The Three Languages of Politics

thank you all for braving our shutdown city this morning so I am Aaron Powell I am director of Cato's libertarianism.org project which also published Arnall claims three languages of politics so the last edition of three languages of politics provided an intuitive and powerful way to look at political conversations in this country and the nature of our political divides but this this new edition brings that same clarity and insight into the Trump age I think we really knew a valuable analysis for getting a grasp of where we are and what's happening politically in our country right now so explore these ideas and their application I'm honored to introduce Arnold Kling our author he's an independent scholar an adjunct with Cato a blogger and author of several books on economics and public policy in addition to the three languages of politics he's published specialization in trade a reintroduction to economics with libertarianism.org and here to discuss the book with Arnold is Russ Roberts he's the John and gene Denault research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and host of the brilliant and long-running podcast econ talk so thank you all for coming with that I'll turn it over to our guests I'll just ask everyone to put their cell phones out in airplane mode if you could if all goes well this will be an econ talk episode somewhere down the road and we're gonna talk for about an hour and then we'll open it up to questions from you today is September 23rd 2019 a my guest is economist and author Arnold claim this is his 16th appearance on econ talk he was last here in July of 2018 talking about morality culture and tribalism Arnold welcome back to econ talk this episodes a bit unusual we're gonna talk about your book the three languages of politics which we've already talked about on the program back in June of 2013 there's a new edition of the book which is available at Amazon in hardcover paperback on a Kindle for a mere 399 and it's also available as an e-book PDF etcetera at no charge at libertarianism.org and we will link to all of those the other reason besides this new edition the reason we're revisiting the three languages is that a lot has happened since 2013 there's plenty to talk about and I finally want to say that we are recording this in front of a live audience at the Cato Institute so you guys can applaud now thank you it's about 600 people here I'd say just I couldn't if you could tell from the applause at home so I'm a quick review what are the three languages of politics okay and I'm gonna back you up okay start start back with sort of why I why I wrote the book which was I noticed that the expression of political opinions in the traditional media and the social media was not constructive and the way I put it at the time it is people are not trying to express themselves in a way that would change the minds of the other side they're not trying to open the minds of their own side they're just trying to close the minds of their own side and so the big question is you know how did this happen how does this how does work how did we end up talking past each other than why and so now I can go to the three languages which is sort of my explanation of how tactically people manage to talk past each other sort of dog-whistle to their own side and not not to talk to the other side so there's a progressive language a conservative language and a libertarian language and the I each one sets up axes of opposition's so the progressive it's the oppressor versus the oppressed so the evil side is people who are on the same side as oppressors and the good side are people who are fighting for the oppressed conservatives put the axis of civilization versus barbarism so the people who really conservatives really feel threatened by they accuse of taking getting rid of civilizations restraints and taking us back to barbarism and for libertarians it's libertarian versus Liberty versus coercion they say coercion is sort of the ultimate evil and the state as the sort of the the legitimate arm of coercion and sort of the state is the biggest threat to increase coercion so you have these three Bad's oppression barbarism and coercion we think that we all think they're bad but each tribe as it were thinks it has kind of a monopoly on fighting one particular bad and put in both of our all of our cards on the table I I would say and you publicly say in the book it's not a secret we tend to be more sympathetic to the libertarian axis the idea that we can organize our thinking around coercion versus freedom I I sometimes tend to look at issues that way but I have to say that since I read your book and since I've grown up which is about the last diet say four years or so recently turned 65 I feel like I finally grown up I started to see a lot more merit and the other sides and you could argue that that is a literally a form of maturity a form of intellectual maturity would you agree with that and would you agree with my characterization of your views just to get that straight yeah I think sort of I would describe myself as sort of libertarian slash conservative I have probably the the least sympathy on the progressive side but as you said there are certain issues certain things where that voice is correct and I think can think of historical examples where you know different sides got it wrong I'd say the civil rights movement circa 1963 64 when you have libertarians trying to defend states rights as Barry Goldwater did that just seems like they were on the wrong side of that of that one the oppressor oppressed axis probably works it was a better frame in that case so yeah I think it is more mature to sort of be able to be more flexible and be willing to to see these various sides I want to add that if for those you listening and and hear in person one of the drawbacks of this book is it takes a lot of of the fun out of hating your political opponents so you might not want to read it I you know you read it you should have a warning a warning label caution may lead to tolerance of people who don't think the way you do or may lead to charitable views toward people you disagree with and I think one of the reasons let me say two things first of all this is one of the most terms of bang for the buck and I don't mean price I'm in terms of effort in time you have to put in to read the book it's really an extended essay as how I would describe it it's not a lengthy tome in terms of what you get out of it it's way up there in my list of books that have the biggest impact on me per word and I would yeah other thing I would add react about those statements the other thing I would add is that it's hard to think of a more timely or important book given how hostile people are and intolerant they are people who disagree with them so I think this is a book whose time has come it was prescient in 20 whenever it came out the first time 13 2013 when we talked about it now I feel like it's more of an imperative yeah I have sort of mixed feelings about that and that I things are changing so quickly that you know I I almost feel like this edition is already out of date in some sense I do but it's more timely in the sense that a lot I think many more people now are upset at the state of political discourse and wondering you know how did this happen you know how are we doing this and the book between the first edition in the second edition this is now the third really explored a lot of sort of political psychology and there's a lot of that and we can we can get into that if you want sort of the the psychology that creates this polarization and political psychology has just taken off in the last five years and that's a sense in which this book is was prescient was ahead of its time you know these a term that's that's really accelerating its usage is called effective polarization and what that just means and that it's distinct from issue polarization so issue polarization would be people getting on opposite sides of you know gun control or abortion or what-have-you effective polarization is just pure love for your own side and more than that hatred of the other side and you know there's just you know recently this psychology psychological phenomenon I couldn't didn't even have in the book as a just came across it recently that suppose you get a little frustrated with the people on your side let's say you're Republican you don't really like Trump that much your psychological response to that is to hate the Democrats more because that sort of you know tones down the cognitive dissonance you feel about being a Republican who doesn't like Trump so your dislike of leaders on your own side causes you to hate the other side more though that's just one example of the psychology that's involved in creating this polarization and people talking past each other Adam Smith in the theater Moral Sentiments says that I'd like you to like what I like so if I tell you this is a really great movie and you go see it I'm gonna feel good if you if you like and I'll be disappointed if you don't like it but if I see what I think is a really awful movie and I tell you how awful it is and you like it that I'm really upset so we're it's more important Smith claims and it seems to be an example of effective polarization it's more important that we that our friends hate what we hate