think empathy is a made-up, new age term
that – it does a lot of damage.”
And democracy ties into this too. Having the vote is both a badge of equality as well as a weapon to defend your other rights. Without it, you're a second class citizen and it's easier to take away more of your rights.
Whatever their individual level of enthusiasm for democracy, many founders worried that their revolution wouldn't last. Some feared that greed and ambition would eventually bring another aristocracy and thought seriously about how to best prevent it. A few of them, like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine had even suggested capping wealth and redistributive taxation. But I covered that in another chapter. Just a few generations removed from the revolution, Abraham Lincoln wrote about this shrinkage of liberty he was witnessing and it filled him with utter disgust:
- Charlie Kirk, racist violence instigator
I've been wanting to post my chapter on empathy on here for awhile now.
When I first published my book in 2014, many were still trying to make the “compassionate conservative" brand happen and callous economic policies were still being sold as tough love by both conservatives and centrists alike. Denying cruelty was still a bipartisan reflex back then. Apologists would say things such as “Sure, you can always find fringe figures, but those kooks don't really represent conservatives as a whole."
Never mind how many of those kooks had already gotten obscenely wealthy by trying to out-bigot each other. Their violent rhetoric and manifest racism were both routine and gleeful. And yet strangely, despite millions of listeners and paid subscribers, they still didn't really represent anyone.
Then, in 2016, The Donald got into office. Two years later, Adam Serwer wrote an essay on Trumpism in The Atlantic entitled “The Cruelty is the Point." But as Serwer subsequently emphasized in his book by that title, cruelty had always been a dark part of our country's politics. Trump was just the latest iteration.
Centrists still defend fascists, but since the fascists have stopped masking their aims and attitudes, doing spin for their benefit has become a bit more difficult. As I wrote in my previous post, both Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth openly embrace a loopy theology that says empathy's a sin. The notion's nutty, but not novel. Secular libertarians have been trying to associate empathy with tyranny since Ayn Rand. The Tea Party just injected that idea into religion.
But I wasn't just trying to identify one shitty tendency in that chapter. I tied it into three others that define conservatism itself – their obvious animosities towards liberty, equality, and democracy. These three ideals are central to America’s identity and as interdependent as the legs of a tripod. And the right despises them.
This ain't a strain to explain. Once you become a second class citizen, you lose some of your rights, right? Well, it also works the other way, so when you lose some of your rights you become a second class citizen. That's just one example of liberty and equality's inherent interdependence.
Indeed, equality was built into Thomas Jefferson's definition of freedom: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” Equal rights. Yes, as a slave owner, he was a hypocrite about it, but he was nevertheless articulating a self-evident truth.
Conservatives oppose this “no harm/no foul" formulation of freedom because they favor a more restrictive definition and the inclusion of others disquiets them. Why? Because they're authoritarians and correctly perceive that liberty and equality subvert hierarchy. Indeed, the linkage between these two ideals is clear in the word “insubordination." By disobeying authority, you are undermining the established order of things. By refusing to be bossed, you are asserting both your freedom and your status as an equal.
And democracy ties into this too. Having the vote is both a badge of equality as well as a weapon to defend your other rights. Without it, you're a second class citizen and it's easier to take away more of your rights.
So, lose any of these three and you'll soon lose the other two if you haven't already lost all simultaneously.
Without equality, universal rights are neither universal nor rights. They become special privileges instead and the portion of the population that still enjoys them predictably begins shrinking the minute exclusions get instituted. As Thomas Paine explained, “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach unto himself.” Paine was making a call for solidarity with everyone whose freedom becomes threatened. He called it a duty, but he also framed solidarity as intelligent self-interest.
James Madison also saw solidarity as intelligent self interest. Indeed, he saw political diversity as a bulwark for defending everybody's rights. In Federalist #10, he argued that diverse interests could ally to prevent one strong political faction from dominating all the others. Moreover, Madison thought a larger country would be harder to control because it would contain a greater diversity of competing interests:
The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.
