I could not help but think “three-axes model” when I read Strangled by Identity, by Rishabh Bhandari and Thomas Hopson.

American politics features three concepts of identity, but Americans are rarely clear-eyed about how these differ and disagree. Ethnic identitarians think civic nationalists are closet racists. Civic nationalists think that ethnic identitarians are “race-baiters.” And while cosmopolitans wrongly believe themselves to be above the fray, the other two sides of this entangled triangle don’t trust them or the institutions they lead. So it is that, at the end of the day, people on each side can blame those on the other two sides for playing identity politics while nonetheless playing the game themselves.

For “Ethnic identitarians” read progressives, interpreting their opponents along the oppressor-oppressed axis. For “Civic nationalists” read conservatives, interpreting their opponents along the civilization-barbarism axis. For “cosmopolitans” read libertarians, interpreting their opponents along the liberty-coercion axis.

In the very same issue of National Affairs, there is Civility and Rebarbarization by Arthur Milikh. Citing essays published under a pseudonym in 1763 by the man who became the second President of the United States, Milikh writes,

According to Adams, the human passions — in particular anger and the desire for revenge, which especially characterize man in the barbaric state — must be ordered, moderated, and channeled so as to form human beings capable of civilized self-government and rule by laws. These passions, however, are ultimately ineradicable, which means that a permanent transformation into a state of civility is not possible. Indeed, entertaining such hopes is dangerous. Rebarbarization always remains a human possibility. Should it occur, nations may find it impossible to re-civilize major portions of their inherited order. Adams’s purpose is to educate his readers on both the origins and fragility of the constitutional liberty that we enjoy.

The entire essay is eloquent along these lines. My guess is that if a survey were taken, conservatives would check the box “strongly agree.” But it will not be so well received by progressives or libertarians. This is a case in which speaking in a single language means that only your tribe will understand what you say.

Self-recommending.

At the end, Bill James expresses sentiments that are essentially identical with mine.

Self-righteousness is the great problem that afflicts our political culture. And, the problem is that large numbers of people on both ends of the political spectrum are so convinced that they are correct and that failings to see their correctness are moral failings, that we have lost much of our ability to communicate from one end of the spectrum to the other. And, there’s no justification for it on either end. None of us understand the world. The world is vastly more complicated than the human mind. No one understands whether these policies are going to have the intended effects, or whether the unintended effects are going to be greater than the intended effects. No one knows the answers to those questions. And the people who are convinced that they know the answers to those questions are just wrong. And it’s become a huge concern, because people are so angry, based on their self-righteousness, that we are: anger repeatedly expressed–anger building on anger, building on anger eventually leads to violence. And we need to get people to back away from the conviction that they are right and see that they may be wrong not about something but about everything.

Not that Bill Walton, although this one is plenty tall. Here we are. Starting with the 3-axes model, we go on to a wide-ranging discussion that was fun for me.

He said,

Here is the fine-tuned liberal democracy hypothesis: as tribal primates, human beings are unsuited for life in large, diverse secular democracies, unless you get certain settings finely adjusted to make possible the development of stable political life. This seems to be what the Founding Fathers believed. Jefferson, Madison, and the rest of those eighteenth-century deists clearly did think that designing a constitution was like designing a giant clock, a clock that might run forever if they chose the right springs and gears.

Do read the whole thing. My comments:

1. This lecture could have fit in perfectly with the theme of American Exceptionalism.

2. The belief in the fragility of civilization (or, in this case, liberal democracy) is very conservative. It gets you to the civilization vs. barbarism axis. Haidt must be aware of this, as he has read The Three Languages of Politics and told me he is a fan.

3. Haidt sees a rise of extremism within two institutions: the Republican Party, which he sees as having moved hard right; and the college campus, which he sees as moving hard left.

From the where I and most of my readers sit, blaming all of the polarization in Washington on Republicans seems wrong. We probably are more inclined to recall examples of Republican weakness than Republican recalcitrance.

I recall once bitterly accusing President Obama of taking his political views from the faculty lounge of the sociology department. In other words, I saw the Democratic leader as a creature of the campus left. Granted, that was uncharitable as a blanket statement, but to the extent that there is truth in it, you have to admit that some of the radicalism in Washington has been on the Democratic side.

But let us not pursue that argument. Rather than dismiss Haidt’s view here, let us assume that we are too far to the right to be objective.

4. Haidt is optimistic that his Heterodox Academy project and other efforts will restore reason, free speech, and political diversity to college campuses. We shall see. My fear is that we will see Haidt get more and more invitations to reach conservative audiences (we saw him speak with Jordan Peterson, and this speech was given at the Manhattan Institute). But he will get fewer and fewer invitations to speak on college campuses, where the views expressed in the paragraph I quoted will make him unwelcome.

Particularly starting around 4-1/2 minutes in.

I have two regrets about The Three Languages of Politics, both of which concern the cover.

1. I am really jealous of the graphic for Andrew Sullivan’s piece in New York Magazine. It depicts three separate clusters of sheep, with each cluster a different color. You get the sense that each individual sheep wants desperately to be in the middle of its cluster, so they crowd closer together. As they crowd closer together within a cluster, the more distinct the clusters become from one another.

2. I think that the subtitle we came up with, “talking across the political divides,” is misleading. It makes it sound as though I offer a pat solution for political polarization. Instead, I delve into the nature of the problem. In terms of the sheep-clustering metaphor, I talk about what makes us cluster and the importance of resisting the urge to push into the middle of your cluster.

A reader points me to an article on conservative support for lawyers for indigent defendants.

Over the past decade, Republican lawmakers across the country have passed bills to reform public defender systems in Louisiana, Michigan and Utah; similar efforts are underway in Tennessee, Mississippi and Indiana. Meanwhile, legislators in blue states like California and Washington have failed to address their own dysfunctional systems. (There are exceptions. Left-leaning Colorado recently beefed up public defense funding, and New York state just promised funds for counties to meet higher statewide standards.) But the momentum on this issue is clearly being driven by red states, which have proved remarkably responsive to a constitutional argument that departs from progressive ideology that often emphasizes racial and class inequality.

The reader points out that in terms of the three-axes model, the Republicans are using conservative and libertarian rhetoric.