rather than that they like what we like well that's interesting because it's certainly the way people right I mean I I described this phenomena of demonization so you you can think of you know two extreme types of ways of communicating on issues you can think of being in a persuasion mode or in a demonization mode so persuasion you know think of a high school debate team where you know you absolutely don't make any personal criticism of the other team you focus on the substance and on the logic and so on and you play by very careful rules demonization you know think of road rage all you want to do is let the whole world know that the guy that cut you off is a horrible person and in politics demonization means just trying to let the whole world make sure that the whole world hates the person you hate and when you know when I think of the examples of people whose opinions are expressed in this demonization terms you know listen to a Rush Limbaugh episode any afternoon and he's trying to make sure that you hate the Liberals or read any Paul Krugman column and he's trying to make sure that you understand that you should hate the Conservatives you know that so that that is again part of this you know I call this demonization and that is what characterizes so much political commentary nowadays in regular media and social media so I've I've claimed that made the argument that that that demonization is camp has come out of the expanded choice in our media landscape that we have an opportunity unlike say a world of three television stations that we're all very similar we'd have the chance to tailor our choices of media that we consumed and information that we consume to our tastes and we're not so interested in the truth which is no one likes to be told that it's an unpleasant piece of of information in fact when I used to say things like that they don't just go no I'm interested to they yell at you because it hurts their feelings they don't like to be told that the idea that that media exists to give me what I like in the same way that Amazon does or Zappos or a restaurant and that this fusion of choice has allowed this to happen is I think extremely important because it allows me to have a stream of information that plays to those tastes that you're talking about on both sides I consume what I like and I get to hate what I don't like and my Twitter feed my Facebook feed my timeline my choices of newspaper etc feed that that tribalism yeah well I think there's trying to assess you know what what causal factors have current created this sort of apparent increase in demonization is tough it's a you know the you know my two favorite kind of causal things one of them you just named the change in the media environment but you know you can ask to what extent is the increase in polarization you know causing the media environment to change and what you know to what extent the other way around the other favorite causal factor would be the sort of cultural sorting that has taken place where you know people with different political views different social classes different backgrounds I think used to mix a lot more and they don't as much and that that can feed polarization because if you're only around people who agree with you then there's a high risk in taking the other side's point of view in in public among your group and a very low risk in taking an extreme negative point of view about the other side within your own group so there's this natural tendency for groups to become more polarized as they become more sorted but I think it's the the whole causal I would say the the causal model would look like a tangled ball of thread and be very hard to to you know figure out where which threads to pull to unravel it and one counter-argument I'll get from people or the people should think about when we talk about the media environment is you know look at the 19th century media environment where you know it's overtly partisan newspapers or broadsheets or propaganda sheets and you know people say well politics was never clean I think my response to that is that but we can cite some examples of persuasion not demonization I'm sure demonization you can you can show cartoons and propaganda sheets and whatever but I don't think the Federalist Papers were would be accused of demonization I don't think that the lincoln-douglas debates were about demonization so there were at least some very important examples where the the discussion was better but I'm sensitive to somebody saying look don't look at 1960 and the you know political economic and media environment in the United States and say that's normal I mean it may feel normal to us you know we were growing up with that but I am sensitive to somebody coming and saying well that's well there's no doubt that that politics was a dirty was a bloodsport in the 18th century 19th century 20th century 21st century I think the difference is the role that the consumption media played in people's their all let me say it this way this way I would try to salvage my otherwise mana causal explanation I think the median buyer what people consumed and the role they played in their lives was was really different most people in in 1800 on getting food on the table today we have a lot of time on our hands which is a feature and a bug yeah the way I described it I you know i'm i've always liked sort of a McLuhan at Marshall McLuhan type look at the media and how they kind of relate to society overall and one of the distinctions I like to draw is between what I call the sub Dunbar world and that refers to the Dunbar number of you know you can recognize about 150 faces 150 close friends and the super Dunbar world of the larger society and I think related to what you just said those were very separate for a long time I mean you knew that you lived most of your life in the sub dunbar world among your family among your work associates among neighbors and you didn't and they were all close to you there you saw them physically you didn't see them on a screen and the super Dunbar world was some distant world that you was you know where people were organizing society or they were running large corporations and that you didn't feel you didn't feel intimate so there's a clear separation you didn't feel as intimate with this super Dunbar world and that has changed with the internet and just progressively changed with smartphones so you get to the point where your friends exist on screen on a screen you know the people that you used to be intimate with now exist on a screen and then the people that on the screen appear to be intimate to you so you take a lot more you feel a lot more sense of ownership of what's going on in public life and you care about it a lot more an example of that that I've discovered this summer is talking to young people about the issue of free speech I had this dialogue with a bunch of young people was a I know maybe a dialogue of the Deaf but I was I would say you know free speech is good and they said but there are bad people out there saying bad things but free speech is good but there are bad people out there saying bad things it was just kind of that back and forth and I think the difference is that you know 30 or 40 years ago if there were bad people outs that they're saying bad things they disappeared from view pretty quickly classic example the Nazis who marched in Skokie Illinois in 1977 that was a big deal in the days leading up to the March after the March they were completely forgotten about today 12 of them yeah well but today you get those 12 can be really loud today and they and they persist and they're in your face and your friends remind you that they were there so something like Charlottesville which is well another relatively small event numerically is vivid in people's minds and people feel like I have to do something about it it's like there's no separate that isn't part of a separate world that people could forget about most of the time which is but where the Nazi March and Skokie people could forget about very quickly I think that sub Dunbar super Dunbar distinction is it would make a good chapter in addition for I of your book fourth edition I I do think there's a you know this is this famous cartoon most famous for me it's probably not famous for most of us but I probably mentioned it before I think about every once in a while it's uh shows a man and his computer term and all and me and he's talking to his wife off a panel outside the panel and he says honey I'll be I'll be up in a minute some somebody said something wrong on the internet and I don't know if you have that problem I sometimes have that problem some person who doesn't understand fill-in-the-blank economics trade issues doesn't matter what it is has said something that's that quote I know is wrong now in the abstract I know there were millions maybe billions of people who don't understand it that phenomenon out in the real world why is it that they've come into my living room in some dimension into my brain into my sense of consciousness because I read it now in my Twitter feed as response to me on Twitter I find that I'll just say that I think culturally we haven't figured out how to deal with that yet right the Hayek writes a lot about the difference between the microcosm and the macrocosm and how the norms that we have for interacting with a