Unfortunately, this only works when these diverse interests each have a voice in government. If some have no power to contribute to the collective defense they become non-factors in any political conflict. And potential oppressors understand this and act accordingly. They seek to shrink the sphere – only politically rather than geographically. Consolidating power invariably requires dis-empowering minorities. So, the power hungry will always weaponize bigotry for their own benefit. It's a built-in incentive, which is why we see it repeatedly deployed across human history. In short, tyranny and bigotry always go together.
Say a powerful group has a plurality but not a majority. In other words, they are the biggest group, but they still don't make up over half of the total. Maybe they have 40% but no other single group has more than 20%. They can't bully too overtly at this point or they risk everyone allying against them. First, they must turn the other groups against each other. It's called “divide and conquer." Next, they whittle away at marginal groups, disenfranchising them. The biggest group can thereby turn their plurality into a de facto majority by becoming the majority of those who still hold any power. They don't necessarily need to grow their own numbers if they can shrink other groups' instead.
The incentive to do this always exists and thus the rest must always resist it. Indeed, this dynamic describes much of our country's history – the struggle between those who want to expand the franchise vs those who wish to restrict it. The ideal of democracy is still being realized since, while (almost) everyone has one vote, undemocratic institutions like the Senate and Electoral College mean they don't have equal worth.
This is why the right finds diversity terrifying. Even the slightest uptick in the number of different people around them alarms them. They see any more than the token one as a dangerous and outrageous invasion.
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to [Tsarist] Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. (emphasis original)
Empathy boosts solidarity by adding a potent emotional component. It activates solidarity and sustains it when things get difficult. In short, empathy is both a trigger and an energy source.
It's also important to note that the boosting goes both ways: Practicing solidarity strengthens empathy. Tackling problems together makes you more familiar with both the problems and those you're supporting. The shared experience creates a bond and you're also more likely to notice similar problems elsewhere. Just noticing things grows empathy which in turn raises your antennae and makes you notice even more things. It's a virtuous cycle, and an awakening that makes you more vigilant and civic. In other words, “woke."
Obviously, anyone trying to sabotage our free society would logically start by vilifying empathy, and that's what we're plainly seeing today and everyday. Empathy isn't an earmark of tyranny, but smearing empathy historically is. All the familiar power dynamics in play prove it. As always, the oppressors are projecting.
So, without further ado, here's my chapter on that:
So, without further ado, here's my chapter on that:
9: Liberty, Equality, & Empathy
How Compassion Holds the Tripod Together
I neglected to mention a particularly fanciful Nazi analogy in the last chapter. In 2010, Glenn Beck implied that empathy had caused the Holocaust. President Barack Obama had used the word “empathy” in a sentence and Beck felt compelled to mention that Adolf Hitler had once used the word too. Beck explained, “Empathy leads you to very bad decisions, many times.”[1]
His argument seems uniquely loopy, but Glenn Beck is not empathy’s only enemy. His comment stops to shock once you recall that he is a big fan of Ayn Rand. She argued that altruism is evil and equated it with tyranny. Beck’s comment was not just another random manifestation of his Hitler fixation, but an expression of his fundamental moral framework – one his Rand-reading audience already shared.
This demonization of empathy is not limited to libertarians and it is sometimes literal as well. Evangelical leader Reverend Mike Bickle thinks that compassion and tolerance are the Antichrist’s calling cards. “The Harlot Babylon will be a religion of affirmation, toleration, no absolutes: a counterfeit justice movement. They will feed the poor, have humanitarian projects, inspire acts of compassion for all the wrong reasons.”[2] Reverend Bickle thinks that the herald of the Antichrist is Oprah Winfrey.
No, seriously. He actually says it is Oprah. When I picture this, all I can hear is, “EVERYBODY GETS BRIMSTONE!”
Mike Bickle’s assaults on empathy are pretty similar to Glenn Beck’s. Both use the same “It sounds nice, but …” structure that conservatives have always used to oppose progressive proposals. Usually, that “but” is followed by an argument that the program will not work. Liberals are accused of being well-intentioned, but wrong-headed – naïve, but not evil. The law of unintended consequences is often invoked. Usually, they just say that the program is a waste of time and money. Only the paranoid fringe suggests that altruism conceals some tyrannical conspiracy.
