and policies are self-reinforcing. If the policy doesn't work, there is a ready answer: the cause must be inadequate funding. Big government by its nature creates entrenched constituencies and cultures of dependence.
Conservatives have built-in support. Status-quo bias in psychology is a real thing. News media thrive on fear. Big government appeals to conservatives, too, via entrenched entitlements for retirees and the military-industrial complex.
Thus, progressives and conservatives have a lot of overlap in big government. The conflicts between them are at the margins, never far from the median voter.
In my experience, among the three groups, libertarians are least likely to avoid open discussion that comes to grips with challenges, if only because they are few -- and splintered -- in a sea of mainly progressive and conservative discourses. Nonetheless, to quote Arnold Kling, libertarians, even when they aren't splintered, have no reliable political friends because they reject big government.
A nifty summary - good work. Having grown up under the sway of a strongly conservative GOP dad, and worked for 35 years as a public school teacher and been immersed in the pervasive cultural POV that accompanies that (on the institutional level), I’ve had to navigate a lot of rhetorical truth-obstacles over the years, and I appreciate your ability to boil it down. Anyone who seeks a broad range of perspectives and input must also develop a keen BS detector and employee it rigorously. But it’s also clear you’re treading a narrow path to do so - a necessity, perhaps, because the weeds are so thick all around. Here’s a question: was that path wider in the past, or were those of us who remember when it seemed to be that way simply deluded? And is there actually any remnant of a universal moral dimension that might serve as a common point of contact between people from different camps?
Well yes, but each tribe is a manifestation of what the other two tribes are NOT. That is, any one tribe doesn’t exert much thought toward what the other two tribes are saying. For example, conservatives don’t think much about and don’t want to talk about the truthful aspects of the progressive oppressor-oppressed axis. So on and so forth with the other two tribes.
Is this not more important than the weak spots proposed here?
By introducing these new weak spots, you’re saying that there’s only one weak spots that applies to each tribe. Shouldn’t there be at least two weak spots for each tribe? At least for the sake of your goal which is to get the tribes to be open-minded to the viewpoint of the other two tribes.
"conservatives don’t think much about and don’t want to talk about the truthful aspects of the progressive oppressor-oppressed axis."
Be specific, give a particular example of some social disparity the progressives correctly attribute to oppressors oppressing the oppressed, and which conservatives erroneously reject.
It's telling you say "Jim Crow" and not "Civil Rights". Barry Goldwater and Milton Friedman were right about "Civil Rights" in the long run. It meant the outlawing of freedom of association.
Let's say we debate everything that has happened in "Civil Rights" after 1965. Would you defend it on the whole?
Republicans didn't want to talk about Iraq until Trump said aloud what everybody was thinking. Suddenly, everyone could admit that the war was a huge mistake and Bush et al were terrible and all the bad things that happened were in fact bad. What you are going to see now is the progressives flip to defending whatever nasty abuses the now solidly BlueGov CIA and FBI get up to, while the right tries constantly to criticize and cripple them.
Opposition to a specific, highly flawed and overbroad Federal law is demonized as “doing nothing”. Goldwater and most Republicans had supported a more focused Civil Rights Act in 1960 which, thanks to racist Democrats didn’t pass. That’s demonstrably not nothing.
Big government folk often support a Big Fed Govt program to solve every problem, and falsely claim, as Kling does here, that opposition to a lousy program is equal to doing nothing, thus supporting the problem.
I’d guess that Friedman was against Jim Crow laws requiring racial discrimination, but in favor of private businesses having the freedom to discriminate, or not, for any reason. I would argue that freedom to discriminate would allow discrimination, alongside non-discrimination, so some lunch counters would discriminate, and some would not. Those with less discrimination would, over time, be more profitable and expand, while those which discriminate would be shamed, and celebrated, for being racist.
The USA in 2023 would likely be less racist had all government discrimination been forbidden, but all private business discrimination been allowed. Truths about racial and sexual differences, in averages, would be more discussed. And more folk would be judged on their individual character, and behavior, as was dreamed of by MLK.
Demonization of freedom is why America is giving it up. Even by folk who claim to support freedom in general.
How about “some businesses engage in wage theft”? I’d say progressives overestimate the number of businesses where it happens, and include stuff in the concept that isn’t wage theft. But it does happen and conservatives mainly assume that people just quit those jobs.
How about “public services like schools, police, emergency services, and environmental services under-serve neighborhoods that are predominantly black and brown”? I can’t speak to how true that is, but conservatives seem to scoff at it. Libertarians would agree with the proposition and chalk it up to predictable government failure (like market failure).
I don't scoff about the 2nd paragraph, have thought about this plenty.
The police example is backward. Peaceful, boring neighborhoods get no policing if they are part of a big city (and not a tiny-municipality within the city with their own police force). Thus the zip code I used to live in had regular, nightly theft: cars, contents of cars, bicycles, mail, Christmas decorations, anything not nailed down. The police were working the areas with more dysfunction than just cars being stolen. They generally did not even have time to come over and take reports; usually people were advised to do it online. They were working accidents and responding to 911 calls, and I assure you those calls come from your notionally "under-served" neighborhoods, or from homeless encampments.
"Schools" makes no sense. The schools are wherever the children are. And surely by now someone on an econ blog has confronted the truth about per-pupil spending.
Finally, there was an annual tradition in that city where the media would trot out the idea that "black, brown" (now mostly Hispanic) parts of town were underserved with public pools. There would be an announcement that some or other new pool was coming or being refurbished with fancy slides and stuff. I always thought this was funny because each time they would dutifully make a map, and it would plainly show lots of dots for city pools in just those parts they were claiming were underserved; and hardly any in the rest of town. I was fascinated that people could simultaneously make a map, and not look at it.
My parents live in the 4th largest city in the nation. It's a leafy middle-class neighborhood. They expect no services at all. For many years there's been a hump in the road near the entrance/exit causing you to have to swerve into the oncoming lane at a blind curve. I found it had grown to be about 4 feet high this year, and I don't honestly know whether I was more annoyed by the safety hazard or by the fact that the people of that neighborhood literally don't expect anything and so not one of the few thousand people resident therein had phoned it in in all this time. I finally went to the online portal of this city I don't even live in, and reported it.
It was fixed within a couple weeks.
In addition to the municipal taxes they pay, for police who rarely darken the neighborhood, my parents pay extra, privately, for a constable to drive around. They pay, in other words, for the attention other neighborhoods receive from the police.
It would literally never occur to them that you are supposed to see a policeman from time to time, because you pay for their services.