small group are different than the extended order of cooperation that we call a market economy we're pretty good at that we've gotten better but we still struggle with that and he talks about the urge we have in the innovative good seed he talks about the urge we have toward socialism to extend the socialism of the family which is a beautiful thing to the larger macrocosm where it's not so beautiful tends to lead to tyranny he argues and I and I agree and I think that struggle is similar to the struggle that you're highlighting here of how I interact with the people in my intimate or casual circle versus strangers versus you know I have many friends on the internet who I've never met right who I consider my friends or associates or I interact with them in various ways online and the rules for how not just not just the norms of how to do that politely but how I should think about my interaction with them and my standing and and connection to them I think we haven't quite figured out yeah well like for instance I I wish people would use my Terms of Service on Facebook which is no politics at all you know I mean I'll share you know posts about my travel or dancing or anything anything I would I would do it put up a cat video before I do anything on politics and when someone the bold statement Arnold and frightening and striking and you know it's just it's just not a medium for that and and when I you know when somebody says something wrong or something it really upsets me on Facebook yeah I just have this rigid rule don't comment don't like don't share just you know and and if somebody even if they're posting things that I like but they're all they're doing is posting politics on Facebook unfollow so that but that's Mike my cultural adaptation obviously that's strange why do so many people host how its political things on Facebook what did they think they're accomplished if you step back and asked what did you accomplish by doing that I think the best answer they could probably give is well I let off some steam yeah it's a form of therapy for them but they they might argue but I think it's I think it's I think you you'd agree that it's all looking for the the dopamine you know I need I don't have enough followers I'm I want more followers so we I find him as a yell if I ran I pose I wave a banner around that says I'm one of these and and I that the people who disagree with you culturally who I watch on Twitter reposting and retweeting and and cheering on the the uninformative but zealous statement of political belief I look at them in you know in shock yeah I'm like you I want to say what do you think you're doing and I think oh I know what you're doing you do too don't you yeah there are a lot of things but I again you're going back to your point that we maybe have not culturally adjusted properly to the technology that's kind of you know suddenly gotten into our lives I think it's it's the point and we'll have to see how that turns out I see this book in a way as an attempt to reshape the culture right and to think differently about our political disagreements one of the problems I have with it is I think it appeals to you and me and most people don't want to learn that other language of the their opponents they don't want to empathize and so you and I saying hey this is how the other side thinks if you know let me just put a footnote to that if you have a spouse who's in the other axis he's speaking the other language this is good for your marriage to read this book because you'll realize it oh yeah he's not a jerk she's an idiot she just looks at the world differently than I do and I think that is a clear practical application but for the most people they're not so interested in what you're selling how do you react to that that may be true I think you know if you're trying to if I were trying to sum up a prescription of this book and I don't have this phrase in the book like a you know this is one of these things I keep thinking about you know as I go along and I sometimes come up with better formulations but I would say my phrase would be those who know better should do better so there are a lot of people who are just not going to know any better they're just gonna you know they're just gonna see there's haters gonna hate well not but even just so they see other people doing it right they see this is the way this seems to be the way political discourses is conducted so I'll jump in and do the same thing so I think anyone who reads this book will know better right and problem but to your point maybe the people who are drawn to this book probably knew better anyway you know so I don't know how to what extent it brings about change but that would be my line it's pretty feeble those those who know better should do better and anyway I'll just leave it at that probably come back to some of that later I will say you know I'm come teasing a little bit about you know why would anyone want to want to follow your insights and learn about them but I do think for me personally I don't think I'm normal but I do think for me personally it has softened some of my dislike for the ideas of the other side as well as the people who hold those views and I think that's a better life I don't think I think it's hard to appreciate the the serenity it's a little strong but the the peace that comes from not hating other people it's very tempting to hate other people it's very tempting and I would argue you know Sebastian Junger was on here talking about his book tribe I think that's a profound book we're tribal we are we are tribal to say oh that's a mistake you shouldn't be tribal I think that's naive we are tribal so what I found your ideas do for me is that they they make they've raised the possibility that I can admire respect the people in the other tribes and even the tribes themselves and I find myself I like that feeling I also like the feeling of hating the the other side and looking down on them I understand the appeal of self-righteousness it's very deeply in us and I think partly through that tribalism but when you can step away from that and for me it's a little bit like the agnosticism I sometimes advocate on your money con talk that it's good to say I don't know it's also good to say you might be right which is really hard for us to say and so I think your book for those who have a taste for that or would like to explore that taste your book opens up that part of your palate okay you won't say anything no no okay just wanna apply that's part of the problem is sometimes we're a little bit like you know twins separated at birth yeah no that's true but but I would I would argue that the goal of a Vikan talk is not to have a good argument it's to get smarter so for those of you out there I hope some of you're getting smarter one of the things you you mentioned in the book I want to come back to this tribal come to this tribalism issue one of things you mentioned the book is I think it's just a sentence but it's it's something that that I think about religion has organized standard mainstream religion has become less people are less connected to it even over the last decade rates of church attendance and other forms of religiosity have gone down so one thought which you put forward I don't suggest it quote is true but it is provocative is the idea that as we have moved away from religion as a source of tribalism we found two other places to express that yeah that's that's a fear that that that politics is kind of filling that space one of you know I've mentioned that a lot of the political psychology that I've become aware of its kind of emerged since the first edition came out in 2013 and one of the books was by Liliana Mason who's Marie kanako-sama we talked about that book and she talks about the decline in the term is cross-cutting identities yeah so if you you know if you just feel strongly about anything you know your religion your sports team or whatever and you find yourself associating with other people who share that point of view or share that emotion and then it turns out that you disagree with those people on politics that kind of attenuates your hatred of them so like if you know if a trump supporter and a Trump hater happened to show up at a sports bar rooting for the same team in the World Series maybe that would just make them a little bit less inclined to see each other as inhuman and completely offbeat and so religion was one of those things that used to do that where you see you know that people's politics wasn't perfectly correlated with religion and that used to matter but you know I think people's emotional commitment to their religion is is so much less now that I don't think he can even serve that function even for people who are observant and going to church and synagogue my I mean I feel like the people who go to my synagogue are much more you know they're very open-minded religiously I mean if you tell them you know is is there something terribly wrong with Islam oh no they're good things about Islam is there's something terribly wrong with Christianity oh no there are good things about Christianity is there something there's good things about Republicans oh no you know so you know they're just much more committed politically than they are religious languages yeah you should have a hope I did go through a phase it was very short-lived where