Category Archives: Three-Axes Model

John Samples on identity and free speech

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Responding to me, he writes,

Arnold Kling notes that Progressives generally see the world as divided between oppressors and the oppressed. (I would add a third group, the Guardians or the political class). Some social groups are oppressors, others their victims, the oppressed. The job of the Guardians is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” or more generally, help the oppressed in their endless struggle against their oppressors. In this view of the world, speech may just be a weapon used in several ways by the oppressors to subjugate the oppressed. It directly attacks the dignity of the oppressed. Oppressors cast doubt on the harms to the dignity of the oppressed. The speech of the oppressor justifies a society marked by oppression. He demands recognition of a universal self that excludes the lived experiences of the oppressed. In this world with these harms, censorship is not really an abuse of power. It is an obligation of the Guardians, a necessary task for the good ruler. It is this view of politics – oppressed versus oppressor – that transforms identity into censorship.

I think that the only response to this is to reject identity politics. The only version of equality that I can support is equality under the law. Any other attempt to manufacture equality is seems likely to undermine equality under the law. I am not saying that equality under the law can be achieved in some perfect, ideal sense. But let’s stick with that as the goal. Treat people as individuals, not as members of oppressor or oppressed classes.

TLP watch

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Cass Sunstein writes,

We live in an era in which groups of people—on the Left, on the Right, in university departments, in religious institutions—often end up in a pitch of rage, seeing fellow members of the human species not as wrong but as enemies. Such groups may even embark on something like George Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate. When that happens, or when people go to extremes, there are many explanations. But group polarization unifies seemingly diverse phenomena. Extremism and mobbing are not so mysterious. On the contrary, they are predicable products of social interactions.

The essay goes into some of the social psychology involved. As my thinking evolves, I am putting more emphasis on what the three-axes model says about political psychology and less emphasis on what it says about ideology per se.

My review of Raghuram Rajan’s latest book

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My review of The Crumbling Pillar says,

One can think of each of the three pillars as having an ideological base. The strongest support for the market comes from libertarian ideology. The strongest support for the state comes from progressive ideology. And I would argue that the strongest support for community comes from (socially) conservative ideology.

My overall criticism of the book is that he supports an idea of subsidiarity which I identify strongly with conservatism but without doing anything to raise the status of conservatives or lower the status of progressives. Either this is what Tyler Cowen would call a Straussian attempt to appeal to progressives or it shows how conservative thought is completely ignored by academics these days. In my review, I opted for the latter interpretation.

Please read the whole essay.

The piety display

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M. “Lorenzo” Warby writes,

If a cognitive identity is based on adherence to a set of opinions (that is, publicly expressed or endorsed beliefs) that are felt to generate prestige, to justify a collective and internalized sense of approval and admiration towards their adherents, then opinions which contradict those prestige opinions cannot also generate prestige. They must generate negative prestige. If X generates prestige, then Contrary-X must generate negative prestige and so be subject to the opposite of public admiration (within that cognitive milieu), which is stigmatization. Indeed, avoiding such stigmatization can become a powerful reason to engage in affirming the prestige opinions (or, at least, not openly contradicting them).

Pointer from Lorenzo himself, who did me the honor of leaving a comment on yesterday’s post. In the first part of the essay, he argues that the term “piety display” is more accurate than “virtue signaling.” Read the essay to see why.

The three-axes model would say that conservatives and libertarians also engage in piety displays. When conservatives speak of the fragility of civilization and describe it as threatened by barbarism, that can be thought of as a piety display. When libertarians highlight the encroachment of the state on liberty, that can be thought of as a piety display.

Lorenzo argues that in a time of rapid change, conservatives are at a disadvantage.

visions of the imagined future naturally gain increased power. In particular, politics based on a moralized vision of the future have an inherent advantage that was greatly magnified. For the problem of the past was not only that it now looked so different, but that the past (being sequences of human striving) is inevitably morally messy. Conversely, the imagined future can be as pure as one wants. So, if one wants opinions that provide some guarantee of cognitive status, those based on the politics of the imagined future have a near unbeatable cachet. Especially as it is easy to confuse moral intensity with moral superiority, and even use the former as a marker of the latter.

The perennial appeal of socialism feeds on the information-economizing purity advantage of the imagined future. Rarely precisely defined, socialism becomes a righteous catch-all for the aspiration to attain some profoundly better society, without grappling with practical difficulties or past failures along the path.

The essay concludes,

Given that the underlying drivers of the demand for prestige opinions that generate and protect status-asserting cognitive identity are not likely to go away soon, the prognosis for the health of freedom of thought, science, public debate and democracy in Western societies, or for the competent functioning of institutions, is not good.

I think that the symmetry among libertarians, progressives, and conservatives breaks down when it comes to what I call intimidation. Conservatives and libertarians do not seek to de-platform people with different ideas. They do not seek to get CEOs fired for having the “wrong” opinions. They do not seek to stamp out intellectual diversity in higher education or journalism.