But today, the fringe is in the saddle of the GOP. While the red-baiting of social programs is certainly nothing new, we have not seen this degree of it since the 1950s. In any case, the basic argument is the same. Its shrillness varies over time, but it always says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Conservatism’s compassion-bashing is long-established. As John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” Add to that conservatives’ binary, black-and-white worldview and vilifying empathy becomes predictable. If greed is good, then compassion must be bad. It is simply going on the offensive. And that is a problem because a free society must balance everyone’s rights against everyone else’s. Considering other people is a basic civic duty that empathy obviously encourages. Thus, celebrating selfishness ultimately sabotages free society.
For example, “Life is not fair” is the credo of cheaters and conservatives. Now, I am not claiming that everyone who says that is either one or the other – I do not think that Jimmy Carter is either. But for conservatives, that banal phrase has become a fixture and a justification for injustice and corruption. No, life is not inherently fair, but it is part of our country’s ethos that it can be made fair, or at least fairer. As those old Superman serials remind us, “righting wrongs” is associated with the “American way.” This is the goal of those who love justice, just as “Life is not fair” is the credo of those who tolerate injustice – and thus excuse and encourage it.
But, as usual, conservatives turn every virtue on its ear. Glenn Beck tells his audience that the phrase “social justice” is a red flag for tyranny – one he associates with actual red flags. Jonah Goldberg is no more nuanced in his assault on empathy. He called George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” “compassionate fascism” because he thinks that any use of government to improve living conditions is automatically totalitarian.[3]
Incidentally, do you know who said, “Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice”?[4] Kudos, if you said Adolf Hitler. I would have guessed Ayn Rand.
This also ties into Jonah Goldberg’s odd notion that those who think we can build a better world are fascists. Perfect? No. But better? Always. Ever better. As I wrote before, perfection is a direction, not a destination. Perpetual improvement is part of our national ethos. Of course, that is a fundamental human quality too, but our country was the first to really encourage it because we are an invented nation. We rejected stagnant tradition and the bankrupt notion that the status quo was its own justification and the will of God. We thus rejected the Divine Right of Kings. And, of course, many of the revolutionaries had rejected organized religion by association.
In England, this Enlightenment mindset can be seen in Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” In it, she wrote, “Let not men then in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannic kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that woman ought to be subjected because she has always been so.”[5] A free people realize that they have a right to rewrite the rules. Fuck old customs if they oppress anyone. Conservatives may howl, but that is what America is about.
Thomas Paine had celebrated change and humanity’s agency when arguing for American independence in his pamphlet “Common Sense.” He wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” That is how real revolutionaries think.
Perhaps the purest expression of this mindset was Thomas Jefferson’s principle that all laws and public debts should expire after nineteen years. He wanted each generation to start off with a fresh, clean slate – free of the dead hand of the past.
His friend and rival, John Adams, had also affirmed that we always retain a right to re-order our world. And he did this while simultaneously affirming the principle of fairness. Because stratification and tradition were linked in people’s experiences, their opposites – equality and change – were organically associated as well:
Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men: Therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it.[6]
America’s true character is humanist in nature. It believes that we human beings can govern ourselves without any heavenly-appointed spokesman. It credits human ingenuity rather than divine inspiration. It says that we have not only the ability to fix the things we think are broken but the right to try. When we forget or ignore this ethos, we sabotage our country’s sense of self and lose our way. Moreover, our ethos of perpetual improvement provides every generation with goals and a sense of purpose. Without it, people become as vacuous, callous, and predatory as many conservatives are today.
That last line was not just some snarky cheap shot. There will always be greed. There will always be bullies and people who exploit others, and therefore crime. To quote those old Superman serials again, it is a “never-ending battle.” But that does not mean that it has to be a losing battle. Just as we can make things safer, we can make them fairer.
There is no denying that progress is both actual and measurable. We can see it in rising literacy rates and average life spans. But what happens when school budgets get cut or food safety inspections are neglected? Other countries best us in technology and we have E. coli outbreaks. We can lose ground as well as gain it. Therefore, progress is neither foredoomed nor guaranteed. We cannot safely take it for granted. Improvement of the human condition requires conscious effort. We cannot leave society on autopilot and let the “magic of the market” take care of everything. Civilization is indeed advancing, but upgrades do not mean we can neglect regular maintenance.