I thought it might be a good thing for people to do activities that that their in-group doesn't normally do you know this would be Republicans going to yoga classes and Democrats going to NASCAR bull-only Anna Mason worried that NASCAR was a dangerous place for African Americans and I thought that was an interesting example of some of the problem we're talking about that that even the idea of going to a non political event where you know that people are a certain way cultural or politically could be fraught with danger is I think symptomatic of really a huge cultural problem in a you know it's a pride it's part of the reason I think people have trouble with patriotism today it's like who's country you're talking about mine are theirs I like my version of patriotism but theirs is dangerous and I think that's that's really scary I suggested in a recent econ Talk episode that it hasn't aired yet it'll be out in a couple weeks with Ryan holiday riffing on an idea of Marina Abramovic that it would be interesting to have a physical space where people from opposite ends of the political spectrum or different ends in your case it's three there's at least three we'll get to the fourth in a minute but people in different spaces could just sit across from each other in silence and look into the eyes of that person and be aware of their humanity Yoga might do that cheering for NASCAR or sports team or you know going folk dancing I think could do that and maybe in response to the appeal the virtual world we will find more places in the physical world to do that than we have recently maybe that will help bring us together in fact one of the great comforts to me and it's a terrible comfort is that when we have a horrible thing happened in the United States whether it's a mass shooting or a physical disaster people pull together like quote they used to write people rescuing other human beings without thought of who they are or what they're about and I suggested recently we're not far from where President Reagan was shot and as the Washington Hilton he was rushed to the GW George Washington Medical Center the emergency room and there's a wreck it makes this joke that was funny at the time we looked up the so he was still somewhat conscious he looked up at the doctor and said I hope you're a Republican that wouldn't be funny in today's that's where we are I think we're in a world where people just can't handle the political differences and and they don't experience perience them so I do think it would be a great if we found social venues in other ways to interact with people who aren't just like us joint projects that they're both working both they're working to do so that they they realize that they're working with each other and they can that's that's that's a real kumbaya theory yeah well that's what the we do rescue a person from a flood you don't ask for their voter registration card I hope I don't think we did ever there was a story I think I just put it on my blog of a tow truck driver who arrives at you know somebody who needs a tow and then finds out their politics and drives away without towing them okay said yeah that's great what let's talk about the last five years when when the I was gonna say the Trump phenomena I don't want to call it the Trump but I'm gonna call it the rise of populism and nationalism which I I think people mistakenly associate with Trump as the cause of it I think he is more the result and you look around the world we see a rise of these phenomena not just the United States and I first saw them as a seemingly fourth axis in use of or fourth language what are your thoughts on that and what do you have to say in the book I know you're right about it as well yeah yeah I came up with the term in the sort of the Bobo vs. anti Bobo axis and that Bobo refers to a 20 year old book by David Brooks called Bobo's in paradise and Bobo stands for bohemian bourgeois but so that's all terminology but it there clearly are there emerged a lot of resentment of elites in both parties on the part of a lot a lot of people and you know this is most strongly evident in let's say the the contrast between college-educated women and non-college educated men you know non common so college educated women are may now make up a huge portion of the Democratic vote and non-college educated men make up a large portion the Republican vote and Trump I think pulled in a lot of non college-educated men who had voted Democratic even for President Obama and that was kind of his narrow margin of victory in those states so that is yet another axis so there's there's been a lot of change in the last several years and the change is ongoing it's hard it's you know if you know if we think of polarization and people talking past each other as a disease it's like the pathogen keeps mutating it's hard it's very hard to even stay on top of it so I'm gonna disagree with you a little bit and defend the first three languages it's ironic when I look at brexit or when I look at Trump and I see the the issues that I felt maybe I'm wrong but that felt viscerally important to their supporters even though I would not call have called Trump a conservative because he has many policies that do not that were not in 2016 conservative or at least associated with could the conservative wing of the Republican Party and yet I think a huge part of trumps appeal and a huge part of the appeal of brexit is a civilization versus barbarism and there many different flavors of that some of its directed toward outsiders foreigners some of it is directed I think more toward national identity the pride of being say British take it outside the u.s. example and so that that elite non-elite when ice let's stick with England for a minute obviously a lot of young people voted against Breck so a lot of older people voted for obviously the opposite ya know that young people voted against Breck said older people were in favor brexit and a lot of that was a to me a tangled set of emotional issues not about pocketbook although it was often brought into the debate but about what it means to be English what it means to to be related to Brussels what it means to be part of the world at large and I think that same thing is going on in America well let me push back on that particular example look what look at what breaks it is done to the British political system it's turned it inside-out it split the Labour Party and it split the Conservative Party so it's clearly done something different than traditional conservatives and I think Trump does the same thing I think a lot of traditional conservatives look at Trump's just behavior and conduct and say this guy is violating guardrails and guardrails are the essence of you know social guardrails social norms traditions respect for party elders you know he's got no respect at all for party elders and vice versa he came in with no endorsements from anybody in the party he came in having been reportedly insulted John McCain the previous candidate so he doesn't seem to acknowledge any guardrails for a traditional conservative that would be you know awful and for some you know for this thin sliver of inside the beltway conservatives that is you know they do become never Trump Cruz but it seems that for the people at large for the popular his popular support that's a good thing that it shows that he's not going to go native when he comes to Washington he's not going to betray us when he comes to Washington so it becomes a good thing and that so I I don't I don't think he fits I think he I think he really does create a new new axis where where for example a lot of hatred among his supporters is directed against against Republicans they hate Romney they hate and so that there's so III I do think that we have to that he doesn't fit neatly into the civilization barbarism story and I don't think the populist movements around the world fit neatly there either I mean I'm just trying to think mentally as I go through Italy France you know I don't think the resentment of Makram is a civilization versus barbarism so what how do you think about the without trying to stuff it into a fourth axis how do you think about this this fear of elites I do think what has come to the front or distrust of elites what is one of the things that's come to the front is this idea that that somehow we've been betrayed that the people we kind of counted on to quote take care of everything have somehow had at best messed up at worst pursued a policy that for their own benefit and I think both of those I think that second one is is just way over exaggerated but the first one's true and has matured for a long time but it clearly has a a a salience that it didn't have in the past what's going on well I guess you know I I would keep recommending Martin Gauri's work the his book is the revolt of the public and it's sort of a combination of this sort of media collision so now or that you know the the intimate is no longer separate from the larger society and so people are much more they treat the elites in the newspapers and in politics as like an immediate family that's betrayed them so that so it's just a much more visceral feeling and they can just be much more aware of it the the example that I like to cite maybe people have forgotten this sort of so-called rather gate where Dan Rather at CBS aired this basically hit