How did you become a conservative? I asked a friend.
“When I was young,” he explained, “I knew nothing about politics. So, I made a thorough study of the issues, and I became a conservative.”
How did you become a liberal? I asked another friend.
“Historically, conservatives have been wrong about everything,” he replied. “They were wrong about slavery, segregation, immigration, trickle-down economics, fascism, Nazism, isolationism, Social Security, gender equality, and gay marriage. Now they’re wrong about abortion and climate change.”
If, like these two friends, you believe that you chose your political allegiance rationally, please give me a break. Over the past decade, numerous studies have concluded that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality,” suggests the University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt, author The Righteous Mind (2012). “Moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”
Some social scientists argue that people select their political party in early adulthood the way they choose their friends or social groups: They gravitate to the party that has people who resemble themselves. And once you’ve selected your party, you are likely to retrofit your beliefs and philosophy to align with it.
Other studies have found (not surprisingly) that conservatives and liberals respond differently to perceived threats, and (very surprisingly) that this behavior is strongly linked to biology. “We would look at brain scan results, and we could be incredibly accurate knowing whether they’re liberal or conservative,” John Hibbing, a political scientist at the U. of Nebraska/Lincoln, told NPR in 2018.
The Church vs. Martin Luther
I know, I know— many conservatives dismiss these findings as so much psychobabble. “The idea that psychology drives politics is itself a liberal construct,” one of my conservative friends insists. And if rhetorical warfare between liberals and conservatives is your idea of intellectual stimulation, I guess you can stop reading right here. Scoring debate points strikes me as a boring exercise. I’m much more interested in investigating why perfectly decent people I know can examine the same evidence and reach diametrically opposed conclusions.
I personally am instinctively (emotionally?) neither a liberal nor a conservative but a devil’s advocate. What irks me above all is the ignorance of certainty. Whenever I encounter certainty about any subject (say, among Israelis or Palestinians who believe that eliminating their enemies will solve their problems), I instinctively take the other side. My hero is the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, who during the Reformation refused to join either team, reserving the right to criticize both the Catholic Church’s corruption and Martin Luther’s rejection of free will. As a student sports editor at Penn, I defended coaches and jocks against scornful intellectuals. As a newspaper editor in the conservative town of Portland, Indiana, I cast myself as the house liberal. As managing editor of Chicago Journalism Review in the early ‘70s, I again donned a conservative mantle, questioning the logic of my lefty colleagues who demanded that reporters take control of their own newspapers. If only for the sake of appearances, I began wearing a three-piece suit to the CJR office, in contrast to many of my long-haired and bearded colleagues there.
This strategy paid off at least once. One day when I was alone in CJR’s one-room office, a middle-aged man walked in to cancel his subscription. “This publication isn’t for me,” he explained. “My son in college might like it, but it’s too radical for me.”
At this, I stood up and confronted him in all my three-piece-suited splendor. “Sir,” I said, “look at me. Do I look like a radical?” He retreated in befuddlement.
Like football rivalries
“Stop stalling, Rottenberg,” you are thinking. “In the war between liberals and conservatives, who owns the truth?” After digesting many of those recent sociological and biological studies, I would reply:
Both sides own the truth; it’s just a different truth. Conservative truth, at its most basic level, believes that ideas and institutions should not be discarded just because they’re old. Liberal truth maintains that ideas should not be rejected just because they’re new. Who could argue with either of these propositions? Ultimately, it’s simply a matter of which truth makes you feel more comfortable. And if the latest studies are correct, that is a subject not for political scientists but for psychologists and biologists.
Like football games between traditional rivals, political debates (between, in my day, William F. Buckley Jr. or James J. Kilpatrick on the right, and Murray Kempton or Shana Alexander on the left) provide partisans on both sides an opportunity to cheer their teams and demonize their rivals. But they don’t really prove anything, other than who’s a better debater. Ultimately, a healthy society needs a healthy left and right, just as a healthy body needs a right and left leg to walk.
Black pastor in the synagogue
Some 15 years ago my rabbi, Avi Winokur of Society Hill Synagogue in Philadelphia, came up with the inspired idea of exchanging pulpits one weekend with the pastor at Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, located just a few blocks away. On the appointed Sabbath morning, the Reverend Mark Tyler ascended our bima— the Jewish pulpit— and the first words out of his mouth were, “I believe Jesus Christ is my lord and savior!” Then, as we Jewish congregants rolled our eyes and wondered what we’d let ourselves in for, this Black pastor looked out at us and added: “That may not work for you. But it gets me through the day.”
That insight— that ultimately, religion exists to get you through the day— has stuck with me ever since. Which religion you practice is secondary; what matters above all is your adherence to some philosophically based belief system. And I would apply that notion to political philosophy as well. If you lack a philosophically based belief system (a certain former U.S. president comes to mind), then you’re in trouble, and so is everyone you encounter.
Conversation at the Times
After a lifetime in journalism, I’ve concluded that, since no one owns the whole truth, and nobody can predict the future, the best service we journalists can provide is to create forums where people with opposing viewpoints can exchange ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
The weekly New York Times op-ed page “conversation” between the liberal columnist Gail Collins and the conservative Bret Stephens provides a good model: Instead of debating each other a la Buckley vs. Kempton, the Times format requires the two journalists to relate to each other as fallible adults capable of learning by listening to each other. The currently despised Internet offers, to my mind, the best hope for the future development of this kind of dialogue.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking: The Internet today is a Wild West playground for amateurs and manipulators posing as professional journalists. I would simply point out that the criticisms currently leveled at the Internet— namely, that it spreads lies and pornography and disrupts the existing social order— are the same fears that were raised about Gutenberg’s movable type in the 15th Century. Those fears did indeed come to pass, but human ingenuity eventually mastered Gutenberg’s new technology, just as it will master the Internet.
Did I mention that I’m also an incurable optimist?
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Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com
From reader Gresham Riley:
In my earlier short list of substantive books in support of normative systems of thought I failed to include an especially important one: Susan Neiman. Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists.
The following especially trenchant summary observation is at the heart of her critique of all forms of relativism and her defense of reason-based normative judgments: "The relativism that holds all moral values to be created equal is a short step from the nihilism that holds that all talk of values is superfluous."
And the reference to "nihilism" brings to mind a recent discovery. There is an annual [Oscar] Wilde Wit Competition in Great Britain. In 2023, one of the winning entries was: "If it weren't for nihilism. I wouldn't have anything to live for."
The absurdity embedded in this "witticism" sheds light on the fact that relativism and its various formulations are less theories about values than expressions of moral indifference— or the willful avoidance of the complex, critical thinking the subject matter requires.
Great column, Dan. Wish others would pick up this thread. Your reference to Haidt was especially apt. We must be into the era now where we begin to view the current Big Conflict between left and right through a psychological lens, just as we begin to pay attention to the role of the spiritual in these questions. Love your suspicion of certainty, also one of my not-so-pet peeves.