I’ll pick one that I’m at least a little convinced about: schools. The problem isn’t so much money per pupil. It’s that school district permit crap teachers at schools where no one expects much of the students. Higher income parents would historically at least complain more vocally. Perhaps that’s less true now, but I’d also say that district that vote Democrat are unlikely to criticize the teachers unions. These days, you also get higher income parents exercising exit to private and home schooling.
For the argument on policing to make sense, I think you have to take the geographical incidence of crime into account, which is a results measure confounded with underlying criminality. You’d expect government to try to achieve the same incidence of criminality everywhere. That’s not the result you get. So the argument is that governments are under policing brown and black areas where crime rates are higher. There’s a lot of stuff in there that is awkward for progressives to argue, so it’s probably a bad example.
The term "under-policing" would then be meaningless. They already have to "over-police" those areas, and zero-police most other areas - if they are "under-policing" it is relative to other things in the municipal budget that they would need to cut out. And police/fire/EMT is generally the biggest item, I believe.
"When classmates discuss topics like abortion or healthcare in class, I have often felt like I should not share my complete opinions on the matter."
– Class of 2025
"In general I have had to suppress my opinions about topics like the LGBTQIA+ community as a lot of people I have encountered have had been negative towards it. For example I did not express my opinion in front of my theology class as the professor had previously stated that he though homosexuality was a sin and I did not feel comfortable engaging with him."
– Class of 2024
"As a Catholic with a lot of Protestant friends, they can be pretty ruthless when it comes to mocking my religion, to the point where I rarely if not ever speak up about my faith or defend it."
– Class of 2025
"The administration bans all forms of protest and dissent, which leads to muted student backlash when they host rather heinous political thinkers in their forums, like their CCAs"
– Class of 2024
"When President Trump was elected and in the months leading up to his inauguration, campus seemed very hostile towards anyone who would potentially disagree on political issues."
– Class of 2023
"The topic of abortion. If I am not pro life in every circumstance, I am looked down upon."
– Class of 2025
"Some students are too rigidly adhered to the Bible, sometimes it makes it difficult for contemporary discussions."
– Class of 2023
"In my politics class I felt like it’s just not worth it. I wouldn’t be learning anything new or gaining any favors with my prof so I just kept quiet"
This is a difficult issue to see clearly. Let’s go back to the main thrust of my first comment on this post: each tribe is a manifestation of what the other two tribes are NOT. What does this look like at Hillsdale?
Well, look at the viewpoint diversity of the student body: there are 12 conservative students for every progressive student according to FIRE. Arnn doesn’t dispute this so it’s probably true.
So, in a typical discussion class of 24 students, we’re hearing 2 students that have a different view than the 22 that have a similar view. Crudely speaking, but go with it please. That’s a huge bias. How great can the Socratic dialogue be if the viewpoint ratio is 24 to 2?
So FIRE may not say this explicitly, but viewpoint ratio makes a huge difference. It can make all the difference. See these one-liners below.
1. Sometimes group loyalty is valued over truth. (Dan Williams)
2. People often hesitate to speak truth if doing so will likely lower their status. (Rob Henderson)
3. In order to fit in, people gravitate towards saying and thinking, whatever sounds good. (Bryan Caplan)
4. We adopt false beliefs that enable us to belong. (Arnold Kling)
What should Arnn say? What doesn’t he want to talk about?
He should demonstrate or give an argument showing that a great deal of learning will occur even with a viewpoint ratio of 12 to 1.
Or he should say, “You’re right that viewpoint ratio is bad for Socratic dialogue. We need to change.”
Do progressives point this out by calling Hillsdale’s culture oppressive? Kind of. On paper they stand for diversity, but in action they are even more oppressive.
Higher education in the USA is overwhelmingly dominated by the progressive viewpoint, and those who share that viewpoint have many options. Those with conservative views, not so much. Why would anybody who feels strongly about LBTQ+ and abortion rights go to Hillsdale? What FIRE or libertarians have to say about Hillsdale College is trivial. The point is that libertarians have failed to preserve freedom of speech against progressive dogma in higher education as a whole.
What can I do to help preserve freedom of speech in higher education?
For starters I can point my kids away from colleges that have viewpoint ratios greater than 2 to 1, and with FIRE rankings better than 50. Everyone is free to choose their own threshold.
I can encourage other parents to send their kids to elementary and high schools that seek truth, and personal accountability. Here are two examples: Thales Academy currently enrolls 6000+ students, and Challenger School even more students. Check out the Top 15 Outcomes at Thales and their recent opening of Thales College. Check out the test scores at Challenger School, talk to their students about Lincoln’s statements to keep the Union together during the Civil War, and their celebration of the U.S. Constitution. Libertarians have done more than you probably know. We’re up against free public schools, so it’s not easy, but we’re taking care of ourselves.
You could support a law which cuts off all public funding of every kind to any institution which disciplines students or faculty for speech the government itself would be prohibited from penalizing.
Wouldn't bother Hillsdale, they don't take public money. Every other place does. Free speech or shrink 99%. Radical. Serious.
Doesn't want to talk about it? Come on. Arnn wrote a whole opinion article in the Wall Street Journal explaining it! Put that one in the GPT grader, and also Fire's rebuttal.
See The Book of Mormon, the New Testament or the Old Testament. Narratives within these books are not in accordance with the laws of physics.
Walk into most any evangelical, Latter-Day Saints or Catholic church service and listen for a physics-based discussion for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the means by which prophets communicate with god, how the human body came to be, where heaven is, how Satan opposes us, how Jesus turned water into wine, etc. You will not hear physics-based discussions on these topics. Progressives are right to point out that these doctrines have been used to murder, oppress, torture, and censor. Exposing the falsehoods of these books is bad for conservative Christianity. These conservatives don’t welcome these discussions in their churches, nor in their public or private schools, nor by their elected officials.
America is a diverse country. The Saints make up a small fraction of the conservative population, but are not insignificant in cultural and political influence. Here are some statistics to consider.
Of all religions in America, the Saints are the most conservative, the most republican and most in favor of smaller government according to a large Pew Study. See statistics below.
As of 2023, there are nine LDS Church members serving in Congress; three in the Senate and six in the House of Representatives. All nine are members of the Republican Party.
BYU ranks as the #1 conservative universities in nation according to Niche.com.
BYU is one of the largest religious universities in America. BYU total enrollment is 82,000 compared to Hillsdale College’s 1,500 students.
BYU Provo 35,000 students
BYU Idaho 44,000 students
BYU Hawaii 3,000 students
Average SAT of entering student body is one of the highest in the country for a conservative college. From US News.
Hillsdale College: 1440
BYU Provo: 1375
Statistics from the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study
Conducted in 2007 and 2014, surveys more than 35,000 Americans from all 50 states about their religious affiliations, beliefs and practices, and social and political views.
