By Jonah Goldberg
January 01, 2014
The Beltway consensus seems to be that 2013 was a bad
year for the same reason nearly every other recent year was bad: polarization
and partisanship. Personally, I can think of plenty of more important things to
worry about than partisanship. Democracy is about disagreements, and
partisanship is often a sign of healthy disagreement.
But polarization is a bit different. It speaks not just
to a lack of basic agreement about what kind of society we should live in, but
a breakdown in understanding and respect among Americans. There’s a lot of
them-vs.-us talk these days on the left and the right. And while I’d never want
to live in a country where we all join hands and sing “Kumbaya,” maybe a bit
more understanding wouldn’t be all bad.
So I have small suggestions for New Year’s resolutions
for both the Right and the Left in 2014. For liberals, maybe you should try to
accept the fact that you’re not the non-conformists you think you are. And for
conservatives, perhaps you should consider that you’re not necessarily the
irrefutable voice of “normal” Americans.
The thought occurred to me while reading “The Liberal
Illusion of Uniqueness” in the journal Psychological Science. Apparently it’s a
well-established finding that liberals tend to think their views are more
rebellious than they are. They feel a “need for uniqueness.” And that need can
stand in the way of seeking commonality with other Americans.
Conservatives don’t crave uniqueness. In fact, they are
more likely to overestimate the extent to which there is a consensus around
their beliefs. In other words, liberals bristle at the notion that they’re
conventional thinkers, while conservatives are too quick to assume everyone
thinks like them.
I’m not a huge fan of subjecting politics to
psychological analysis. It often lends itself to the pernicious idea that
people with “healthy” minds have certain political views and that people with
unpopular notions aren’t simply wrong — or have different preferences — but are
somehow sick.
Still, something about this finding rings true to me. One
of the most impressive achievements of liberalism is the perpetuation of the
myth of liberal rebelliousness. One of my favorite things to do when speaking
on college campuses is to point out to students how conformist they are.
(College students are a lot like that mob in Monty Python’s Life of Brian who
chant in unison, “We’re all individuals!”) I point out to the students that
their professors are liberal. Their school administrators are liberal.
Hollywood and the music and publishing industries are all overwhelmingly
liberal. The mainstream media are liberal. “But,” I ask them, “you think you’re
sticking it to the Man by agreeing with them?”
Meanwhile, lots of my friends on the right often seem to
take it for granted that there’s a vast silent majority of Americans pitted
against a small cabal of elitist pinheads and would-be social engineers. As a
conservative, I believe there are a lot of pinhead social engineers (see:
Bloomberg, Michael). But I also understand — or at least try to — that there
are millions of Americans who see these people as leaders who speak for them
and address their needs.
Ironically, both the conservative false confidence in
consensus and the liberal false confidence in uniqueness have a similar
downside: smugness. Evidence for this is about as hard to find as hay in a
haystack. Liberals often talk as if only the backward masses disagree with them,
and conservatives often assume that only overeducated weirdos and radicals
could object to their agenda. Hence Barack Obama’s infamous explanation for why
rural Pennsylvanians didn’t support him: They were too busy “clinging” to their
God and guns. Tellingly, conservatives took that line as a badge of honor.
Smugness is also the chief source of political problems
for both the Left and the Right.
Conservatives have become far too insular, too often
rejecting the need to persuade those who don’t already agree with them, arguing
instead that ever bloodier doses of red meat will grow the coalition. Liberals
have become far too content with the myth of their uniqueness and the pretense
that they are brave polymath iconoclasts who know what’s best for you better
than you do.
Maybe, just maybe, if both sides resolved not to take
their most flattering myths for granted, America would be just a bit less
polarized.
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