piece on George Bush allegedly not having done his military service properly and they included a letter that was written and somebody on the internet figure that the letter which supposedly was written and you know I don't know 1960s 1970s hadn't used a proportional spaced font that was only available in Microsoft Word you know obviously in the 1990s well that just that that kind of expose wouldn't have happened and before the new media and the ability of people to rally around it I mean again I'll go back to you know could anyone even someone with like Donald Trump have gotten along with zero endorsements from the party you know no endorsements in the media I mean you needed that really up until at least 2008 you needed some you needed some base within a party leadership you needed something within the elites so the the the new media environment has definitely empowered people and also made them much more aware of the failings and the perceived failings of elites so I think it's helped to build this kind of populist move I'm gonna focus on that perceived failings for a minute this sounds it's hard for me to say because it's an argument I would not have accepted in the past but is it not possible that the current media landscape the information landscape has made it much easier to scapegoat anybody and blame anybody and and relentlessly tell people a set of distorted facts or lies that that are easy for people to swallow because it feeds that that like they have of their tribal identity we think of mass movements that are that are distortive if we think about as they could take the Nazis in the 1930s right or the Communist Party during its reign now they had control of the media either it could direct control or they had got control and we know that's important it seems to me that in today's world no one has control of it almost by definition at least right now in the United States maybe in China it's different I hear it's different but that fact that no one has control of it which usually is a wonderful thing in an economic system because it allows people to tailor their consumption to their preferences in political space is not so healthy and it's allowed what is effectively people to believe a set of conspiracy theories about who's running the country and what that's doing to their lives that are simply not true and yet I think large swaths of people have come to believe them well that that's true and they and they believe sort of equal and opposite conspiracy theories you know just the look the latest one I mean this this will probably be over in two weeks right but the the Ukraine whistleblower story I mean one side sees a conspiracy on the part of Trump and Ukraine and other side sees a conspiracy on the part of media against Trump and that's so here's one of the stranger aspects that it I'm not paying attention to that I don't know about you what is it yeah I know what it is sort of but the reason I'm not paying attention and I and I worry sometimes about whether I'm failing my and my role as a citizen but I I couldn't I couldn't figure out the FBI Russia conspiracy theory on each side right so the Trumper said that the FBI deliberately created a belief that the Trump was colluding with Russia and the anti-trump er said that no Trump was colluding and they've covered it up and and and the the the Mueller report doesn't exonerate him it's actually an indictment he just didn't have the gods etc and you know the amount of effort it would take me as a somewhat educated person to figure out where the truth lies in that dispute I give up that can't be a good thing right that's that it's actually scares me and in the old days we would just come there'd be a consensus that what was true it wasn't and now you have to start thinking you know be a lot of it you should think a lot of those probably weren't true they were just what the media came to is their sort of consensus and now I just not sure what to believe about a lot of things yeah and I think a lot of people just want to tune out because they just don't want to hear the shouting and that's I mean maybe that's good maybe that's a healthy response sorry but you talk about an interesting term I been thinking about the idea underneath it the state of closure that people have what do you mean by that people want to not have to carry in their minds a sense of ambiguity of things that well I'm not sure about and I think that you know that sort of falls under the category of the sort of the psychological reasons why people use these organize things along their three axes so if you're trying to you take something like football players last year the f1 or African American football players not kneeling during the national anthem you know that's something where you could look at a lot of sides and you know how to deal with an ambiguity but the simple but for progressives that they just they can simplify it - okay well african-americans are traditionally oppressed and they're standing up against that oppression then you've reached closure you don't have to you just it's much simpler to process that if you're a if you are conservative you just say well the you know the flag and the national anthem there's those are symbols of sacred you know yeah there's symbols of American greatness and so trying to tear those down is barbaric and then you've simplified it Libertarians I don't know maybe if you had asked to libertarians you get three opinions but one thing that they might say is that you know what is that with this ritual of saluting the flag and singing the national anthem at the beginning of the football game that sounds like state worship you know it's not just the football players who shouldn't be kneeling nobody should be or who shouldn't be standing nobody should have to stand do to this state worship so anyway that's on that I'd like to get a little bit more into this sort of the people who know better should do better my lines on that like I think well a couple of the places that just within the last six years have gotten worse in that dimension I saw so my initial read would have been that you know someone like Paul Krugman knows better and should do better I mean called you know if Paul Krugman walked into an economic seminar there's just no way he would speak the way he does in his op-ed I mean it's just a completely different voice he's completely compartmentalized his role as a scholar from his role as a public intellectual but for the public at large that isn't clear at all they just see oh this Nobel Prize winning economist just beating up on conservatives and so there was a case of someone who knows better but won't do better and he'll I'm and he will justify him he'll tell you that oh no this I'm making the world a better place by exposing how awful these conservatives are but so it's it's it's hard to you know you're not gonna change his mind on that I think that we had a norm until this administration that the President of the United States was sort of above the political fray that you know they might have run a dirty campaign they might have been nasty but once they're in office the Oval Office they're supposed to be above the fray maybe they sent their send their vice president out to be nasty maybe their campaign commercials are nasty but it doesn't come directly now they don't want to share it with the vice president for themselves it's surprising present yeah I think we have one but it's got to be the lowest profile I was president my lifetime somebody's taking up all the oxygen I think probably yeah sorry go ahead and I'd say the other group that I think knows better but doesn't do better is on college campuses and particular college administrators know I think the most feckless people on earth but you know you've got this situation where you have social justice at activists who demonize people I mean you know it seems if you'd asked me in the 1960s where should we head on issues of race and gender it would be we're treating people entirely as individuals you know the whole race gender thing is transparent you as an individual take your interests and your capabilities and do the best you can with them and and you know will encourage you will support you and how that plays out is how that plays out that's the way it looked like it was headed in 1960s where it looks like it's it is now it's team black and team female against team white male and and then and that seems to justify throwing out on campus every value that used to be sacred for intellectual integrity so you throw out free speech you throw out open inquiry and for purpose of this discussion you don't model the rhetoric of persuasion of dealing with of treating to other people with respect of not making ad hominem arguments of focusing on facts and logic so the the rhetoric of persuasion has been replaced by the rhetoric of demonization you allow people to demonize white people in general you out people to demonize civic individuals and make them you know I'm not allowed to speak and I think that's that's a case where again that there are people who know better there are plenty of you know I would say academics of our age you know 65 years and older who came from the left or are still on the left who understand that but that's I I fear that's fading and that that to me is even more worrisome than the Trump phenomenon because