% Members that identify as conservative as opposed to moderate or liberal
Interesting stuff in its own way but what it says to me is that your (and Arnold Kling's) mis-characterisation of conservatism is something along these lines "a mentality rather alien to me that I don't much care to understand".
It seems like you both start from this position and work back from there. A much fairer definition would be "that 'language' most clearly articulated in modern times by the philosophers Russell Kirk and Michael Oakshott". (I do not, by the way, equate conservatism with the Republican Party - even less so with the British Tory Party.)
That wasn't what I asked, the question is about the models of how the human world works that provide different explanations for social observations. I'll give you an example. When a progressive sees less than 50% female representation in a profession, they see oppression and say it's due to discrimination against women, and if it wasn't for the discrimination, the number would indeed be 50%. Conservatives reject the oppression thesis and say that whatever there might have been to it in the past, going into the second quarter of the 21st century, it doesn't account for much.
So, what I'm asking for is an example like that, where the progressives are right, and the conservatives don't want to talk about it because they are wrong.
Yes, Progressives are wrong to say that every social ill is oppression, but Conservatives are wrong to just deny the problem. I don't know what the "right" proportion of CEOs or faculty of discipline X is, but "oppression" at earlier stages in the lives of people involved leads to the "wrong" proportion.
I don't believe there is any significant oppression of women or minorities any more. 50 years ago, you could find examples, but today? Everything is slanted in their favor.
I think Kling's Three Languages book does what you say regarding discussing the strengths of each viewpoint. I don't remember it covering the weaknesses in the way here but maybe it does. Either way, I think there is value in both.
As for pointing out two weaknesses of each view, yes, sure. He could have said FAR MORE about each but I think the point here was to be brief and merely introduce the overview, not flesh out all the details.
I think the book probably does discuss the weakness, but I feel this post would have been better to first repeat what is said in the book about the blind spots of each tribe, before introducing this new, slightly different framework. This post seems to differ slightly or use different terminology. So I’m basically asking for a clarification from Arnold, asking what the connection between this post and the book is. I think it just needs a few more paragraphs of transition or as you say THE TWO examples or the two blind spots for each tribe.
I have noticed that free market economists tend to believe that trade will resolve all conflicts between nations. No country, they argue, will want to go to war with a key trading partner. Yet history is full of counter examples: Russia and Ukraine, France and Germany, Japan and China, the Union and the Confederacy.
Yes, global trade has eliminated any *economic* excuse for war, but all too many remain: fear, hatred, ethnic and religious differences, national pride and honor, territorial disputes, or just a leader’s need to distract citizens from domestic problems. But free market economists tend to shut down when such “irrational” motives are broached.
I think that might be because so many free market economists were arguing against Marxism that they subconsciously came to agree (casually, not deeply) with economic materialism as an outlook.
Parallel to the popular culture war discussion is a conversation being had by old school materialist Marxists and right-wing free marketeers/relatively more capitalist. They share an assumption of political economy in society's driver's seat.
They seem to be a thin strata of smarty pants left and right gliding over drag queen story hour or sports fan blackface talking points.
Yeah. Now that old school Marxists and libertarians have nearly zero chance at running anything, they can jointly reminisce about the bad old days when their debates mattered. (I say, “they,” but ... ya know ...)
No doubt all three could be expanded quite a bit but even though I believe I lean more libertarian than conservative or liberal, I thought libertarian was the one that your description begged for more. In particular, the difficulty for a libertarian society to care for those who temporarily or more permanently can't care for themselves.
As for conservatives, what you said seemed a bit harsh and off target. I think they can't point to a moment when things went off the rails because there is no such moment and any attempt to pick one is certain to fail. Whatever their failings, I disagree with that one being on the list. It is a strawman.
Overall a great piece, weakest in your discussion of conservatism. “But if you look back in history, conservatives opposed such changes” - what are you talking about? This statement is so broad as to mean nothing. That said, I do grant your general point that conservatives lack a narrative that accounts for social change that they don’t wish to undo.
There are countless non-state violations that libertarians also condemn.
>Libertarians denounce those who disagree with them as statists.
It is probably clearer to describe them as “authoritarians”.
>I think that what libertarians do not want to discuss is the topic of social cohesion. They (we) take it for granted that you can have a society with minimal government and plenty of social trust and constructive norm-following. We assume that conflicts will be settled peacefully by private actors. I don’t think that we pay enough attention to the nature of conflict and why disagreements over values and competition over status have so much emotional salience that our ideals are unrealistic.
To have a libertarian society it is necessary to have maximal private property and free markets. But, of course, that is not sufficient. It is also necessary, first, to have a libertarian culture that approximately understands and wants a libertarian society. And the only way for that to occur is for a critical mass of intellectuals (in the broadest sense) to be converted to libertarianism. In recent decades the world appears to be travelling in that direction—but with a very long road ahead still. I don’t notice reluctance among libertarian intellectuals to discuss “social cohesion” (but I do notice a lot of reluctance to discuss liberty in philosophical terms).
I would say a major weak spot of all three, qua political activists, is that they are typically bad at achieving their stated goals. Libertarian activism has mostly done a terrible job of advancing liberty, conservative activism has mostly done a terrible job of conserving civilization, and progressive activism has mostly done a terrible job of helping the oppressed. You can point to exceptions for all of these, but for every one of these there are like 10x as many instances of the activists trying to reproduce their prior success and failing or even backfiring.
The good thing is that there is far more advancement of liberty, preservation of civilization, *and* amelioration of oppression in recent history than can possibly be explained by political activism. It remains an underrated strategy to study why that happened and try and make more of it happen instead of doing conventional political activism. But conventional activism makes people feel more righteous and more responsible, so it will keep being overproduced.
There are a lot of different ways of measuring success rates of activism, and different approaches would yield very different scores than you hand out. The results can totally flip depending on how much weight one assigns to instrumental vs terminal goals (even if you take stated goals like 'liberate the oppressed'* seriously); or to actions at tactical, operational, strategic levels; or to absolute performance vs "grading on a curve" methods like relative performance vs competitors (or just competitors within your same weight-class), or 'efficiency' giving extra points for getting big results with small resources.
The same problem arises in analysis of military effectiveness in war, or security effectiveness in general, or more abstractly performance in all competitive games.
In war, the strategic objective and terminal goal is to win the war. But history is loaded with examples of leaders and units who lost their wars but had obviously superior average performance in battle.
If you put more weight on tactical gains, progressive activists get high marks. If you put weight on efficiency, the libertarians punch well above their weight. If you put weight on strategy, the conservative legal community / FedSoc types are in a class of their own. If you are talking about establishing structural advantage and "long march through the institutions" grand-strategy, the progressives make Genghis Khan and Alexander look like chumps.
