Mike Rappaport writes,

While I found Kling’s idea quite interesting, I should say that in my own mind all three of these values (as well as others) are important. I am a consequentialist libertarian. I start with liberty as the basic building block of good consequences. But one of the features of liberty is that it allows a sophisticated civilization to grow that is of great value. And I also believe that liberty greatly helps to prevent oppression and to help the oppressed of the world. So I care about all of these values, but, as a libertarian, liberty is the basic building block.

I am starting to think that The Three Languages of Politics is the book that everybody understands but nobody gets. The aspect that nobody gets might be termed the difference between cheerleading and analysis.

If you are playing the role of a basketball analyst, you evaluate strategy. You might say, “The Cougars should use a zone. If they get too far behind, they should use a full-court press.”

If you are playing the role of a basketball cheerleader, you recite chants that exalt your team and disparage the opposing team. If you say, “Adam, Adam, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, Bobby can” you are not really talking about strategy for using Adam and Bobby.

The three-axis model is about how we do political cheerleading, not how we do political analysis. Of course, everyone is against oppression, barbarism, and coercion. But when we do political cheerleading, we prefer one axis over the others. And we disparage the other political teams by accusing them of being on the opposite side of our preferred axis.

Stefanie Haeffele-Balch and Virgil Henry Storr write,

Moderation does not necessarily mean adopting moderate policy positions. [Adam] Smith is not suggesting we compromise our political views and values. Instead, he is suggesting that we think about how we present these views and values to others and how we characterize those who disagree with us. It’s a reminder to think of our political opponents as human beings, seek connection and embrace comity.

Pointer from Don Boudreaux.

My sense is that we have seen a decline in thinking about politics as a tool for problem-solving. Instead, we act as if our main goal in politics is anger validation. The stories that get the most prominent coverage are not necessarily the ones that deal with the most important topics. Instead, they are stories that encourage people to validate their anger. Unfortunately, we live in a TLP world.

1. A talk I gave for Cato on the Three Languages of Politics. Why don’t I modulate more (i.e., vary my tone of voice)? I sound more boring than I am.

2. Ryan Bourne writes,

The BBC is another example. Natural conservatives feel the need to highlight the Beeb’s historic role as a national institution, creating shared experiences, enriching our culture and providing a reasoned, shared platform in contrast to the brashness of US cable TV. Progressives like to think of the BBC as an island for the oppressed in a sea of commercial TV ruthlessly seeking profit. The classical liberals? They cannot abide that the BBC is funded by a compulsory licence fee, particularly given changing tastes and technologies.

He argues that Brexit produces divisions within the tribes. One can argue that the 2016 election did the same thing in the U.S. For conservatives, the divisions are obvious. Progressives are divided about what to do about white working-class voters–should progressives write them off as racist and sexist or try to win them over? As for conservatives and libertarians, the inability to coalesce around an alternative to Obamacare exposed the divisions between and within those tribes.

Megan McArdle writes,

Trump has coalesced around himself the people who are most interested in order, leaving the people who are focused on freedom and coercion somewhat unmoored. There’s a place for that conservative thought: Crime is the ultimate barbarian force, attacking the gentle roots of our civilized order. It’s easy to see why people conclude that if criminals are bad, then things which attack criminals must be good.

But the Founding Fathers were not unaware that bad people would sometimes get away if prosecutors had a high burden of proof to meet. They were not unaware that some of those people would go on to do further bad things. What they understood, and Sessions apparently does not, is that there are even worse things than crime, and one of them is a government that is allowed to steal our liberty like a thief in the night.

She is referring to civil asset forfeiture, which only a hardcore civilization-vs.-barbarism type could love. That is, you really, really have to believe that the police represent civilization and that when they confiscate the assets of suspects it is a blow against barbarism.

Pointer from Donald Boudreaux. The first thing in her manifesto that caught my eye was this:

As [David] Boaz says at the outset of The Libertarian Mind, “In a sense, there have always been but two political philosophies: liberty and power.”

