If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case?
Pointer from Bryan Caplan. The linked essay is long but worth your time.
Later, Hanania writes,
Those who identify on the right are happier, less mentally ill, and more likely to start families. Perhaps political activism is often a sign of a less well-adjusted mind or the result of seeking to fill an empty void in one’s personal life. Conservatives may tell themselves that they are the normal people party, too satisfied and content to expend much time or energy on changing the world. But in the end, the world they live in will ultimately reflect the preferences and values of their enemies.
My father interpreted Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer as saying something similar. That is, people who are dissatisfied with their lives are likely to blame the social system for their personal unhappiness and join radical movements.
The Hanania article makes a very strong case for why all the institutions are leftist, but what I really want to know is why leftists seem more and more out of touch with reality. In the past, when the main issue was socialism, I thought of believers as misguided. It seemed like most of them had good intentions but just ignored all the evidence that socialism didn’t work, and in fact could be downright dangerous. These days, it’s a lot harder for me to see good intentions behind things like “cancel culture” and critical race theory. And a lot of the positions regarding sex and transgender issues are so incredibly anti-scientific that I don’t even know what to think. (What was the recent thing? There’s no consensus about how to tell the sex of a baby? Holy cow!) How does Hanania’s theory explain something like that?!
As a person on the left, it is important to understand no one on the left is interested in socialism.
I often felt that those on the right are simply afraid. Justice and equality platforms are only ideas. When I watch right-wing opinion shows on Fox I am amazed at the fear-mongering and odd euphemisms such as “cancel culture”. Fear-based arguments are the norm. The only way the right can keep voters going to the polls for them is to scare them into thinking the left wants Socialism and “cancel culture” (whatever that is).
If firing a person from his job because he gave a $10 donation to a cause you don’t like isn’t “cancel culture”, just what would you call it?
Your last sentence would be more accurate if you said *or the left* as well. After all, irrational fear of systemic racism or murderous police (who are about as likely to kill a black man as a lightening strike) or myths like ‘rape culture’ hiding in the bushes on every college. Politics of any variety is almost always primarily about fear and hatred of an Other.
As a person on the left, it is important to understand no one on the left is interested in socialism.
Sorry, I stopped reading after this.
He actually has a point insofar as traditional socialism is concerned with the working class and the contemporary Western left is unconcerned with, even hostile to, the working class. See Against the Managers.
Socialism isn’t defined as “concern for the working classes.” Lenin didn’t actually care about the working classes, but was still a socialist.
@Mark – Whether Lenin actually believed what he said is difficult to judge (like any politician), but he certainly talked a lot about labor, workers, etc. And “Workers of the world, unite!” is a fundamental socialist slogan. Meanwhile, billion-dollar corporations are promoting Black Lives Matter with no apparent concern that the means of production might be socialized.
Captalism vs. socialism was the struggle of the late 20th century. What’s going on now is something significantly different.
The couple of years, especially the last year of COVID, convinced me that the left is evil rather than misguided. Doing sex change operations on children is worse than Carthaginians hurling their own children into the fire to appease Moloch. It’s so evil it actually makes you wonder if God and the Devil are real (since such evil is so malevolent and pure it almost has to have a spiritual source).
I used think leftism was bad for people trying to start families and that their demographic policies might cause problems in a few decades, but I didn’t think they would destroy everything immediately. I was wrong to not be more worried.
Are sex change operations performed on children? I really dont think so? If I am wrong I will rethink my priors.
In the past I know doctors, when confronted with ambiguous sex organs, might “choose a sex” for the child. I hope this practice has been eliminated.
I think the fundamental reason for the difference is that left-leaning occupations suffer from more elite overproduction, in Peter Turchin’s sense, than right-leaning occupations. Universities are churning out huge numbers of humanities graduates who (1) went to college with the (incorrect) belief that it would end in a decent middle- to upper-middle class job (a belief that society encourages) and (2) took out enough student loans that a working-class lifestyle is no longer possible for them. I think those graduates are the core of the highly-engaged left. See also Freddie Deboer’s It’s all just displacement.
Peter Turchin’s assertion of elite overproduction is a dubious claim. Defining elite as having a credential that 100 years ago was rare and thus valued today is unfounded. A more accurate assessment maybe be that society is producing more individuals who do not feel that there is a role for them given their desire to lord over others. This is certainly not because of a college education. The phenomenon is seen as early as junior high school as students demand all sorts of social change. Some may recall a certain Swedish lady who is busy lecturing the world on the great peril that awaits us from the dangers of global warming. There are many such examples.
I would define “elite overproduction” as “the creation of a significant class which has been socialized to expect a significantly higher social status than is reasonably achievable, and is accordingly not content”. I’d certainly say we have it.
Thunberg just seems to be a typical kid with Asperger’s, frustrated that everyone is playing social games instead of fixing a very real problem. The only thing she’s wrong about is that she expected adults to be able to fix the problem.
As a classical liberal who cares about politics in today’s America, China is the main reason why I’m sitting on the sidelines for now. If my understanding of the geopolitical situation is correct, if the Democrats fail to rein wokeness in themselves, the resulting reduction in US power is not going to bode well for the multinational corporations currently supporting them. (And if my understanding is incorrect, I’m not qualified to fight.)
Tanner Greer notes that I’m far from alone in making this observation: see the parenthetical in the 5th paragraph of https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-problem-of-new-right.html .
However, I’m comfortable with permanently leaving the US if the Democrats fail. If you aren’t, your mileage may vary.
Why do you care so much about China?
I can certainly see how losing a war would be bad. And I can see how the PRC has a lot of flaws I wouldn’t want to live under.
But my own society has a lot of flaws I don’t like living under. All in all, I wonder to what extent China has more freedom than in America, especially after adjusting for the realities of their still being poorer and the realities that imposes.