*You say that progressives have done a terrible job of helping the oppressed. If for the sake of argument you accept their claims about who is oppressed, and the self-evaluation of those people about whether their interests are helped by progressives measured by their disproportionate support of progressives, then that's clearly false, indeed, the opposite of true. The progressives have helped these people -tremendously- to the tune of capital-T Trillions of dollars in value they would not otherwise enjoy without various major progressive interventions in the culture and economy. You can't penalize them for not having yet won the war, cured the disease, and successfully ended all the """oppression""". And after all, they themselves say the struggle against oppression may be like the struggle against weeds, requiring constant effort, constant vigilance, etc.
Fair points. I guess I'm trying to start from a point of view of charity, i.e. assuming people on all sides are generally well-intentioned and that they actually want the high-level things they say they want. When it comes to things like "who counts as oppressed and how do we tell if they are actually helped" I am implicitly viewing differences of opinion through the lens of mistake theory rather than conflict theory.
Of the possible cynical critiques of this, the one I find most persuasive is the Hanson/Simler "elephant in the brain" critique, i.e. people across all political tendencies do *not* actually want the high-level things they say they want, instead deep down they just want to win their local status game, and they do that through self-deception which makes it easier to fool others. And the strategies you describe are indeed very effective at winning those local status games!
Man's enterprise and technological inventiveness is the good story here....the real 'progress' (and the only progress).
This. It may be worth studying but the reality (or silver lining) likely is that, within a pretty wide range, certainly wider than the difference between American progressives, libertarians, and conservatives, it probably doesn’t matter too much what institutions we create to govern and coordinate society.
* Libertarians do not want to face the fact that humanity is not very libertarian
* Progressives do not want to notice that the true motivations for their 'caring' values are mostly proxies for something else - an essentally narcissistic desire to feel nice about themeselves in a cost-free way
* you misrepresent conservatism by defining it as implaccably opposed to social change. The 'father' of modern conservatism is Edmund Burke.....SLOW, CAUTIOUS change. My main beef with my fellow conservatives is the tendency of many to retreat into fatuous conspiracy theories. It is Cock-up not Conspiracy that makes for our human societal tragedy.
* Feminism cannot face up to the fact that young women are most sexually attracted to 'dark triad' type men.
I think humanity is far more libertarian than most people in any of the three groups is willing to acknowledge. Even a majority of people in favor of higher taxes think their own taxes are too high. Almost everyone believes government interferes in their own lives too much even if they want more rules to limit how others behave, mostly to keep people for harming themselves or people they see as oppressed.
I think we're a bit at crossed purposes here. Yes, in the terms you describe libertarianism you are quite right. What I meant in my comment was a comment on the broad spectrum of human nature as revealed in its long history....man's enduring appetite for rules; for religions (including secular ones like climate alarmism and 'social justice' etc); for censoriousness.....and so on. Libertarianism goes hand in hand with naive optimism in my view, in other words.
I often feel alone in my optimism for the future. If libertarian=optimism then my anecdotal evidence is against people being libertarian. But if a libertarian feels he is in a small minority, wouldn't that weaken his optimism? (I can't decide if I mean that seriously or tongue in cheek.)
Either way, people are also tribal, social, approval-seeking, etc. That seems like a stronger driver of what you list than whether they are libertarian. For example, Freakonomics says a majority of people put solar panels on their roof face that is most visible, not most efficient.
Maybe the problem with this whole discussion is that - a lack of clear definition of each of these philosophies - has resulted in us all talking at crossed purposes. Yes, libertarianism will always break on the rocks of tribalism - this is what I was saying (in other words).
What you just described is 'one rule for you, another for me ', not libertarianism. One can't be authoritarian to others and be libertarian.
Yes to different rules for oneself. I acknowledged that we see tend to see raping, pillaging, and somewhat lesser crimes differently depending on who does it. But I in no way meant authoritarian rules.
"Conservative" hasn't meant anything for a long time and it gets worse every year. Being opposed to the progressives these days often bears no relation to anything Burke thought, and is positively radical and anti-Burkean on those matters where the progressives triumphed long ago and made reversing those entrenched mistakes too painful to achieve. "The Right" probably is better these days, being a factious and quarrelsome weak coalition of single-issue counter-revolutionaries.
You are just plain wrong here. Conservative (with a small c) means - in the Western context - Burke and more recently Kirk and Oakshott among others. Sure the word may get misapplied by sloppy people but then so can ALL words. Words like 'Love', 'Hate', 'Truth', 'Lies' all get misused but that doesn't make them meaningless.
"Conservative" hasn't meant anything for a long time and it gets worse every year.
Couldn’t agree more. The barbarism / civilization axis may actually be the one thread holding together this weak coalition, but even that is fading as disagreement increases about what civilization means and what aspects are to be preserved.
Liberals assume that everything good that has ever happened was the result of social reforms, but that's not actually supported by history. Most of the good things that have happened over the last 200-300 years were the result of science, technology, or socioeconomic changes that were not policies and no one opposed them, nor did anyone vote for them - they just happened. Nobody opposed water filtration or the polio vaccine. Conservatives oppose things, that's what makes them conservatives, but they have mostly opposed bad things and only occasionally opposed good things.
Conservatives have often opposed liberal social policies, but those policies generally had negative aspects that conservatives foresaw, so they weren't all wrong. Even civil rights laws had unintended consequences that most people would agree have been negative, though it may be hard to say publicly.
As to your other example - "equality" between men and women - that is so huge a thing that none of us can possibly say what it foretells, or even what it really means.
Arnold Kling generally avoids commenting on current events right away, but in the wake of the Congressional testimony of 3 women college presidents a few days ago, using the issue of giving women equal rights to illustrate the drawbacks of conservatives opposing social change may be an example of bad timing. On his daily video this morning, Scott Adams, paraphrasing Greta Van Susteren, said that the testimony of these 3 college presidents set back the women's movement 50 years. Also, their selection was likely the result of exclusionary DEI criteria, and they exemplified the 'crisis of competence' in this country. And yes, I am in the habit of listening to Adams -- he can be annoying, especially on topics where he lacks expertise, but on many issues I find him to have better instincts than those of most 'fantasy intellectuals,' and at least he is funny at a time when having a sense of humor is a useful antidote to the absurdity of life in America these days. Finally, with reference to the college president example, the vestiges of feminism in me make me wonder whether men deliberately choose incompetent women in leadership roles to make themselves look better by comparison.
