Why, oh, why, can’t we have better dialogue on Political Philosophy?

I’m not sure why I even to bother read articles with provocative headlines that ensure you know the conclusion before the discussion even opens. This Washington Post Article by a conservative political science professor Gerard Alexander (also associated with the American Enterprise Institute) just rang all the bells and whistles implied by the title “Why are liberals so condescending?”. If I were to write a similar piece–which come to think of it I’m about to–it would be titled “Why are conservatives so close-minded?”

Okay, right from the get go, he starts with the presupposition that his conclusion is the right one which is pretty much the problem I have with conservatives. They start with the conclusions being firmly grounded in some truth they’ve devised and then let the arguments spew from there. Facts be damned! Full speed ahead! My argument is already moot because of his first paragraph. I’m already trapped by having to argue the argument from the label ‘smug’. I have to prove I’m not smug before I get around to proving him wrong. But what’s worse, being smug or being hypocritical?

Yes, I believe conservatives adhere to ideology over evidence. Still, I try to argue based on fact and reason and expect the deduced conclusion to be so resonant it is self evident. How is this ‘intellectual condescension”? Better yet, how can I successively argue with some one who is so convinced that they’re right from the get-go and from whom you can expect no real evidence? You’re doomed to be the only one that recognizes you’re right in that situation. All you get is argument based on ideological presuppositions with which you disagree. Yes, mind closed. Straw man erected. Straw man knocked down. Argument over.

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

To me, this article is just wrong from the get go and let me tell you why. Let’s just say I take issue with labeling President Obama ‘liberal’ (or socialist or marxist) when he his clearly no such thing. Most conservatives spit the word liberal through the teeth in such a pejorative way that you can’t help but wonder if they even read from the same dictionary. Most liberals–like me– don’t consider Obama to be one of us.

Let me borrow from another liberal economist whose words caught me on a similar subject.Oregon Professor Mark Thoma has a thread called Why is the Left More Successful in Europe? based on an article at the Boston Globe by Edward Glaeser, a professor (economics) at Harvard. Thoma had issues with this statement by Glaeser in the cited article: “A year ago, I wondered if the Obama victory signaled the declining significance of race and an American lurch to the left.” This is Thoma’s response.

What’s new is the observation that the Obama victory didn’t signal a lurch to the left as he thought it might.

People who believe Obama is a far left populist type haven’t been paying attention. Obama himself is no lurch to the left. The far left has been quite disappointed as they’ve unwrapped the gift they received last November. It wasn’t what they asked for or, in may cases, what they thought they were getting. But it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

The election wasn’t so much a lurch to the left as it was a movement away from the right (a different sort of movement conservatism). People didn’t want four more years of anything resembling George Bush. Sure, there’s been some reversion to the mean, there always is with midterm elections, but the election did ratchet our collective politics to the left. Moving the nation further to the left might might very well be a long, slow process, i.e. the long fight predicted above. And Republicans do manage to make lots of noise when they engage the enemy. But they are struggling to hold on to what they have rather than trying to take new ground. It’s the Republicans, not the Democrats, who need to worry about fighting to hold on to their party.

Americans do tend to be a conservative lot, but not quite in the way that either Glaeser argues in his article or Alexander argues in his. There’s a dialectic going on here that seems to me to miss a bigger picture. When I read the rant on the dismissive attitudes of liberals cited by Alexander, I find utter hypocrisy. He dismisses liberals in the same way he accuses liberals of dismissing his sociopolitical arguments. Then, when I return to the Glaeser article where he tries to explain what slow changing people Americans really are, all I can think is these two guys spend way too much time either on the east coast or in their offices at their respective campuses.

There’s an oversimplification here on both sides on the motivation of the American electorate who, to me, is just figuring out who they can trust after years of bamboozling by both sides. Who even knows what most people think being liberal or conservative represents after years of framing based on political ads and talking heads? How can you have civil discourse when every one is name calling instead of defining themselves?

