Questioning the “Political Spectrum”: To What Extent Are Political Parties Social Clubs?

According to this article by Hyrum Lewis (“Our Big Fight Over Nothing: The Political Spectrum Does Not Exist”), the political “spectrum” is primarily tribal. Lewis states that many of the respective policy positions in the platforms of each of the two main political parties are not glued together by overarching consistently applied principles. These conclusions of Lewis run counter to the writings of George Lakoff, who (in his book, Moral Politics) argues that Republican positions derive from the metaphor of a “stern father,” whereas the Democrat positions derive from the metaphor of the “nurturant parent.” To the extent that Lewis is correct and that Lakoff has overstated his case, this is an inconvenient fact for those of us who claim that our political stances are completely principled, not adopted as the result of social pressure. Here are a few excerpts from Lewis’ article:

In the essentialist theory, ideologies are unchanging, transcendent principles, while parties are evolving social organizations that can be “captured” by the ideologies. In the social theory, by contrast, ideologies don’t capture parties; parties capture ideologies—that is, they redefine them. Once again, research supports the latter: what is considered “right-wing” or “left-wing” is simply whatever the Republican and Democratic Parties happen to stand for at a given moment. Left-right ideologies are tools of self-delusion—they let us indulge the fantasy that our partisanship is principled rather than tribal, i.e., that there is some noble ideal connecting all the distinct and unrelated issues that our party happens to support. But essentialist predictions do not hold up to reality. . .

An alternative to this essentialist theory is the “social theory” of ideology, which says that distinct political positions correlate because they are bound by a unifying tribe. If the right-wing team is currently in favor of tax cuts and opposed to abortion, then those who identify with that team will adopt those positions as a matter of social conformity, not because both are expressions of some underlying principle.

… Public opinion polls further reinforce the point, showing that left-right ideologues often switch their beliefs to conform to the tribe. In the past decade alone we’ve seen self-described conservatives go from being anti-Russia to more pro-Russia, strongly pro-trade to strongly anti-trade, believing that personal character matters a great deal in politicians to believing that it matters hardly at all, staunchly interventionist in foreign policy to staunchly isolationist. Where is the “essence” behind all of this variation? It doesn’t exist. The views associated with left and right are constantly shifting for social reasons that have nothing to do with essential principles.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Avatar of ohmightytim
    ohmightytim

    To the Administrator:

    There is no “Democrat” position or party in America, nor anywhere that I am aware of.

    The use of the word “Democrat” is a perjorative foisted upon the Democratic Party, its adherents, policies and tents by far right wing Brown Shirted neo-con corporate fascist yobbo yappers. Lakoff would describe it as an attempt to control the rhetoric or to create a certain context, meme or emotion to be evoked when it’s used in speaking or languaging.

    There is an offical Democratic Party in these United States and its territories and protectorates which is the oldest continuously functioning politcal party on the planet. If you deny the context from within which the solutions arise, you deny its legitimacy, deny its contributions and its past which allows you to do as the right always seems to do, just make shit up.

  2. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    I’m increasingly bothered by outlier issues these days, inconsistencies of principles that might fairly called hypocrisies. On the right, for example, the pro-life party has shown hostility to life by attempting to destroy access to health care and by decimating early childhood programs. On the left, I am witnessing increasing willingness to muzzle opposing viewpoints (including muzzling and shaming even sincere questions/criticisms), which should have J.S. Mill spinning in his grave. This problem manifested first on college campuses, necessitating organized resistance in order to honor the principles of J.S. Mill (See the website of FIRE – Foundation for Individual Rights). I fully embrace Mills’ approach to liberty and speech. Further, on the “Left” I’m witnessing an increasing willingness to define others by physical appearance (as both victims and aggressors), which doesn’t jibe with traditional liberal principles. These outliers and many others suggest to me that roiling social pressures are battering the increasingly rickety intellectual foundations for our political parties.

  3. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    This topic fascinates and concerns me. I should make clear that I’ve never suggested any version of “both sides” where it means both sides are equally culpable to the same extent in all ways. I have never promoted any form of moral relativism. I have many carefully reasoned moral convictions just like anyone who happens to read this. That said, I embrace the science demonstrating that we are all human animals, that there is no ethereal soul allowing us to transcend this predicament, and that we are all susceptible to powerful in-group forces that bind and blind us, ever-tempting us to believe that those opposing us are stupid, evil and less than human. The science demonstrating in-group bias among our conspecifics, our primate cousins and many other animals is strong and uncontroverted. An early classic experiment was conducted in 1956 by Soloman Asch, where groupishness was shown to distort something as basic as visual perception. See link in the comments. No person is immune to this in-group bias. To pretend otherwise is crippling to that intellect we celebrate – which (as Jonathan Haidt has shown) is like a tiny intellectual lawyer trying to control a huge lumbering emotional elephant the lawyer is riding (social intuitionism). Group forces affect all of us, some of us more than others because some of us are wired or trained to be more comfortable trusting groups. I would disagree with anyone’s attempt to minimize the illiberal (contrary to the class liberalism John Stuart Mill advocated) campus behavior that leads to many viewpoints being muzzled or shouted down instead of invited and engaged with reason and evidence, which is the only way for ideas to prevail (anything else is pretend). These many abuses have been documented in many places, including a book and Atlantic article, both of them titled “The Coddling of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. See also, the work of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).

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