Arnold wrote: "What conservatives are reluctant to discuss is what went right with social change up until the point when the claim it all started to go wrong." Here's a response: the civil rights movement led by MLK initially sought equal rights before the law by breaking up Jim Crow, which was a state imposed system of discrimination. However, it soon became apparent that this was not going to solve the many pathologies of black culture nor result in equality of outcomes. The movement was abruptly corrupted by being re-engineered into political allocation of preferences. The ideal of equal treatment became nothing more than moral cover for grift.
This transformation was baked into the laws from the state as well as the logic behind most Civil Rights leader assumptions.
MLK himself had already become a radical by the late 1960s. He would have become Al Sharpton if he lived.
I'm late to the party, but I'll bite:
1. Libertarians don't want to discuss the importance of social cohesion and shared values. The "10% Bee" aspect of humans is something they don't care for and don't think much about, but its implications are far-reaching.
2. Conservatives don't question or acknowledge the degree to which their attitudes are grounded in whatever cultural practices happened to prevail during their formative years. In fact, I'm not even sure this qualifies as a thing which cannot be discussed. Most aren't aware of it in the first place.
3. I could write a dissertation on where I think progressive thinking gets stuck in the ditch, but suffice it to say that group differences are real and important, cultural differences impact individual and collective outcomes, and unintended consequences are real. Progressives seem incapable of acknowledging, much less grappling with any of the above.
2. How to describe ... so as a little girl I wasn't allowed to watch "Charlie's Angels". Or Bond movies. Mother thought they presented women in a bad light. She wouldn't have thought of this on her own, would have read it somewhere.
Overall in the 70s things were egalitarian where kids were concerned. Girls and boys dressed much alike. In movies and TV the girl archetype tended toward tomboy. (Even one of the Angels was a tomboy - I discovered this later, when I finally got to watch a few moments of an episode or two: I remember an Angel, the prettiest one, was undercover as a hot dog vendor, in a plaza, doing a sting I guess, and the camera work snapped from one person to another, and back around again, this sufficing for action, for about ten minutes, and it was super boring though she looked cute in her hot dog outfit.)
Feminism was in full flush and girliness - was mostly just out. Hair was natural, makeup was minimal and meant to replicate a "natural" sunkissed look. "Nails" were no one's obssession, nor something you paid for; at most some girls might paint their own pink. Everybody was skinny then. The idea of altering your body would have cut against the whole aesthetic, at least in young women.
Girls were supposed to try to be smart, although school wasn't that big a deal.
The outdoorsy girl was very much a thing too.
This was the wholesome vestige of hippiedom, I guess.
You can imagine my amazement when I noticed, around 2000, that girls were crying on TV, their mascara melting, over bachelors they'd just met; they were competing and cat-fighting to see who would be top model; they were going on reality shows to win plastic surgery, etc. And the music industry had been given over to a basically amusical genre that chiefly wrote lyrics in which the female archetype was essentially "whore" or "cunt" with every possible degradation.
And it has only gotten stranger since then.
Now does this make me, the most conservative woman in a tri-state area, the Last Feminist?
I didn't mean to imply it was always wrong to favor or prefer the norms/attitudes of one's youth; I just meant it was wrong to reflexively do so.
No, I know you didn't. It is hard to avoid, though, and all part of (mostly) having to live in the world as you find it. I was just having a little fun at the thought. I'm reminded of how ridiculous the National Review used to make itself way back when - but not way back when enough, if you take my meaning - complaining about rock and roll.
Libertarians do not want to talk about the patterns of who supports or opposes libertarian ideas, and relatedly, what is required to sustain the social conditions that support a critical mass of pro-libertarian sentiments and policies.
"What conservatives do not want to discuss is the history of social change."
That's like seen vs unseen fallacy as a condition of history. One pays attention to the changes, but one doesn't even think about the billions of things that *didn't* change, but which could have and perhaps will soon in the infinitely vast space of human cultural possibilities. Is the score for this history -4, 6 out of 10, or a ratio of a million to one? Not to mention that the jury is always still out as regards these changes, and I strongly suspect that future human 'conservatives' will be more than happy to talk about many of them and how they rolled them back.
How about the unsayables for Somewheres and Anywheres.
Possible corollary (someone else may have made this point in a prior discussion): each tribe views the others through their own blind spot/the others' lenses. Progressives see conservatives as barbaric, threatening Enlightenment ideals and institutions; conservatives sees progressives as oppressors, using institutions of academia/media/law to keep others down. Libertarians view conservatives and progressives as blocking social change toward voluntary institutions and as oppressing individual choice.
Are you kind of saying that each group views the others are hypocrites on their own axes?
I hadn't thought of it that way but yes, that's probably true! I'm thinking it's probably not conscious, and is kind of an implicit acknowledgement of the other axes' legitimacy. Maybe even a potential bridge between the tribes.
Progressives have built-in ascendancy because their rationales and policies are self-reinforcing. If the policy doesn't work, there is a ready answer: the cause must be inadequate funding. Big government by its nature creates entrenched constituencies and cultures of dependence.
Conservatives have built-in support. Status-quo bias in psychology is a real thing. News media thrive on fear. Big government appeals to conservatives, too, via entrenched entitlements for retirees and the military-industrial complex.
Thus, progressives and conservatives have a lot of overlap in big government. The conflicts between them are at the margins, never far from the median voter.
In my experience, among the three groups, libertarians are least likely to avoid open discussion that comes to grips with challenges, if only because they are few -- and splintered -- in a sea of mainly progressive and conservative discourses. Nonetheless, to quote Arnold Kling, libertarians, even when they aren't splintered, have no reliable political friends because they reject big government.
A nifty summary - good work. Having grown up under the sway of a strongly conservative GOP dad, and worked for 35 years as a public school teacher and been immersed in the pervasive cultural POV that accompanies that (on the institutional level), I’ve had to navigate a lot of rhetorical truth-obstacles over the years, and I appreciate your ability to boil it down. Anyone who seeks a broad range of perspectives and input must also develop a keen BS detector and employee it rigorously. But it’s also clear you’re treading a narrow path to do so - a necessity, perhaps, because the weeds are so thick all around. Here’s a question: was that path wider in the past, or were those of us who remember when it seemed to be that way simply deluded? And is there actually any remnant of a universal moral dimension that might serve as a common point of contact between people from different camps?
Well yes, but each tribe is a manifestation of what the other two tribes are NOT. That is, any one tribe doesn’t exert much thought toward what the other two tribes are saying. For example, conservatives don’t think much about and don’t want to talk about the truthful aspects of the progressive oppressor-oppressed axis. So on and so forth with the other two tribes.
Is this not more important than the weak spots proposed here?