Let me demonstrate the essential Alexander argument with this quote from the article. He borrows not only from Obama but the big giant talking Cheeto; another person whom I believe is NOT a liberal in the traditional sense of the word. He also quotes Paul Krugman, Howard Dean, and Jon Stewart as examples of condescending, liberal elites. Of course, he trots out the ultimate Obama snafu made during the campaign of speaking of bitter working folks clinging to god, guns, and bibles. Offensive yes? Liberal elitist? I don’t think so. It’s just your basic class snobbery.

I’ll let you discover these anecdotes on your own reading because I believe we’re familiar with all of them here. His narrative uses a time line of what he considers a history of increasingly, patronizingly superior attitudes towards movement conservatism which he considers to be a vastly superior intellectual pursuit. He does this exposition while frankly oozing condescension.

But these days, liberal confidence and its companion disdain for conservative thinking are back with a vengeance, finding energetic expression in politicians’ speeches, top-selling books, historical works and the blogosphere. This attitude comes in the form of four major narratives about who conservatives are and how they think and function.

The first is the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush’s presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational factors.

This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example, Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican War on Science” argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.

This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the decision will “open the floodgates for special interests” to influence American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.

Glaesar argues that our less-than-democratic institutions makes it impossible for a real dialogue to occur with folks like Alexander. His argument is that we really don’t have a left wing in our country and therefore, the right wing has so defined the dialogue, that it is impossible to provide a liberal viewpoint. No one really knows anything about what a real liberal is, let alone the workings of a social democracy. This, I think, is a valid point. I’m not sure whose fault that is. Glaesar blames the political system and history.

In an earlier thread, myiq2xu pointed to an article in The New Republic which–to me–has a better sense of what Alexander is capturing. It’s not liberal elitism. It’s upper class elitism. The TNR article is titled He’s a Yuppie: Why Obama can’t connect with the Working Class. I think it better encapsulates what’s going on here with both Obama and the effete snobbery demonstrated by Alexander. I think all these arguments are more properly put into the forum of socioeconomic class upmanship rather than differences based on political concepts. The American people resent being sold an unattainable American Dream and are not sure who to blame it on or who to trust to correct the problem. I think this is more the appeal of Sarah Palin than her conservative ideology. Scott Brown isn’t a working class hero or typical republican. He’s a reaction to more of the same. Folks were promised something different. They’re just looking for a whiff of authenticity at this point and want to stop stuff from being done until they know what it is and what it means to them. It isn’t about being conservative or liberal. It’s about being lied to again and again.

Here is a fact: Barack Obama has trouble generating enthusiasm among white working class voters. That’s not because they are white. He would have had trouble winning support among black working class voters if they had been unable to identify with him because he was black. He has trouble with working class voters because he appears to them as coming from a different world, a different realm of experience, a different class, if you like. And that’s because he does.

People are screaming fascism, socialism, marxism, progressivism, conservatism, and liberalism without really knowing their meanings because people like Alexander–who even teaches political science–have spent so much time demonizing people that don’t agree with him. You can’t make a solid intellectual argument without agreeing on the facts on the ground and laying out the definitions. Alexander’s article does none of this. This is why real liberals get perturbed. The name calling starts before every one agrees to the assumptions of the argument. Alexander ignores the class issue which is convenient to his argument. It allows him to feel outraged by things like the War against Christmas. It isn’t an overreach by them; it’s insensitivity to a rich conservative intellectual movement by us.

I’m not sure how we get out of this box because whether or not “conservatives” like Alexander want to admit it, they further their interests by name calling, misconstruing intent, and mislabeling liberals and liberalism. The one thing I will say is that I’d rather read an argument from Alexander than listen to one minute of a Rush Limbaugh diatribe. Alexander’s language was different but the message was basically the same. We have the high ground because our ideology is superior to yours. We don’t need no stinking facts, scientific method, or dialogue based on shared understanding and definitions.

How do we ever get a national dialogue started given that tea partiers are now using Saul Alinsky’s game plan and folks called ‘progressives’ are borrowing from Karl Rove’s play book? That I don’t know about. What I do know is that a political science professor shouldn’t be moving the Overton Window in such an obvious manner when it comes to political definitions for the sake of winning an argument based on knocking over a straw man.