I have been thinking about this. During the era of Vietnam protests, politics was quite heated. I would describe it as confrontational, with traces of violence. The tactics today strike me as milder (or subtler). However, I think we were better off back then in two ways.
1. The vast majority of the American people were repelled by confrontations with traces of violence, and they expressed this through voting for Richard Nixon, particularly his landslide re-election in 1972. I hate to give Nixon credit for anything, but he did provide a vehicle through which the silent majority got its message across. Today, it may be the case that most people are sick of partisanship, but it is less likely that they will find a vehicle with which to express that. Primaries being what they are, could we wind up in 2016 with Ted Cruz vs. Elizabeth Warren? Even if a centrist were elected, would the polarization in Congress remain too intense to be overcome?
2. Back then, elite individuals changed their minds and reversed course. A lot of prominent supporters of the Vietnam War, including Senators who voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, recanted and turned against the war. The economists who had enthusiastically supported “incomes policies” (meaning wage and price controls) and pooh-poohed monetary policy as an inflation-fighting tool recanted, based on experience. I don’t see that sort of mind-changing being possible today. If Obamacare ends up helping millions more people than it harms, will its opponents recant? If Obamacare ends up harming millions more people than it helps, will its supporters recant?
I am most worried about problem (2), the way that people are closing their minds. I have said that very few bloggers or newspaper columnists seek to communicate with people on the other side or to open minds of people on their own side. Instead, the goal seems to be to ensure the opposite–that people on your own side keep their minds closed. You reinforce mind closure by demonizing the other side, using ad hominem and straw-man arguments, and by working intensively to reinforce your side’s narrative through using spin, denial, and bullying.
It is my guess that the political split in this country is not as large as it was a few decades ago. The big issues of the day are not the Great Society of the Vietnam War, but comparatively penny-ante stuff like Obamacare and gay marriage.
The substantive changes to the day-to-day lives of Americans are much less likely to change than they were in the era of draft cards, gas lines, and Medicaid.
What is different between now and then is the cultural and demographic split.
Fifty years ago people lived in more culturally and economically diverse neighborhoods. Fifty years of land use regulations and university admissions has given us the Big Sort.
We now have three Americas that simply do not interact with each other.
1: We have well-off liberal America, which values status seeking via education and culture.
2: We have suburban American, which values children, and thus open space and wealth preservation.
3: We have the underclass.
These three groups have segregated themselves geographically, economically, and culturally. They live in separate worlds, view separate media, live in separate counties, have separate values, but are forced to share one federal government.
The problem now is not that we disagree politically. It’s that we just plain don’t like each other.
Something to be mindful of is the full weight of “it’s very difficult to convince a man of something if his salary depends on his not believing you” and collateral reciprocal rules.
For senators who recanted on the war, it is likely they came to perceive that their continued salary depended on their recanting – that is, refusing to sway with public opinon was a way to exit politics.
For a blogger whose real job discription is “provide a focal point for anti-democratic thought and argument”, then no matter what their view, it will never *be their job* to admit that the ACA might be a good idea. Likewise, for a blogger whose job description is “provide a focal point for anti-republican and restributive thought and argument”, admitting the ACA is a failure will never *be part of their job*.
On the other hand, such changes in views might well be the job of a politician who wishes to remain in office.
For anyone trying to do real science, especially if their have tenure, changing their mind could well be a way to keep or grow a job, rather than to be marginalized.
So I am not sure more people hold or argue unalterable viewpoints now (though it might be), rather, I wonder if more people are compensated/aligned/identify with jobs/groups/parties which are by nature built around such things.
By the way – I think the web is likely to make the issue worse rather than better. If I get some reward (followers, attention, money, an outlet, whatever) by writing on a particular point of view, it may be very very hard to change.
In the print era, such selection forces as newspaper editors and newspaper circulation could in effect edit such writing. In the web era, if you can afford an ISP link you can be a published author.
Or beyond that, demonizing anyone on their side that doesn’t adopt the most extreme position, but that is self limiting, shrinking to minority status, contenting those who find complaint and sense of oppression better than attempting rule and being forced to compromise. Extremity is just an attempt to budge the needle and when extremists forget that they end up moving it in the opposite direction through irrelevance. There is less difference among population views than between parties and politics and especially extremists.
“If Obamacare ends up helping millions more people than it harms, will its opponents recant?”
I think you’re missing something fundamental in asking that question. Whether or not Obamacare is beneficial overall, it will have harmed me, so no, I won’t recant.
Your question is a little like asking if, given a policy that killed rich people over 50 in order to harvest their organs for transplants for poor people under 30 that was shown to help millions on balance, that the rich people over 50 ought to recant their opposition. I don’t think so.
Arnold, I’m curious whether you have any theories on what brought about the change you describe in #2. Fragmentation of the national media? The fall of the Soviet Union and the ideological implications thereof? Or maybe this is just what coalition-building looks like in an advanced democracy.
My first thought is “insecurity.” It’s harder to admit that you are wrong when you feel under threat. And perhaps mainstream leaders of both parties feel threatened as evidence mounts that they do not have clear understanding or useful solutions to today’s problems.
A second thought might be “security”. In our post-scarcity, welfare-state, single-superpower world, there is frankly very little actually at stake day-to-day in most of these debates. So people can blithely indulge their wildly unfounded opinions without harm or regret.
All demagoguery, all the time.
Steve Sailer made roughly the same suggestion recently: when a people face little or no outside threats, they turn to fighting amongst themselves for power, status, money, etc.
I would say that it is a combination of steady improvements in the technology of politics coupled with a Hayekian sorting of the political classes whereby the worst rise to the top.
Arnold:
“And perhaps mainstream leaders of both parties feel threatened as evidence mounts that they do not have clear understanding or useful solutions to today’s problems.”
Threatened in what way, with what (particular to them) “undesirable” consequences? Or, do you mean by the consequences of their actions or inaction?
The evidence of limitations of knowledge has always been on display, but that has never determined the conduct of those who would play at the role of “leaders,” as defined by Michael Oakeshott.