Readers suggested that I check out these two posts:
1. James Pethokoukis on Arthur Brooks. Brooks writes,
the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools.
Brooks appears to be suggesting that conservatives adopt the oppressor-oppressed language when talking about entitlements and about school choice. My guess is that this will not be successful. I do not think that most ordinary people respond so much to the rhetoric of the three axes. And I don’t think that political elites can be talked into changing sides with different rhetoric.
Most of the energy in political discussions goes toward closing the mind of people on your own side. This seems to work, because elites on all sides are pretty closed-minded.
Of course, if you ask me what might be successful for conservatives, I do not have an answer.
My hypothesis is that rightism is what happens when you’re optimizing for surviving an unsafe environment, leftism is what happens when you’re optimized for thriving in a safe environment…. Leftism wins over time because technology advances over time which means societies become more secure and abundant over time.
Read the whole thing. I think there is a little bit there that is correct. That is, I think that conservativism tends to include a tendency to worry that we could go down the tubes. In terms of the civilization-barbarism axis, conservatives see many routes back to barbarism.
However, I do not think that either progressives or conservatives would recognize themselves in Alexander’s mirror. Progressives also can be pessimistic–about the distribution of income and the environment, for example. And conservatives are optimistic along some dimensions.
My goal with the three-axis model is not to explain away someone else’s beliefs. Instead, the goal is to describe political beliefs in a way that reflects how each side talks about issues, particularly as they reach a settled opinion.
Professor Kling,
My understanding would be that this oppressed-oppressor axis has been wildly successful in the past, based on its political results. Is there any reason to think libertarians couldn’t harness it equally as well?
When people see and understand how the machinery of the State crushes children and people, at least in my experience, they open up to libertarian arguments in ways that they never would have before.
By ‘harness’, do you mean adopting the language/rhetoric or adopting the philosophy? It would seem (though I must defer to Arnold) that the language used might be similar, however the philosophic bent would diverge right at the point of coming up with a solution (such as transferring wealth or power to the ‘oppressed’ through coercion for example). As he says in the last line, ‘My goal with the three-axis model is… to describe political beliefs in a way that reflects how each side talks about issues, particularly as they reach a settled opinion.’. IOW, how each side might arrive at ‘this is what’s wrong/right with the world, and this is how to fix/maintain it’.
Brooks real agenda is driving out the social conservatives by occupying their “social issues” territory. No more of that depressing talk about abortion or gay marriage, what Brooks sneeringly calls “minority moral viewpoints.” The words justice, virtue, moderation, and self-restraint don’t appear in the article, and he refers disparagingly to “bourgeois morality” and “sexual purity.” He does talk about cutting entitlements, school choice (what’s wrong with my neighborhood school?), global free trade, property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship. Global free trade? That’s never a winning issue. Rule of law, property rights – that’s like running on clean water. It’s sort of taken for granted. It’s the same bloodless “you’ll eat your capitalism and like it” agenda that Romney just ran on, and lost. Brooks is clueless.
Am I wrong; or do I correctly sense in Brooks original article in the WSJ that there should be recognition and acceptance of “collective obligations,” such as collective responsibilities?
However, as Hayek concluded: “I am not a “Conservative.”
Optimism and pessimism can simply be personality traits that people exhibit completely independent of their political leanings. Or they can simply be a product of present circumstances. How many progressives were feeling positively gloomy in 2005? How many conservatives are today?
Side note: Pethokoukis’ thesis is partly negated in his first sentence quoted above: “the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens.”
That is, I could rephrase as “the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly – it is that we might run out of the money needed for them to work.”