Rating: Highest bang per reading minute ever.
If someone with only 90 minutes to spare asked me to recommend a book about improving our politics in America, this would be it. To be fair, I’d recommend it even if it took ten times that long to read because its insights are invaluable.
Kling argues the political statements we make no longer aim to open the minds of people who disagree with us; instead, they now target further closing the minds of those who already agree with us. He thinks we’ve divided into three major political “tribes” and we expend our political efforts improving our standing within our chosen tribe. Further, he explains each tribe has its own political “language.”
Conservatives, Kling argues, communicate along an axis running from civilization to barbarism. Progressives communicate along an oppressor-oppressed axis and Libertarians communicate on an axis of liberty to coercion. Because we are all speaking different languages, we tend to talk past each other instead of to one another.
The biggest lightbulb moment for me came as I realized the core objective of all three groups – maintenance of civilization, elimination of oppression and preservation of liberty – ALL struck me as very sound objectives. But even more importantly, they can all work compatibly together… and yet we sure don’t interact with each other as if that were the case.
If you suspect we could approach political dialog more constructively in the US and think that might even be a positive thing, Arnold Kling’s little gem is definitely for you.