By introducing these new weak spots, you’re saying that there’s only one weak spots that applies to each tribe. Shouldn’t there be at least two weak spots for each tribe? At least for the sake of your goal which is to get the tribes to be open-minded to the viewpoint of the other two tribes.
"conservatives don’t think much about and don’t want to talk about the truthful aspects of the progressive oppressor-oppressed axis."
Be specific, give a particular example of some social disparity the progressives correctly attribute to oppressors oppressing the oppressed, and which conservatives erroneously reject.
I would cite Jim Crow. Barry Goldwater and Milton Friedman rationalized doing nothing about it.
It's telling you say "Jim Crow" and not "Civil Rights". Barry Goldwater and Milton Friedman were right about "Civil Rights" in the long run. It meant the outlawing of freedom of association.
Let's say we debate everything that has happened in "Civil Rights" after 1965. Would you defend it on the whole?
Jim Crow ended a long time ago; how about today?
Conservatives don’t want to talk about this: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program.
They don’t want to talk about rectal feeding.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html
But Feinstein was right to talk about it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/us/feinstein-torture-report.html
Republicans didn't want to talk about Iraq until Trump said aloud what everybody was thinking. Suddenly, everyone could admit that the war was a huge mistake and Bush et al were terrible and all the bad things that happened were in fact bad. What you are going to see now is the progressives flip to defending whatever nasty abuses the now solidly BlueGov CIA and FBI get up to, while the right tries constantly to criticize and cripple them.
Yes. Because enough of the truth and evidence had come out by then, Trump could say it.
Opposition to a specific, highly flawed and overbroad Federal law is demonized as “doing nothing”. Goldwater and most Republicans had supported a more focused Civil Rights Act in 1960 which, thanks to racist Democrats didn’t pass. That’s demonstrably not nothing.
Big government folk often support a Big Fed Govt program to solve every problem, and falsely claim, as Kling does here, that opposition to a lousy program is equal to doing nothing, thus supporting the problem.
I’d guess that Friedman was against Jim Crow laws requiring racial discrimination, but in favor of private businesses having the freedom to discriminate, or not, for any reason. I would argue that freedom to discriminate would allow discrimination, alongside non-discrimination, so some lunch counters would discriminate, and some would not. Those with less discrimination would, over time, be more profitable and expand, while those which discriminate would be shamed, and celebrated, for being racist.
The USA in 2023 would likely be less racist had all government discrimination been forbidden, but all private business discrimination been allowed. Truths about racial and sexual differences, in averages, would be more discussed. And more folk would be judged on their individual character, and behavior, as was dreamed of by MLK.
Demonization of freedom is why America is giving it up. Even by folk who claim to support freedom in general.
How about “some businesses engage in wage theft”? I’d say progressives overestimate the number of businesses where it happens, and include stuff in the concept that isn’t wage theft. But it does happen and conservatives mainly assume that people just quit those jobs.
How about “public services like schools, police, emergency services, and environmental services under-serve neighborhoods that are predominantly black and brown”? I can’t speak to how true that is, but conservatives seem to scoff at it. Libertarians would agree with the proposition and chalk it up to predictable government failure (like market failure).
I don't scoff about the 2nd paragraph, have thought about this plenty.
The police example is backward. Peaceful, boring neighborhoods get no policing if they are part of a big city (and not a tiny-municipality within the city with their own police force). Thus the zip code I used to live in had regular, nightly theft: cars, contents of cars, bicycles, mail, Christmas decorations, anything not nailed down. The police were working the areas with more dysfunction than just cars being stolen. They generally did not even have time to come over and take reports; usually people were advised to do it online. They were working accidents and responding to 911 calls, and I assure you those calls come from your notionally "under-served" neighborhoods, or from homeless encampments.
"Schools" makes no sense. The schools are wherever the children are. And surely by now someone on an econ blog has confronted the truth about per-pupil spending.
Finally, there was an annual tradition in that city where the media would trot out the idea that "black, brown" (now mostly Hispanic) parts of town were underserved with public pools. There would be an announcement that some or other new pool was coming or being refurbished with fancy slides and stuff. I always thought this was funny because each time they would dutifully make a map, and it would plainly show lots of dots for city pools in just those parts they were claiming were underserved; and hardly any in the rest of town. I was fascinated that people could simultaneously make a map, and not look at it.
My parents live in the 4th largest city in the nation. It's a leafy middle-class neighborhood. They expect no services at all. For many years there's been a hump in the road near the entrance/exit causing you to have to swerve into the oncoming lane at a blind curve. I found it had grown to be about 4 feet high this year, and I don't honestly know whether I was more annoyed by the safety hazard or by the fact that the people of that neighborhood literally don't expect anything and so not one of the few thousand people resident therein had phoned it in in all this time. I finally went to the online portal of this city I don't even live in, and reported it.
It was fixed within a couple weeks.
In addition to the municipal taxes they pay, for police who rarely darken the neighborhood, my parents pay extra, privately, for a constable to drive around. They pay, in other words, for the attention other neighborhoods receive from the police.
It would literally never occur to them that you are supposed to see a policeman from time to time, because you pay for their services.
I’ll pick one that I’m at least a little convinced about: schools. The problem isn’t so much money per pupil. It’s that school district permit crap teachers at schools where no one expects much of the students. Higher income parents would historically at least complain more vocally. Perhaps that’s less true now, but I’d also say that district that vote Democrat are unlikely to criticize the teachers unions. These days, you also get higher income parents exercising exit to private and home schooling.
For the argument on policing to make sense, I think you have to take the geographical incidence of crime into account, which is a results measure confounded with underlying criminality. You’d expect government to try to achieve the same incidence of criminality everywhere. That’s not the result you get. So the argument is that governments are under policing brown and black areas where crime rates are higher. There’s a lot of stuff in there that is awkward for progressives to argue, so it’s probably a bad example.
The term "under-policing" would then be meaningless. They already have to "over-police" those areas, and zero-police most other areas - if they are "under-policing" it is relative to other things in the municipal budget that they would need to cut out. And police/fire/EMT is generally the biggest item, I believe.
Hillsdale College would prefer not have a Warning rating from FIRE and are actively trying to get it removed or changed.
https://www.thefire.org/news/why-hillsdale-earns-warning-rating-fire
https://rankings.thefire.org/rank/school/hillsdale-college
Do some students at Hillside feel oppressed?
"When classmates discuss topics like abortion or healthcare in class, I have often felt like I should not share my complete opinions on the matter."
– Class of 2025
"In general I have had to suppress my opinions about topics like the LGBTQIA+ community as a lot of people I have encountered have had been negative towards it. For example I did not express my opinion in front of my theology class as the professor had previously stated that he though homosexuality was a sin and I did not feel comfortable engaging with him."
