Now trumps all:
This is extremely bad news for America because it is very hard to have an effective democracy without compromise. But rising cross-partisan hostility means that Americans increasingly see the other side not just as wrong but as evil, as a threat to the very existence of the nation, according to Pew Research. Americans can expect rising polarization, nastiness, paralysis, and governmental dysfunction for a long time to come.
This is a warning for the rest of the world because some of the trends that have driven America to this point are occurring in many other countries, including: rising education and individualism (which make people more ideological), rising immigration and ethnic diversity (which reduces social capital and trust), and stagnant economic growth (which puts people into a zero-sum mindset).
This is extremely bad news for science and universities because universities are usually associated with the left. In the United States, universities have moved rapidly left since 1990, when the left-right ratio of professors across all departments was less than two to one. By 2004, the left-right ratio was roughly five to one, and it is still climbing. In the social sciences and humanities it is far higher. Because this political purification is happening at a time of rising cross-partisan hostility, we can expect increasing hostility from Republican legislators toward universities and the things they desire, including research funding and freedom from federal and state control.
They’ve made their bed.
Yikes. The Left-to-Right imbalance of faculty has multiplied several times since the 1990? I thought it was bad enough when I left grad school in ’88. Is it now required to be a Marxist to teach engineering?
No, but you have to “signal” a belief in Climate Change.
And diversity. Have you seen an application for any job at a college that didn’t demand you state your support of diversity?
If there’s rising individualism, I certainly haven’t noticed it.
This is a warning for the rest of the world because some of the trends that have driven America to this point are occurring in many other countries, including: rising education and individualism (which make people more ideological), rising immigration and ethnic diversity (which reduces social capital and trust), and stagnant economic growth (which puts people into a zero-sum mindset).
I think here, he’s thinking of the ongoing conflict between libertarian/individualism beliefs and relatively authoritarian beliefs (eg, NRA versus gun control). If there wasn’t widespread individualism, there wouldn’t be such a conflict. Still this seems a bit like saying if there wasn’t Christianity then there wouldn’t have been conflict between Christianity and Islam during the Middle Ages.
But there still might be religious conflict in that latter case between Europe and the Middle East just because of the large differences in the people, culture, environment, etc. Similarly, I don’t see presence or absence of individualism changing this thing.
My view here is that there are some valid contributing factors such as education or economic stagnation. But what seems to be going on fundamentally here is that there are dwindling common interests and common identities these days combined with zero sum thinking. For example, Haidt, the author of this essay mentioned religion and ethnicity, both which have greatly weakened in recent decades as a sense of identity.
Similarly, there’s little sense of regional identity either. A lot of people are highly mobile and no longer belong to any given place that they happen to reside in. And that same mobility often removes the workplace as being something one identifies by.
So as a result, our sense of right and wrong and our personal beliefs are one of the few things left by which we can identify ourselves. So I guess my take on the causes of ideological conflict are: a considerable reduction of means by which one can self-identify, zero sum thinking spurred in part by economic stagnation, enhanced ability to contract the ideas and beliefs one is exposed to (“echo chamber”), and a love for stories (such as the conflicts around the Thanksgiving table or villainization of parties with rival ideologies). It doesn’t help that a large portion of the population has little understanding nor interest in understanding other viewpoints that don’t fully agree with their own.
The only people compromising have been the right, who have compromised away so much that there’s nothing left to give. The left regard compromise as weakness, and will just come back the next year demanding more.
They’ve made their bed.
Looks like you’ve completely missed the main point being made:
This is extremely bad news for America because it is very hard to have an effective democracy without compromise. But rising cross-partisan hostility means that Americans increasingly see the other side not just as wrong but as evil, as a threat to the very existence of the nation, according to Pew Research. Americans can expect rising polarization, nastiness, paralysis, and governmental dysfunction for a long time to come.
Between them both sides have messed the bed they share.
True. If the right had refused to compromise decades ago, the world wouldn’t be in such a mess.
But, personally, I’m seeing far more agreement between right and left these days than I ever have before. The biggest change I’ve seen in my right-wing American acquaintances over the last year is that many have gone from trying to save the country to saying ‘let it burn, and we’ll build something better.’ And burning America to the ground is precisely what the left have been trying to do all that time.
I was referring to the universities. That’s all on the left.
Yep, you go pick what you want to justify you seeing the other side not just as wrong but as evil, and a lefty will go pick something else to justify them seeing the other side not just as wrong but as evil.
Here’s my take on the matter. It’s not Rand’s job. He can be as deeply hypocritical as you insinuate here. You’re not paying him to be fair or even handed. You’re not paying him to be open to other ideas. You’re not paying him to espouse critical thinking or encourage it in others. You’re not paying him to compromise or any of the things that might help this problem even a little bit.
But unless you are a perfect siphon of tax dollars in your society, you are paying colleges and universities to do and be these things.
There is a profound dereliction of duty here whereby universities are contributing greatly to one of the key problems they’re supposed to address! When institutions profoundly betray those that support them, then it is natural for bad things to happen, like lose of funding, loss of power, and loss of respect. They’ve made their bed.
Similarly, compromise is by mutual agreement. There’s a certain authoritarian outlook that thinks it is just fine to lie outrageously in order to achieve their goals.. For example, I’ve seen way too much cut and paste environmentalism rhetoric concerning nuclear power or oil pipelines, where problems remain exactly the same no matter the circumstances or mitigation efforts, to take that seriously.
The Communists are particularly notorious for this, resorting to lies from the start in order to get what they want.
So I’m supposed to compromise with ideologies that don’t compromise or will deceive or renege on compromises in order to get more power? No way. I’d rather a democracy without compromise than to compromise into a tyranny. Compromise requires give and take. There are a lot of parties which are only interested in taking.
You assume that government paralysis and dysfunction are a *bad* thing.
If you agree with Thomas Jefferson — “That government governs best, which governs least” — then anything which impedes the swift and steady flow of legislation and regulation is a good thing.
If paralysis stops the left from raising taxes and seizing guns and the “right” from further escalating the War on Immigration, it is a step toward the Jeffersonian ideal.
When even self-styled “conservatives” accept the premise that traditional principles are rendered obsolete by “the increased complexity of modern society,” gridlock becomes the best protection for our remaining freedoms.
In the United States, it may even be a more urgent problem than cross-racial prejudice.
That’s a humdinger of a last sentence. He spends the whole piece saying Race made no difference and then describes cross-racial prejudice as maybe an urgent problem??
This is a bit silly really. It’s not ideology that’s the problem, its poisonous ideology. The left is moving rapidly towards fascism and this should not be compromised with at all. If the left remained the pro-American left of the 50’s and 60’s and thought American greatness was a good thing, there would be no issue.
I don’t think that word fascism means what you think it means.
Fascism is a political/economic philosophy. It isn’t just about (or primarily about) foreign policy and whether you believe your nation is better than another one. (Hitler and Mousilini did not lack for a sense of national superiority.)
That is the problem with the Neo-(liberal/conservative) position. It says that America is exceptional but does not value the things that made America exceptional. Neos merely long for a return to the days when the Left favored a strong foreign policy. They have “no issue” with heading down the road to serfdom, as long as we *voluntarily* becomes serfs under an American ruler. But there’s nothing exceptional about a nation of serfs.
We followed the German example for education in the 19th century, now it’s time to follow the Japanese example – stop funding social science, gender/race “studies”, and non western civ oriented humanities in general. Problem solved.