I’ll admit I’ve never been to China. I’ve been to richer Asian countries like Japan and Singapore, which I’ve been every impressed by. And I’ve grown up around lots of Koreans. Most of these countries would be “literally Hitler” by the standards of the western Overton Window these days, but I found them just fine. Maybe China is worse (even my brief stay in Beijing airport made me feel that was the case), but overall I just can’t work up much dread for the idea of China taking over Taiwan or what have you.
Nobody in China hates me. Nobody in China blames me for things I never did and problems I never caused. Nobody in China believes there are infinite genders, and demands I teach that to me kids in school. I’ve got about as much interest in America winning a war against China as someone in Austria Hungry in WW1 has an interest in winning the war. It beats losing…but I wouldn’t want to go over the top to save the Archduke.
I care about Western civilization; but Western civilization is larger than any specific country. It may be time to let the US lose its leading position and serve as a cautionary example to others. Peter Thiel has noted that China’s diplomacy has been “weirdly autistic”; there is plenty of room for countries that remain(/become) aligned with classical liberalism to rise while a woke US declines.
As long as a woke US is not powerful enough to suppress all global competition, this seems like the likely outcome in the event of Democrat failure. In this context, it is sufficient for China to serve as a blunt object that’ll break any attempt by a woke US to entrench its ideology globally.
I hate to break this to you, but the Chinese Communist Party has been playing the nationalist angle hard for the past few years. Your estimate that nobody in China hates you or blames you for things you never did is off by several hundred million . Quite a few believe that the coronavirus was a biowarfare attack on China by America (yes, it’s stupid, but so is Qanon – people believe dumb things).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-American_sentiment_in_mainland_China#Trump_administration
Republicans may get around half the votes, but those votes are not all Republicans.
35 to 50% of eligible adults don’t vote at all.
Lorena Boebert only has to appeal to a majority of a minority of a minority to get elected to the house in her district. Easy for her to pose, ISIS like, in front of her weaponry. You won’t see the CEO of Wells Fargo posing like that.
A corporation wants to sell to everybody. It must recruit workers from the community in which it does business. It needs kids to be excited about their products. Or whatever. They dont have the luxury of turning off 75% of the market when the remaining 25% is not going to keep them in business anyway.
“A corporation wants to sell to everybody.”
Yeah, that used to be the case, anyway. One of the disturbing things about recent times is that a lot of big corporations don’t seem worried anymore about pissing off half of their potential customers.
But its not half. Most people dngaf about politics when choosing a home improvement store to buy their hinges in.
Maybe it’s a third or a quarter, not a half, but the point stands. In the past, most corporations pretty much stayed out of partisan politics. Sure, they were involved in politics, but were mainly nonpartisan. Many corporations made donations to both sides so they would have an “in” with whichever side won. Unless you have some counterexamples, I still think it’s a recent and undesirable development for so many corporations to be taking sides like this.
So you’re saying there’s a silent majority of 75% of people who sympathize with leftism? Otherwise, why isn’t the corollary for the left true as well: appealing to the minority of people who want to abolish police or think fusion food is racist turns off the other 75%. You seem to have misread the title of the post. It’s not, ‘why don’t institutions lean right,’ but why ‘why do institutions lean left.’
No. But hey, since you mention it, support for Democratic priorites does often exceed 70% (minimum wage) but thats not what I am saying.
Up to half the people any given year dont care enough to vote. With only two parties each one relies on independents leaning their way. True believers who will go to the mattresses for their partisan team make up a minority of a minority.
We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I agree that most people don’t care that much, and that’s why boycotts seldom work. I don’t conclude from that that it doesn’t matter if all the corporations decide to become political partisans. I think it does matter.
Also — you think that 70% of people favor a $15 minimum wage? That seems unlikely to me, but if it’s true it would just show that economic illiteracy is rampant.
It’s the money.
Professor Bainbridge points is to research finding that putative Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) mutual funds are less than what they advertise :
“Investment funds that claim to focus on socially responsible stocks have proliferated in recent times. In this paper, we verify whether ESG mutual funds actually invest in firms that have stakeholder-friendly track records. Using a comprehensive sample of self-labelled ESG mutual funds in the US from 2010 to 2018, we find that these funds hold portfolio firms with worse track records for compliance with labor and environmental laws, relative to portfolio firms held by non-ESG funds managed by the same financial institutions in the same years.”
https://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2021/04/putative-esg-funds-hold-portfolio-firms-with-worse-track-records-for-compliance-with-labor-and-envir.html
Steve Sailer has done yeoman work detailing the riches that the Southern Poverty Law Center has yielded its management: https://isteve.blogspot.com/2004/12/jim-tharpe-vs-southern-poverty-law.html?m=1
Bezos funds hard left non-profits like the Washington Post but no unions for him, thank you very much.
Al Gore got very rich indeed off his despicable climate fear hucksterism.
And the list is endless.
Separating idealistic fools from their money is perhaps the most lucrative industry in the USA and it’s all mostly tax-favored.
There will be no real election integrity/campaign finance until the disgrace of tax favors for nonprofit scam artists is finally ended.
The left controls the media, and the media are the gatekeepers of advertising. It really is that simple.
The article doesn’t mention that it’s completely counterintuitive for corporations to embrace a philosophy that says capitalism and racism are “conjoined twins” (according to Kendi). Clearly they aren’t in it for ideological reasons. I think you need to go back to the 80s and 90s when Democrats started to look like chamber-of-commerce Republicans and replaced white working class support with identity politics. Republicans are never going to turn against corporations, so why not embrace just enough wokeness to keep the wolves at bay? Acedemia and corporate America would must rather see the country divided by superficial racial lines (and maintain the status quo) than structural class lines that could, heaven forbid, result in real reform