Ah, yes, the liberty-coercion axis.

In specific terms, McCloskey writes,

Cut the multiple levels of corrupt government in Illinois. Kill off, as the much-maligned Liberal 1.0 and billionaire Charles Koch wishes, the vast programs of corporate welfare, federal and state and local. Close the agricultural programs, which allow rich farmers to farm the government instead of the land. Sell off “public” assets such as roads and bridges and street parking, which in an age of electronic transponders can be better priced by private enterprise. Close the American empire. Welcome immigrants. Abandon the War on Drugs. Give up eminent domain and civil forfeiture and military tanks for police departments. Implement the notion of Catholic social teaching of “subsidiarity,” placing modest responsibilities such as trash collection or fire protection down at the lowest level of government that can handle them properly. Then outsource the trash collection and the fire protection. To finance K-12 education—socially desirable but sometimes out of reach of the poor—give families vouchers to cash in at private schools, such as Sweden has done since the 1990s and as Orleans parish has done for poor families since 2008. To achieve universal K-12 education, and a select few of other noble and otherwise privately unfundable purposes, such as a war of survival, by all means tax you and me, not only the man behind the tree. But eliminate the inquisitorial income tax, replacing it with a tax on personal consumption declared on a one-page form, as economists such as Robert Hall and Arthur Laffer propose. Still better, use only an equally simple purchase tax on businesses, to reduce the present depth of personal inquisition. Eliminate the so-called “corporate” income tax, because it is double taxation and because economists have in fact little idea which people actually end up paying it. (The old bumper sticker saying “Tax corporations, not people,” when you think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense.) Give a poor person cash in emergencies, from those modest taxes on you and me. Quit inquiring into whether she spends it on booze or her children’s clothing. Leave her and her family alone. No pushing around.

A commenter writes,

There’s one thing I’m still not clear about from the book. You distinguish talk from thought but … many readers do not make this distinction…

Three antagonistic framings of issues that the three tribes use in a constant intellectual war – the antagonism causing them to represent each issue entirely as one of civilization versus barbarism, or oppressor-victim, or coercion-liberty. This leaves little room for hope as it has nothing to say about what people think: perhaps it’s not simple partisanship but how they really think too.

In theory, I see a distinction between:

1) arriving at an opinion by yourself. Call this private reasoning.

2) justifying your opinion to others. Call this public justification.

I mean for three axes model to apply to (2). But in practice (1) and (2) are so closely related that it is easy to slip into applying the model to (1).

Let’s use an example. Take the travel ban from Muslim countries. Along the oppressor-oppressed axis, what stands out is the fact that many American non-Muslims are wary of Muslims, and to progressives this makes Muslims an oppressed class. For a progressive, this justifies opposing the ban. Along the civilization vs. barbarism axis, what stands out is the threat that Muslim extremism poses to our civilization. For a conservative, this justifies supporting the ban. Along the coercion-liberty axis, what stands out is that the ban coercively deprives innocent people of an important right. For a libertarian, this justifies opposing the ban.

However, I do not wish to say that any person adopts a single-axis reason for supporting or opposing the ban. In fact, a person who self-identifies as progressive and who takes a progressive position on many issues might, for some reason, support the ban. Our tribal axis plays a role in private reasoning, but it is not everything.

When I say “justifies,” I mean public justification, not private reasoning. In public (i.e., talking with others), a progressive is likely to:

a) make oppressor-oppressed arguments against the ban;
b) view favorably others who use such arguments;
c) accuse supporters of the ban of being oppressors

In fact, even if a progressive for some reason had decided to support the ban, that progressive still would be receptive to (a) – (c). With regard to (c), the hypothetical ban-supporting progressive probably would feel a need to say, “Yes, I know there are many Islamophobes out there who support the ban, but my reason for supporting the ban is not Islamophobia.”

It is easier to escape your preferred axis privately than in public. When you are among members of your own tribe, it is almost impossible to escape from your (tribe’s) preferred axis.

I hope that helps.