Liberals in the Culture, and a Stream of my Consciousness

I'm very tempted just to link a story, say "interesting" and move on, but given the most recent post I feel compelled to be a little more verbose. You've been warned -long and sprawling examination of my mind ahead.



Some weeks -gosh, maybe months -ago, David Frum ended his relationship with American Enterprise Institute over what was most likely a pay dispute (Frum wanted to paid and AEI wanted him to occasionally work for them rather than work on his own projects and mention AEI at the bottom of the page).

David Frum was a speechwriter in the GW Bush White House, as an AEI fellow he did good work on conservative causes, was responsible for the "Axis of" part of "Axis of Evil," and was an interesting guy to read on political history and politics.

Somewhere along after the Iraq War went belly-up the first time, my read was that he basically made his peace with the coming Conservative Crack-up and went to deciding how best to cushion the crash landing. I'd estimate that was about 6 years ago, maybe a little less. At that time, I thought he became much less interesting as he stopped talking about new ideas and started talking about how to salvage what we could on our way to becoming Canada. More critically to the reason I stopped reading him was that he became very snippy at anyone who said "you know, we could still win this..."

So, Frum's separation from AEI strikes me as basically the culmination of this story. AEI wanted to stop digging in and launch a new offensive, Frum wanted flag the "unimportant" buildings for the enemy to bomb, if you'll pardon the over-wrought political metaphor. Example: AEI went full-throat on why the Healthcare Bill was a bad idea, Frum went nuts on pro-lifers for derailing it for a year (description approximate, I got some of this third hand).

Against that backdrop, Julian Sanchez -who, I confess for reasons so shrouded in the fog of time I don't remember them, is filed in my mind under "arrogant, foolish, and wrong" -penned an article on the conservative quest for epistemic closure and how it accounted for conservatives' belief that Frum must have sold out for the cocktail circuit. (Incidentally, telling rank and file activists that their members hang out with the other side in Washington, DC does not actually engender confidence that the members won't sell out for prestige -it just astonishes us that it happens as rarely as it does.)

Now normally I wouldn't give this much thought, what with Julian Sanchez filed in my mind under "arrogant, foolish, and wrong" for reasons I can't remember, which might be making his point, but there's only 24 hours in the day and its a big web -that's my defense and I'm sticking to it...

Anyway, normally I'd read it, shrug, and go on with my life. For what its worth, I have no idea why Frum jumped ship. My irritation with him stems from the moderately strongly felt sensation that he jumped ship just when it was getting tough, and then mocked those of us who toughed it out. It's not that he's joined the other side, it's that when it looked like things were going the wrong way, he tucked his tail and fled. And that's irritating, but forgivable. Now he comes back and wants to be in charge, leapfrogging everyone who stood there and took fire while insulting them for sticking around long enough to actually win. This, incidentally, feels like the reason I don't like Julian Sanchez -the same feeling -also present with Will Wilkinson and Brink Lindsey, with whom I associate Julian Sanchez and the so-called liberaltarian project.

OK, so that long kinda-meta jog down memory lane and my own psychology leads to the article I wanted to link as "interesting."

Megan McArdle at The Atlantic writes a long and more-streaming essay than this, actually 3 of them so far -on structural biases as a human condition, rather than a simply Conservative or Liberal condition. If I can summarize, dominant culture groups don't notice that they are a dominant culture -it just is. So when minority groups look at the dominant group and say "I don't fit in," they form their own groups to have a social life. The dominant group sees this and goes "why do you have to be difficult? Can't you see how you're acting all wrong?" This perception keeps the "weird ones" from getting jobs, seeking out academic positions, et cetera. Since we're all weird somewhere, we should empathize, but we are egocentric and perceive our weirdness as normal, which results in the familiar shouting matches. And this is ultimately bad.

Jonah Goldberg has a particularly interesting rejoinder, I recommend it alone if you only have time for one, at AEI (the circle is complete...) He makes many of the same basic points: "epistemic closure" is a human problem, not an ideological one; and adds that the overt hostility for conservatives by all liberals 40 years ago is the reason we have these parallel institutions, and its really not convincing, now that Conservatives have been affecting politics for 15 years, to claim that its only because Conservatives live in an echo-room. The crack on Paul Krugman is particularly amusing to me, but I like the word "Defenestrate." He also adds that it isn't like conservatives are lacking ideas -in many ways they have too many, which each appeals to a different part of the movement.

*****

Well, that was a lot just to say "read this." I'd like to make a handful of side remarks:
1.) Is it weird that I don't find the existence of Bob Jones University's old no interracial dating rule, or Trinity United Church of Christ's anger at white Americans particularly troublesome? Chicago and wherever BJU is located are strange places. The world doesn't end because someone somewhere is behaving in a way I don't like -now if we institutionalized either nationally -then I'd have a problem. But as tumors go, I find these fairly benign.
2.) I do find Obama's membership at Trinity UCC troubling -sort of. I have other reasons for thinking his policy will be bad and muddled without invoking his church. But I'm not comfortable with a person who chooses a church for political reasons, and I'm not sure why I'm supposed to think well of a person who sat in a pew for 20 years and never heard the pastor talk, and then abandoned the church at the first hardship. In other words, I don't think his history at Trinity reflects well on his character. He was either a pharisee or an apostate.
3.) On the other hand, I don't find campaigning at Trinity or Bob Jones particularly troubling. I figure if the 9th Circle of Hell had electoral votes, politicians would campaign there and actively seek Satan's endorsement.
4.) Following up on my most recent posts, I'm happy to consider the existence of a dominant culture making it hard for minorities to enter. I remain unconvinced that the Central Government is anything other than a giant hammer for pounding octagonal-multi-color pegs into gray-flannel-square holes.
5.) Which is why I remain generally in favor of decentralizing this stuff -even at the University. A bias against conservatives (or anyone) can't work effectively so long as they have a friendly place (like George Mason) to go. This makes the potential for bias at the Journals (as revealed by the CRU e-mails) so troublesome. They are centralized.
6.) On the general point of political echo chambers -based on the research I'm familiar with -which is a grand total of one book, but a recent one and a highly awarded one -the evidence is that they don't exist in the aggregate. People who consume political news are voracious readers of the news. They read everything -they may have political biases in how they interpret, but they don't ignore sources which don't conform to their views. The place where it might happen is the low-information voter, who is generally not politically active in the first place.
7.) On the other hand, people who become more politically active tend to actively cease debating and go straight to cheering on the team. Politically active debaters tend to be well informed, but not very active. How those findings interact, I've no idea.
8.) Apropos of nothing, McArdle is the second person in as many days to use the locution "as there are parts of the right I like..." and that really toasts my buns. You're writing this massive missive supposedly for my benefit and then you finish off with "but there's all this stuff you care about that I hope burns for eternity." Gee, thanks. Remind me to make you guardian of my children, your concern for our welfare is so grand. Look, I'm fine with a liberal who says "I think you have a point here, but no where else." I'm fine with a conservative who says "I'm a conservative, but I think we've got a problem here." But -bringing it full-full circle to David Frum -this whole "I'm one of them, but not one of them" routine is really annoying and not how you run for King.