There has been a fascist left for a long time. We saw it in the Soviet Union, in China, in Cuba, and in Venezuela. But until recently, the Anglosphere has rebelled strongly against it. When I was young, Newsweek Magazine alternated columns by Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. College faculty voted Democrat more than Republican, but conservatives did exist in academia, and no professor was driven off campus for teaching while white.

When I was growing up, the people who might be de-platformed or intimidated were on the left, if they could be connected in some way to the Communist Party. My mother was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957 for her Communist associations in the 1930s.

Back then, the term for abusive personal attacks was “McCarthyism,” referring to a Republican. Back then, the left was against McCarthyism. Now it practices it. Back then, the left read George Orwell’s 1984 as a warning. The SJWs read it as a how-to manual.

A conference on moderation (Martin Gurri watch)

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I attended this event on the 25th.

There are two videos, one for the morning talks, and one for the afternoon talks. If you watch the video for the afternoon talks, near the end, close to the 4 hour, 11 minute mark, I ask the last question at the session that featured Tony Blair.

My father would have been proud. He always liked to measure the social distance that he traveled from his childhood with Yiddish-speaking parents in the St. Louis ghetto. Finding me in the same room with the former British Prime Minister would have given my father lots of nachas, so to speak.

My review of the conference overall:

David Brooks gave a lucid, entertaining opening speech. About minute 44-45 in the video, he gives an account of contemporary progressiveness that could come straight out of my three-axes model.

Earlier, he cites Andrew Delbanco’s The Real American Dream, which argues that America has had three phases of animating cultural idea. Until around 1830, it was “God.” Americans were fulfilling God’s will. From then until World War II, it was “nation,” meaning manifest destiny for the United States. After the war, it became the “self.”

Brooks argues that the individualism of the latest phase has reached its end as a successful animating idea. We need a cultural paradigm shift. He suggests that what might work better now is a form of communitarianism, in which we care about children (not just our own), the dignity of work, our local living places, and racial and social integration. We need for politics to be less important.

In the end, his “politics of love,” as he calls it, is easy to ridicule, and he recognizes that. But he tries hard to justify his proposal.

The first panel was “Why isn’t the center holding?” and it included Martin Gurri. Not surprisingly, I found Gurri’s remarks the most compelling. But I think he also came through to people in the audience who were not as familiar as I am with his views.

Frances Lee did make the interesting point that as political parties separated on ideological grounds (recall that 60 years ago, the Democratic Party was an amalgamation that included Northern African-Americans and white segregationists from the South where African-Americans were kept from voting) and elections became close enough that either party could win, party loyalty has strengthened. There is fear that if you work with the other side, you are helping them win, and this fear is expressed very strongly in the primary-voting public.

I got to ask a question at this panel. I wanted to make the point that the political divide is a subset of a broader cultural divide. It’s about the 2 hour and 9 minute mark. I don’t think anyone wanted to answer the question, but Brink at least helped to clarify what I was trying to get at.

The next panel struck me as less focused. I did note that Damon Linker cited a poll that suggests that in the 2×2 quadrant of left/right and social/economic issues, the least populated quadrant among American voters is the libertarian one of socially on the left and economically on the right. Will Wilkinson expressed doubt that any poll holds for very long, because American voters are volatile on the issues. Yascha Mounk suggested that demagogic politics is on the upsurge because people want contradictory things (I would say that in economic jargon, they don’t appreciate trade-offs), and politicians must try to cater to that.

The third panel turned me off quite a bit. Often, the discussion veered into philosophical and historical trivia. When it got back to present-day reality, it seemed to consist mostly of ritual expressions of contempt for Mr. Trump. At one point, Professor Levy implied that the Republican Party as an institution would benefit by having a prominent conservative Senator utterly denounce Mr. Trump. While I think that it would help to have a Republican challenge Mr. Trump in the primary in 2020, that challenge should serve to articulate what mainstream Republicans want the party to stand for. The challenger should in no way denounce Mr. Trump but instead should commit to supporting whoever the party nominates in the general election. And, no, William Weld does not get my endorsement for the role.

Denouncing Mr. Trump as Mr. Levy recommends would amount to the political equivalent of a suicide bombing that fails to even approach its target. Mr. Trump does not depend on establishment support in the way that President Nixon did. When Nixon lost the establishment, he was gone. But today a politician’s personal brand is more important than establishment support. See Tyler Cowen’s column on the young Democratic congresswomen. In general, hearing Professor Levy’s pontifications reminded me of the refrain, “You want more Trump??? This is how you get more Trump.”

In the hallway, Elaine Kamarck, a Bill Clinton Democrat who has written a book on primary politics, expressed her view that the winner of the Democratic nomination in 2020 will be someone who drives down the “center-left lane,” as she called it. I suggested that the convention might arrive with 12 candidates each having 8 percent of the vote. She ridiculed that possibility. If there had been time, it should have been possible to formulate a bet. A simple one would be, “A center-left candidate will arrive at the convention with more than 40 percent of the delegates.” Presumably, she would bet for this. I would bet against it. I would not bet more than a few dollars, because she knows much more than I do about the subject. That is what would make it fun if I won.