there's a pretty good chance that one way or another the next president will return the Oval Office to being a more dignified and though to you that as a place where people use persuasion rather than demonization but I I think it will take a different temperament of a college administrator to say to the social justice activists look you can pursue your goals however you want but we on campus operate in persuasion mode we don't operate in demonization mode and that statement is just not being made loudly and clearly enough as far as I can tell so this is fun I get to take the progressive viewpoint now okay so I'm gonna say well you say that because you're a white male and you've had a privileged life and if you understood how hard it is to be a woman or black you would understand that there are those norms that you value are actually oppressive and so that I say that well let me let me just add one more piece to that so that would be one that'd be the argue on the other side and well we react to that then I've got another point about colleges I want to add I'd say you know if you if you're committed to that point of view and I don't think you personally are I think you're probably playing a little bit of devil's advocate I read your book I understand that that's a legitimate feeling the question is should it be carried out in this way yeah and I think at some point you have to to say no the that allowing the discourse to switch from persuasion to demonization is just too high a price to pay you know you've got that you have to and I just think at some point if I were the college administrator and clearly I'm not I could I could to give you all my scorn for college administrators but I want we've got something already yeah we're good enough I left it I'll have to share something with you at lunch or something but if I were the college administrator I would just say look the intellectual integrity is what matters you know they they've said for years we can have diversity and inclusion and we can still maintain our intellectual integrity in fact we'll be better for it okay prove that that can happen because I think it's going in the other direction so I have a different thought it seems to me that I wrote an essay where I stole your ideas but at least I mentioned you which is often doesn't happen Stoll's not the right word but I rift on your idea and I said that the three languages of politics also lead to with three blind spots of politics and I think one of the blind spots that I went through each group progressive liberal and conservative progressive conservative libertarian and I suggested that each of them has trouble seeing something about the virtues of the other side and and in the case of I think the progressive axis I'm not a progressed as I should just mention the others first the libertarian axis libertarians have trouble understanding that freedom isn't good for everybody we think it is we think everyone should have the right and it's gonna work out great and economics in particular with free markets everybody's gonna gonna grow and prosper that's literally not true but we'd like to that's our just that's a religious blind-spot for conservatives they think that people who are left behind the progressive see as oppressed they think well they just need to pick themselves up without imagining how hard that is if they had grown up in that situation and so the blind spot I think progressives have is that they by seeing people as victims which of course they often are they often fail to understand the role of agency and the potential for escaping victimhood and the potential for self-expression the potential for liberal for liberation and for me that the attitude that colleges have today that social justice identity politics I find it unhelpful to the people they're trying to help and maybe I'm that's just my you know way of rationalizing it but that would be my argument yeah I think in some ways the people it hurts the most are the african-americans and the women who can make it on you know you know playing by standard rules because they're they're told they're now being told they're inferior or they're they're being put in a fishbowl like you're not an individual you're on Team black you're on Team female and you're and you know that and I sort of denied their individuality so I think that in some ways I think they're the ones who hurt the most the other thing I would say is that I think universities long ago lost the role that you wish they could play as a place where ideas are shared I think I'm an accuser of romance about what a college campus is college campus is a place where 18 to 22 year olds live in in a luxurious settings typically exploring some of the pleasures of life while occasionally going to class and you know this is listeners now I don't believe in surveys particularly but for what it's worth survey results do suggest that people spend much less time on their schoolwork than they used to I think that's probably consistent with my impression my kids and their college experiences college is just a you know a place to explore life and it's a finishing school for for mostly rich people which it's been for a long time just a smaller sliver now it's a bigger slice and so the fact that there's some intellectual discourse relative to what they could have been really not that important how's that for a depressing thought we should close on that no I don't think I can answer that one oh come on well I don't want to close on that note I want you to fight back can't you say anything that made me feel a little bit better our colleges we owe these people the chance to ask questions yeah I suppose my guest today has been Arnold clang Arnold thanks for being part of econ talk enjoy to us questions and please wait till I let's have some instructions here for what I'm supposed to tell you I think you have to wait for the mic yeah well we we prefer questions as opposed to speeches but please wait to be called on wait for the microphone just so people can hear the question and announce your name and affiliation if you can sure that okay here in the front should be rewarded for sitting in the front you know people generally tend to heroes empty so those who are brave enough should get called on for a while anyway a richard coleman retired from Customs and Border Protection as to whether people want the truth or not you can't handle the truth we're not built to handle the truth we're emotional critters every purchase we make is you know affected by advertising which is not as not consumers reports data but you know what's flashy what's read whatever so my hope I'm an anti-trump er well you know that we escaped in 14 15 16 months unscathed not in a nuclear holocaust but the next election put in place people who will have a built-in wall against them the the Trump people aren't going anywhere the people who get to have the joy of hate aren't going anywhere that the tribalism isn't going anywhere the underbelly his exposed isn't going anywhere and my example is by part I used to exchange information with somebody on the think-tank trail and they sent me back a Breitbart link they said did you Kate yourself and this is an educated person and the Breitbart story was about Hillary's child sex ring and and he wasn't kidding so how do we how do we what's going to change in human nature that's going to you know change the arc for yeah culture well the part of the conservative outlook is that human nature doesn't change so it's you know that that what you need are you know social norms and formal institutions to kind of shape people and I think we're just in a period we discuss this in which the the we don't know what the social norms ought to be on social media I mean I have very strict social norms on social media when I my blog posts generally show up on average about 10 days after I write them which means I physically can't react to 99% of the news because the news just you know there's a story that's big today will disappear in 3 days it's a way of forcing myself to think ahead to think long term to use to not use emotional reactions in the book we talk about Kahneman's system 1 and system 2 you know the emotional versus the the more which is more immediate reaction versus the thinking system the one of the problems with social media is that it really gives you an impetus to react quickly rewards you for reacting quickly I mean if if I tweet it on a two-week advance schedule like no more would be meaningless I mean it you know you have to react to what happened in the last two hours or your tweet you know it just vanishes into nothing so getting a whatever cultural adaptation to this media environment example but I think again I wouldn't count on human nature changing I at best would count on some institutional changes in norms building up and you know I end up promising that's going to happen either my only comment is I think ain't seen nothing yet I don't think we're going back to normal her on the side my name is yahia al shami i am a jean-pierre a fellow at the Michaela Center and I'm here to intern here so essentially my question is I'll try to put a challenge it's a question that is though there's there's an article that was published by the Harvard Review seven days ago and it's about how racism and discriminatory speech actually hinders the development