– Class of 2024
"As a Catholic with a lot of Protestant friends, they can be pretty ruthless when it comes to mocking my religion, to the point where I rarely if not ever speak up about my faith or defend it."
– Class of 2025
"The administration bans all forms of protest and dissent, which leads to muted student backlash when they host rather heinous political thinkers in their forums, like their CCAs"
– Class of 2024
"When President Trump was elected and in the months leading up to his inauguration, campus seemed very hostile towards anyone who would potentially disagree on political issues."
– Class of 2023
"The topic of abortion. If I am not pro life in every circumstance, I am looked down upon."
– Class of 2025
"Some students are too rigidly adhered to the Bible, sometimes it makes it difficult for contemporary discussions."
– Class of 2023
"In my politics class I felt like it’s just not worth it. I wouldn’t be learning anything new or gaining any favors with my prof so I just kept quiet"
– Class of 2025
Great point, but let me push back one more time.
This is a difficult issue to see clearly. Let’s go back to the main thrust of my first comment on this post: each tribe is a manifestation of what the other two tribes are NOT. What does this look like at Hillsdale?
Well, look at the viewpoint diversity of the student body: there are 12 conservative students for every progressive student according to FIRE. Arnn doesn’t dispute this so it’s probably true.
So, in a typical discussion class of 24 students, we’re hearing 2 students that have a different view than the 22 that have a similar view. Crudely speaking, but go with it please. That’s a huge bias. How great can the Socratic dialogue be if the viewpoint ratio is 24 to 2?
So FIRE may not say this explicitly, but viewpoint ratio makes a huge difference. It can make all the difference. See these one-liners below.
1. Sometimes group loyalty is valued over truth. (Dan Williams)
2. People often hesitate to speak truth if doing so will likely lower their status. (Rob Henderson)
3. In order to fit in, people gravitate towards saying and thinking, whatever sounds good. (Bryan Caplan)
4. We adopt false beliefs that enable us to belong. (Arnold Kling)
What should Arnn say? What doesn’t he want to talk about?
He should demonstrate or give an argument showing that a great deal of learning will occur even with a viewpoint ratio of 12 to 1.
Or he should say, “You’re right that viewpoint ratio is bad for Socratic dialogue. We need to change.”
Do progressives point this out by calling Hillsdale’s culture oppressive? Kind of. On paper they stand for diversity, but in action they are even more oppressive.
So, it’s up to libertarians to speak up.
Higher education in the USA is overwhelmingly dominated by the progressive viewpoint, and those who share that viewpoint have many options. Those with conservative views, not so much. Why would anybody who feels strongly about LBTQ+ and abortion rights go to Hillsdale? What FIRE or libertarians have to say about Hillsdale College is trivial. The point is that libertarians have failed to preserve freedom of speech against progressive dogma in higher education as a whole.
What can I do to help preserve freedom of speech in higher education?
For starters I can point my kids away from colleges that have viewpoint ratios greater than 2 to 1, and with FIRE rankings better than 50. Everyone is free to choose their own threshold.
I can encourage other parents to send their kids to elementary and high schools that seek truth, and personal accountability. Here are two examples: Thales Academy currently enrolls 6000+ students, and Challenger School even more students. Check out the Top 15 Outcomes at Thales and their recent opening of Thales College. Check out the test scores at Challenger School, talk to their students about Lincoln’s statements to keep the Union together during the Civil War, and their celebration of the U.S. Constitution. Libertarians have done more than you probably know. We’re up against free public schools, so it’s not easy, but we’re taking care of ourselves.
https://www.thalesacademy.org
https://www.challengerschool.com
You could support a law which cuts off all public funding of every kind to any institution which disciplines students or faculty for speech the government itself would be prohibited from penalizing.
Wouldn't bother Hillsdale, they don't take public money. Every other place does. Free speech or shrink 99%. Radical. Serious.
Doesn't want to talk about it? Come on. Arnn wrote a whole opinion article in the Wall Street Journal explaining it! Put that one in the GPT grader, and also Fire's rebuttal.
I would say that conservatives don’t want to talk about the oppressive tendencies of their religions.
See The Book of Mormon, the New Testament or the Old Testament. Narratives within these books are not in accordance with the laws of physics.
Walk into most any evangelical, Latter-Day Saints or Catholic church service and listen for a physics-based discussion for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the means by which prophets communicate with god, how the human body came to be, where heaven is, how Satan opposes us, how Jesus turned water into wine, etc. You will not hear physics-based discussions on these topics. Progressives are right to point out that these doctrines have been used to murder, oppress, torture, and censor. Exposing the falsehoods of these books is bad for conservative Christianity. These conservatives don’t welcome these discussions in their churches, nor in their public or private schools, nor by their elected officials.
Equating conservatism with Mormonism suggests a pretty blinkered misconception of the philosophy of 99% of conservatives
America is a diverse country. The Saints make up a small fraction of the conservative population, but are not insignificant in cultural and political influence. Here are some statistics to consider.
Of all religions in America, the Saints are the most conservative, the most republican and most in favor of smaller government according to a large Pew Study. See statistics below.
As of 2023, there are nine LDS Church members serving in Congress; three in the Senate and six in the House of Representatives. All nine are members of the Republican Party.
BYU ranks as the #1 conservative universities in nation according to Niche.com.
BYU is one of the largest religious universities in America. BYU total enrollment is 82,000 compared to Hillsdale College’s 1,500 students.
BYU Provo 35,000 students
BYU Idaho 44,000 students
BYU Hawaii 3,000 students
Average SAT of entering student body is one of the highest in the country for a conservative college. From US News.
Hillsdale College: 1440
BYU Provo: 1375
Statistics from the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study
Conducted in 2007 and 2014, surveys more than 35,000 Americans from all 50 states about their religious affiliations, beliefs and practices, and social and political views.
% Members that identify as conservative as opposed to moderate or liberal
Mormon 61%
Evangelical Protestant 55%
Catholic 37%
Historically Black Protestant 36%
Orthodox Christian 34%
Muslim 22%
Jewish 21%
Jehovah's Witness 20%
Buddhist 16%
Hindu 14%
% Members favoring smaller government
Mormon 75%
Evangelical Protestant 64%
Orthodox Christian 61%
Mainline Protestant 59%
Catholic 48%
Hindu 40%
Jewish 40%
Buddhist 40%
Jehovah's Witness 32%
Historically Black Protestant 23%
Muslim 23%
% Members Republican
Mormon: 70%
Evangelical Protestant: 56%
Mainline Protestant 44%
Catholic 37%
Orthodox Christian 34%
Jewish 26%
Muslim 17%
Buddhist 16%
Hindu 13%
Historically Black Protestant 10%
Jehovah's Witness 7%
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/
Rankings of the Most Conservative Colleges in America according to Niche.