What do I think of the overall project of reviving a “third way” or a moderate center? I was skeptical going into the event, and I remain skeptical.

I would like to see a more moderate tone in politics. But oddly enough, Levy speaks for me when he writes,

if “moderate” is the name of a substantive position, then it risks being nothing at all, or at least nothing stable, only something defined with reference to the shifting sense of who counts as extreme.

I look at the “shifting sense of who counts as extreme” differently than he does. To me, it looks like the Overton Window is racing full speed to the left. In fact, the window has moved so far to the left that I think most young Democrats see Blair and Clinton as far right-wingers. Consider that when Barack Obama ran for President, he was against gay marriage, and by the time he left office his Administration was pushing trans-gender bathrooms. Consider that President Clinton took pride in balanced budgets and gave thought to fixing entitlement programs*, and now we have Larry Summers and Jason Furman writing that with interest rates so low the government should do a lot more borrowing and spending. And of course, socialism is now a yeah-word and capitalism is a boo-word among Democratic politicians.

After Munich, Winston Churchill said,

for Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.

I cannot support a moderation that amounts to serving the left’s victuals course by course. Get the Overton window to stand still, or maybe move it back to the right a couple of notches; only then we can talk about moderation.

*one of the event’s panelists, I believe it was Damon Linker, suggested that Clinton was getting ready to propose entitlement reform until a certain #metoo episode weakened him politically

On hiatus

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Until February 19. I am away from my computer, and I keep messing up HTML.

Also, there is nothing to write about. Covington? Northam? If we have the luxury of turning these stories into headlines, then we are either doing very well as a country or else we are desparate for distractions from whatever real problems we have.

A few days ago Tyler Cowen recommended a book called Whiteshift, which claims that the cultural disruption we are experiencing is due to whites feeling threatened demographically. I probably should examine the book. Off hand, though, I think that Martin Gurri has a better explanation, because I don’t think Whiteshift can explain the Arab Spring or Greece or Spain. Gurri’s story is that elites are getting knocked off their perch in the age of the Internet.

In the U.S., I see a progressive elite that pounds the table insisting that it stands against oppression. And we have a conservative elite that pounds the table insisting that it stands against barbarism.

The 2016 election exposed the conservative elite as a slim minority.

The progressive elite is larger, but it is still just a minority. I think it is in a precarious position. Puritanism always provokes a backlash. And just as the Republican base decided that the conservative elite is not worth supporting, might non-white ethnics at some point decide that the progressive elite is not worth supporting? One can envision a scenario in which the progressive elite finds itself as beached as the conservative elite finds itself today.

A sense of Huemer

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Bryan Caplan mentioned that Michael Huemer is notw blogging. For example, Huemer writes,

I think ideology is based on outrage. We like to feel righteous outrage, and we pick our ideology according to the thing we most like to be outraged about. The ideology then tells us that that thing is everywhere.

That is a very TLP-ish statement, of course. Conservatives are outraged by threats to civilization, and they see them everywhere. Progressives are outraged by oppression, and they see it everywhere. etc.

He has this interesting corollary:

How to scam an ideologue: tell them a [false] story that fits their narrative about society and plays into their stereotypes.

Bryan points out that Huemer’s early posts offering tips for debate are pretty sensible–if you assume that people want fair debate. Unfortunately, the TLP-ist view is that is not the game they want to play. Instead, they prefer competing for status within your tribe by portraying the other side as evil.

TLP watch

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1. Art Carden writes,

how do we understand the political rhetoric and division regarding the migrant caravan? I think Kling’s framework provides a very useful way to understand.

Indeed. The applications of oppressor/oppressed, civilization/barbarism, and liberty/coercion are obvious.

Another application of the three-axes model is that news stories that get “excess play” are ones that produce the sharpest divisions along the axes. I mean, considering the short-attention-span news cycle and the caravan story’s intrinsic (lack of) importance, its prominence and staying power is hard to explain, except that it provides outrage fodder for everybody’s axis.

2. When you have two hours, listen to Ezra Klein and Jonathan Haidt. Terrific throughout. They fight, but instead of a rude street brawl you get a gentleman’s boxing match. Some of Klein’s jabs are repetitious, but overall I would give them both a lot of points.

I also would note that at one hour, forty-six minutes or so Haidt insists he is not on the right, but then immediately he proceeds to say that human nature is tribal and violent and it’s amazing that we have escaped that thanks to institutions like the rule of law. Spoken like a true civilization-vs.-barbarism conservative. It contrasts so clearly with Klein’s repeated insistence that there is a lot more social injustice in society than we are willing to admit.

I usually try to be modest about the three-axes model and say that it describes rhetorical tools, not fundamental beliefs. But I am tempted in this case to make a stronger claim, which is that Haidt is really deeply attuned to civilization-barbarism and Klein is deeply attuned to oppressor-oppressed.