of black children like and it produces children that have mental essentially mental conditions or more that's more difficult for them to say cope with violence and so on so how do we have persuasive conversations about things to actually objectively hinder a child development that's my first question and the second thing I want to ask which is a great question is could you say more about the project which dr. Dan Klein told me about it's called impossible conversations I'm one of his students so I know it's at least marginally related to this topic I guess I'm reluctant to comment on a Harvard review study that you're summarizing that I haven't read sorry it sounds interesting you know have to take a look at it there are yeah I think when Charles Marie's in Hearne Stein's book the bell curve came out I think even on the conservative side there were people I think it was leon kass i'll have to have to look up who said you know this is not a conversation we ought to be having so there is that that argument I really lean the opposite direction I think you know sort of the answer to free speech is more there to you know alleged to hate speech or speech that troubles you is more speech I think it's difficult is to get someone to understand Marie and her and staying on their own terms you know people read that and they say well you know all blacks are inferior or whatever they want to read Murray and Herrnstein is saying that if you can't change human nature and people are going to bound to read that into it then then maybe you do need to police speech but anyway that yeah that's a delicate issue probably it could require a whole nother hour of should we have those conversations or not well let me say something about impossible conversations she mentioned one of my favorite insights of Arnold's was a post he rode or an essay where he said if you don't like Facebook which is a big issue right now I think the lot of people don't like the tech firms and what they've done to her discourse so what they've done with their data and issues the privacy if you don't like them make a better one and there are many many people right now really smart people trying to create alternatives to the current landscape of Technology the current social media landscape in particular so just to mention two letter dot wiki which is as a conversations contest won't be out I think by the time this airs will be closed there's a site called paragraphs Pai are graphs where people talk about controversial things with each other one of the ideas in some of these conversations is that there are no comments which is sad but I think one of the problems of conversation now is that you and we'd be weird for you and I to have a conversation and random people could come by and yell at us while we were trying to share ideas or learn about what the other person thought or just learn something and I think what's going on now a lot in the in social media is that you know that yelling just takes that car off the off the road and into ditch of of something else and it's that's really hard to ignore the trolls but so one way to deal with this ignore the trolls but the second is to create a platform where the rules are set up in advance such that trolling is less likely hatreds less likely demonization is less likely I mentioned - I know of at least two alternatives to Twitter that people are working on I know of at least two alternatives to the web and the current browser landscape that people are working on one based on the blockchain one I don't know what it's based on but there the question is the real issue I think is what most people don't care they just don't care they they're fine with the way things are they're okay with it but for those of us who are worried about it I think it's worth exploring these some of these alternatives and trying to use them it's hard to do everybody's on the ones that are out there now but you build a better went you built you will potentially have a chance to win in the marketplace and the last thing I want to do is regulate in such a way that makes competition harder by building up a fixed cost of compliance that sconces the current large firms in there Marcus so yeah it right there you yeah you know no no no sorry in front of you yeah no right here yeah so I think my question would circle around at the last three examples that you were talking about so you were talking about on the one hand paul krugman on and i guess three hands right on one hand paul krugman and then you talked about donald trump and then you talked about college professors so i think i would have a question related to maybe some degree of false equivalency and that one has a much larger megaphone and so while i agree with the general idea of you know an open marketplace of ideas that one has a and almost a unique ability to sway the conversations and i'd like to think that you're right that there will be some degree to return to normalcy but I'm not sure that I see that that's possible given the kind of baked in numbers that others have talked about is that is that enough of a question yeah it's enough I guess I just I and maybe I'm naive but I think in terms of style and approach and sort of how he got to where he is I think you know Trump is unique and the other thing that's well okay here's the thing that might not change which is the intense like if you live if you if you read the Washington Post then you can't believe that he hasn't been thrown out of office already I mean it's just you know it it's the scandal of the day story and that's also an extreme environment that's in some ways as extreme as Trump himself and do you know you know what's going on over ninety percent of the people who are in the so in DC you know voted against Trump so there's no pressure on the Washington Post to be objective at all so I think I think we could in that for that real from the media environment perspective I think we could could feel like we're you know permanent embattlement mode but I do think the specific office of the presidency I would if I were betting I would bet a more than 50% chance that you know when Trump is replaced either you're gonna have from now or five years from now that the next president will attempt to not you know to deal with the public and his opponent from a persuasion mode and not a demonization mode that's just my best guess yeah I'd like to think that's true but I guess I don't of course is do I have any reason for thinking that's true III took the question to be a little bit different I took the question to be some people should be demonized and and I think I think that's true and I think that's the challenge that the tolerant charitable person has to deal with which is if you're if you're always saying maybe you're right and I don't know there can be a situation a time in history when that's actually a very inappropriate setting and I guess my did was I think we should use the word nuclear holocaust was a different speaker that was you yeah so sorry it was our first question I I think it's fascinating to me I didn't vote for Trump I think I voted for Gary Johnson it's interesting that that well never mind but Trump I think is much less likely to lead us to a nuclear holocaust despite his personality and macho self-image than many other people who could have held that office and I think it's hard for us to see that so the question is is that blinding us those of us who maybe aren't his biggest fans or who despise them to some of his virtues and i-i-i-i bend over backwards to think about virtues and positive side effects but I think there's a risk to that I concede that and that's what I took your question to me and I think it's a legitimate worry I actually thought you were referring to Paul Krugman but I think you meant Donald Trump about the person with the big megaphone it's interesting to me I'm making a joke but I think it's interesting who has the megaphones there are a few and the truth is we live in a time when even a big megaphone isn't what he used to be it'd make except maybe for the president so I'll take your point there also another question yeah that corner good afternoon and thank you for being here hey my name is Joey and Kyle Lewis from the American University here in Washington the the New York Times broadcast of the third presidential debate in 2012 where the Republican candidate for president walked on to the stage put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his notes for the debate which the other candidate did not do and that Republican candidate in the third debate in 2012 God destroyed in front of the entire world decisively now the debate after the fact is whether or not we would like to teach our children to go through life with the notes to guarantee that you'll win but in the event that you lose you don't get angry or should or is it more the focus of a situation where you have young children who are running for office at their school and they're using different advantages over state kids in the school and it just gets worse and worse and worse as they're getting older you know so what do you all think about that type of integrity strategy just the entire world seeing you know this candidate has these notes in this candidate doesn't and then the candidate doesn't destroys the one that does and it's very fair you know what we all