1. BYU
2. Liberty University
3. Bob Jones
4. Cedarville University
5. BYU Idaho
6. Grove City College
7. SMU
8. Colorado Christian University
9. North Greenville University
10. Utah State University
The two BYU campuses are both in the top five.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the wealthiest church in the world.
Here’s the headline in the WSJ.
The Mormon Church Amassed $100 Billion. It Was the Best-Kept Secret in the Investment World.
Corporation owned by Mormons
JetBlue Airways
Black & Decker Corporation
SkyWest Airlines
Marriott Hotels International, Inc
Utah is 67% Mormon
Idaho is 26% Mormon
Wyoming is 11% Mormon
Interesting stuff in its own way but what it says to me is that your (and Arnold Kling's) mis-characterisation of conservatism is something along these lines "a mentality rather alien to me that I don't much care to understand".
It seems like you both start from this position and work back from there. A much fairer definition would be "that 'language' most clearly articulated in modern times by the philosophers Russell Kirk and Michael Oakshott". (I do not, by the way, equate conservatism with the Republican Party - even less so with the British Tory Party.)
That wasn't what I asked, the question is about the models of how the human world works that provide different explanations for social observations. I'll give you an example. When a progressive sees less than 50% female representation in a profession, they see oppression and say it's due to discrimination against women, and if it wasn't for the discrimination, the number would indeed be 50%. Conservatives reject the oppression thesis and say that whatever there might have been to it in the past, going into the second quarter of the 21st century, it doesn't account for much.
So, what I'm asking for is an example like that, where the progressives are right, and the conservatives don't want to talk about it because they are wrong.
Yes, Progressives are wrong to say that every social ill is oppression, but Conservatives are wrong to just deny the problem. I don't know what the "right" proportion of CEOs or faculty of discipline X is, but "oppression" at earlier stages in the lives of people involved leads to the "wrong" proportion.
Please give a specific example with the wrong and right proportions.
I don't believe there is any significant oppression of women or minorities any more. 50 years ago, you could find examples, but today? Everything is slanted in their favor.
"I don't know what the 'right' proportion of CEOs or faculty of discipline X is" and "leads to the 'wrong' proportion" is illogical.
I think Kling's Three Languages book does what you say regarding discussing the strengths of each viewpoint. I don't remember it covering the weaknesses in the way here but maybe it does. Either way, I think there is value in both.
As for pointing out two weaknesses of each view, yes, sure. He could have said FAR MORE about each but I think the point here was to be brief and merely introduce the overview, not flesh out all the details.
Good point.
I think the book probably does discuss the weakness, but I feel this post would have been better to first repeat what is said in the book about the blind spots of each tribe, before introducing this new, slightly different framework. This post seems to differ slightly or use different terminology. So I’m basically asking for a clarification from Arnold, asking what the connection between this post and the book is. I think it just needs a few more paragraphs of transition or as you say THE TWO examples or the two blind spots for each tribe.
I have noticed that free market economists tend to believe that trade will resolve all conflicts between nations. No country, they argue, will want to go to war with a key trading partner. Yet history is full of counter examples: Russia and Ukraine, France and Germany, Japan and China, the Union and the Confederacy.
Yes, global trade has eliminated any *economic* excuse for war, but all too many remain: fear, hatred, ethnic and religious differences, national pride and honor, territorial disputes, or just a leader’s need to distract citizens from domestic problems. But free market economists tend to shut down when such “irrational” motives are broached.
I think that might be because so many free market economists were arguing against Marxism that they subconsciously came to agree (casually, not deeply) with economic materialism as an outlook.
That’s certainly plausible. “Look into the abyss long enough...”
It could also be that, as economists, they tend see to see everything through the lens of economics (if all you have is a hammer...).
Parallel to the popular culture war discussion is a conversation being had by old school materialist Marxists and right-wing free marketeers/relatively more capitalist. They share an assumption of political economy in society's driver's seat.
They seem to be a thin strata of smarty pants left and right gliding over drag queen story hour or sports fan blackface talking points.
Yeah. Now that old school Marxists and libertarians have nearly zero chance at running anything, they can jointly reminisce about the bad old days when their debates mattered. (I say, “they,” but ... ya know ...)
I've got sympathy for the lost causes
No doubt all three could be expanded quite a bit but even though I believe I lean more libertarian than conservative or liberal, I thought libertarian was the one that your description begged for more. In particular, the difficulty for a libertarian society to care for those who temporarily or more permanently can't care for themselves.
As for conservatives, what you said seemed a bit harsh and off target. I think they can't point to a moment when things went off the rails because there is no such moment and any attempt to pick one is certain to fail. Whatever their failings, I disagree with that one being on the list. It is a strawman.
Overall a great piece, weakest in your discussion of conservatism. “But if you look back in history, conservatives opposed such changes” - what are you talking about? This statement is so broad as to mean nothing. That said, I do grant your general point that conservatives lack a narrative that accounts for social change that they don’t wish to undo.
>I say that libertarians use rhetoric that treats liberty as opposed to coercion by the state.
Liberty is more philosophically complicated than most libertarians understand:
https://jclester.substack.com/p/liberty-in-itself-a-libertarian-viewpoint
Coercion is neither necessary nor sufficient to count as flouting someone’s liberty:
https://jclester.substack.com/p/coercion-and-libertarianism
The state is only the foremost violator of liberty:
https://jclester.substack.com/p/the-state-a-libertarian-viewpoint
There are countless non-state violations that libertarians also condemn.
>Libertarians denounce those who disagree with them as statists.
It is probably clearer to describe them as “authoritarians”.
>I think that what libertarians do not want to discuss is the topic of social cohesion. They (we) take it for granted that you can have a society with minimal government and plenty of social trust and constructive norm-following. We assume that conflicts will be settled peacefully by private actors. I don’t think that we pay enough attention to the nature of conflict and why disagreements over values and competition over status have so much emotional salience that our ideals are unrealistic.
To have a libertarian society it is necessary to have maximal private property and free markets. But, of course, that is not sufficient. It is also necessary, first, to have a libertarian culture that approximately understands and wants a libertarian society. And the only way for that to occur is for a critical mass of intellectuals (in the broadest sense) to be converted to libertarianism. In recent decades the world appears to be travelling in that direction—but with a very long road ahead still. I don’t notice reluctance among libertarian intellectuals to discuss “social cohesion” (but I do notice a lot of reluctance to discuss liberty in philosophical terms).