think about that I think it would be interesting to look at histories of these televised debates and see you know my impression is that okay the the bed I would make is let's say the 1960 Kennedy Nixon debate a lot of it would look petty and he's like what were they talking about Kim way and Matsu and whatever but it would look a lot more a lot closer to what I call the persuasion mode to the high school debate team mode where they're you know people are playing by the rules and then if you said then showed a sequence of debates following that they would kind of get worse and worse I'm gonna be wrong on that but I think you know I think that's a I've you that as a sign of something that you know politics hasn't always been as bad as it is now and I think you know for that's that's a very tough message for me to get across to young people today they just assume that politics is what it is it's this mud ball fight and it's always been that way always will be that way and maybe like you say maybe I'm romanticizing the way things were you know 60 70 years ago but I I just don't think it was quite that bad I don't know I I think people have been demonizing their political opponents for a long time I'd have to think about why it feels different now I think it does feel different I want to react a different way to the question which is how do you parent in a world where integrity seems to be scarce and I think it's a big challenge a really big challenge as a parent my kids are all and a week-and-a-half they'll all be 20 or older and I think I got that right so my my ability to have an impact on their you know their moral foundations is limited but certainly when they were growing up I spent a lot of time thinking about what I thought should be the right thing for them to do and sometimes that meant imitating what they see on television and most the time it meant not imitating and not imitating has its own tribal flavor we're not like everybody else it's okay and I think that's hard for most parents because their kids don't like it and I I just want to encourage people to think about that I think that's a really important question whether you the joke is a joke it's the line I think it's only a dead salmon swims with the tide right you go in swim against the tide if you're alive in your salmon you go upriver and I mean I don't I don't oversell current contrarian ism or nonconformity but I do think that as a parent and as a human being we all have to deal with the issue of how much of the cultural space we want to embrace versus stand up against I know it's an interesting an important issue yeah well yeah yeah hi my name is Eva Johnson and my interest primarily before knowing anything about you was the title of this discussion three languages my background is in language and listening to talk about the ways in which we are processing political discourse makes me think of it more as an inability to process or a pathological processing through a singular lens one side says something and I just can't seem to hear it and so I was wondering if you've contemplated an approach that applies when you're trying to have an issue based discussion to the person who is listening to you regardless of political Creed so I guess can you just you can just add a little bit to what you meant by the last time so it wasn't sure I caught it have you thought about an approach for issue based dialogue that focuses on being able to transcend the listeners political Creed yeah I think I think we would probably say that it is that you know there needs there needs to be a will to do that and that's echoes back to sort of my you know maybe I'm romantic about colleges but I think people it takes a lot of effort to learn to distinguish between sort of ad hominem arguments demonization and you know a real issue based discussion anyway I definitely agree with your point that about the language I thin the book I even mentioned that it's sort of like when people are are talking politics it's almost like when a quarterback in a football team is calling an audible and they don't want the other side to hear to understand it went you know so you know someone read someone you know if someone on the left happened to you know tune in Rush Limbaugh they really they literally would not understand what he was saying or trying to say and I think if a conservative would look all Krugman it's like you're talking about conservatives I don't recognize any of these people you're talking about so the language does divide people I think you know the the mechanisms for having you know better discussions I mean we can come up with I mean juries are like that I mean I don't you know the one time I sat on a jury it was very contested we voted up voting six six but we did not you know but between these instructions of the judge and just sort of the the somberness of the environment you know we we didn't call each other name so we didn't you know and we actually changed each other's minds on some things and so there are settings in which people will deliberate but there there are a lot different than op-ed op-ed columns and Facebook posts so I I'll give a different again a difference thought I and and nice place to close so praise Arnold for maybe the at least the third time I've learned I should say I've learned a lot from Arnold over the years I think I think this book is the deepest stuff I've learned from you and I think in the personal setting forget this sort of we've been talking a lot about politics and and social media let's talk about the dinner table where you know language right now is is a little bit broken and you know people you know it started with the first Thanksgiving of the Trump administration people were worried going home to their families and could they have a civilized meal together and I'm from a for a long long time I've held views that were not politically mainstream many of you I'm sure in the same we're here at the Cato Institute you know there's a building now and there's a thing called the Cato Institute but if you've been you know I've been a something like a libertarian since maybe 1971 and it's a pretty easy time to be a libertarian nineteen seventy one wasn't so easy so I've had a lot of really unpleasant arguments for people where I was called horrible things and and I saw it happened to my friends too and they were scarred by it it I'm sure I was scarred by it it creates a social face that is difficult to maintain and what I found helpful about the three languages I think I want to apologize our on we didn't spend enough time talking about the application I should go back in and read the book you should go back in here the first interview we did honey can talk about it where we go through example after of how it's incredibly powerful and figuring out what people are gonna say and what it's done for me personally is it allows you to not get angry in a setting where a lot of times you just there's just two lions roaring at each other you believe what and and it's the end of civilized interaction and when you've read this book and you think about the psychology of it you realize oh yeah I remember now that that's where he's coming from he's got that he's a progressive or she's a conservative or they're libertarian and it's just so it's calming now the problem is is you don't have a translator you know I'm speaking my language you're speaking yours and part of what I think are most saying just now is that it's hard to sometimes than what you were saying and your question is it's now what what do we do we got the I've recognized that these different languages work and what I found helpful is it does open the possibility it's not easy and I don't this is my romance it does open the possibility of empathy I'm saying you know I'm not a progressive but I understand there are people who are oppressed in the world I don't think everybody's oppressed you know it's kind of like I'll leave that out but I understand that they're oppressed people in the world and now the question is now what should be done about that all right that's a good thing to care about it's a good thing to care about civilization it's a good thing to care about freedom and I all the things that that these three groups care about we all care about and we just struggle to see beyond that one that we're really focused on so if you think about it a little bit more and you talk about it a thoughtful way you actually have a chance to have a simple conversation not necessarily you're gonna convince anybody Arnall you're very clear in the book this is not a guide to how to market your ideas but it kind of is implicitly you don't use it but you could use it that way but we're just how to treat the human beings like human beings it's a it's a big step forward I think I don't think we should my's how useful that is just as in a setting where people can't speak literally speak the same language we work for ways to find ways to communicate and I think this kind of taxonomy their arms created gives us a way of doing that way to add anything ok let's eat lunch second floor [Applause]

Channel: The Cato Institute

Views: 2,958

Keywords: tribalism, progressives, conservatives, libertarianism, donald trump, andrew yang, elections, joe rogan

Id: sTK-iQVkZN8

Length: 94min 50sec (5690 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2019