And, here again, humanism is a defining factor. We humans are unique in that we consciously alter our environment. The beaver dam is the result of instinct, but Hoover Dam is the result of engineering. By contrast, termites do not write environmental impact statements. They just do what they do. Likewise, human society is not a beehive because we all make decisions. Consciousness defines us, so it seems stupid not to use it more.
Democracy is the collective conscious. By debating policy, society becomes aware of its actions and their impacts. Its competing interests are like mixed feelings. Society can second-guess itself and predict (with wildly varying degrees of accuracy) a policy’s likely side effects. Moreover, society can not only change its mind, it can also examine what thinking habits had led to previous mistakes (which is more self-awareness than many individual people exercise). In short, society thinks about itself. This means we can decide not to shit the bed we all share – a realization applicable to both the ecology and the economy.
But it also means that we can invent and build a better bed. We can conduct studies and discover that every dollar spent on food stamps generates $1.73 for the economy[7] or that every dollar invested in prison education programs reduces incarceration costs by $4.00 within the first three years after release.[8] Our modern world of sociology and city planning is the ultimate result of Enlightenment thought – and looking out for other people’s welfare is part and parcel of this. Again, the Enlightenment and the Progressive Era both fused reason and compassion – they tried to utilize the latest scientific thinking for the benefit of all. Contrary to Ayn Rand’s notions, truly objective thought eschews petty selfishness, considers the big picture, and looks toward the common good.
Conservatives often succeed at sabotaging progress precisely because past advances make us take it for granted. They essentially say. “We have not had a catastrophic flood in years, so let’s tear down the flood wall. We don’t need it anymore.” Never mind that the flood wall had prevented several floods since it was built. We do not remember them because they were prevented – not that conservatives would remember them if they had happened. Conservative victories depend on a certain degree of civic obliviousness.
What applies to safety applies to fairness, so the conservative response is the same in both cases. It is no mystery why those who claim that racism is dead frequently say something racist in their very next breath. Not paying attention and doing nothing go hand-in-hand, and so conservatives chronically advocate ignoring the problem.
Of course, for some this is conscious and deliberate. Those who urge gutting various civil rights protections know what they are doing. But they depend on other, less alert voters to go along with their civic sabotage.
We have a civic duty to pay attention to things and empathy helps that. It makes us more alert to possible problems or ones that have not yet affected us personally. Empathy helps society’s web of information flow better. No, I am not talking about the Internet, but the Internet makes a serviceable metaphor for this social dynamic. Information comes to us from all different directions, but callousness restricts this by muting certain channels.
There is a line that Howard Zinn quotes in A People’s History of the United States 1492 – Present that illustrates this: “The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”[9] Zinn quotes it to emphasize that he is not trying to excuse or romanticize everything oppressed populations do. In fact, he prefaces the quote by writing, “I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system.”
Of course, Zinn is also making an ethical claim about justice that I happen to agree with; but I am primarily citing this to make a larger, related point about the flow of information – that we must listen. Empathy encourages alertness and understanding, which is why we should listen to the cry of the oppressed.
Citizens must know what justice is to function as citizens, but that knowledge alone is not enough. Citizens also need news of injustices. Otherwise, the best intentioned people do nothing. Principles need up-to-date information to be activated. Thus, the oppressor’s oft used line: “Everything is fine. Move along. There is nothing to see here.” This is why they have always seen free media as the enemy. This goes beyond their accusing the media of costing the Vietnam War. They see reporting on problems as unpatriotic. But how are any of our problems to get solved otherwise? Unwelcome news is not just news – it is the most important news there is because we cannot do our job as citizens without it. This is the necessity of listening.
Intelligent self-interest dictates paying attention as well. Even today, there are some conservatives who still claim that it is “virtually impossible” to get HIV from straight sex.[10] Thus, callousness breeds ignorance and it is often said that “karma is a bitch.” But karma has nothing to do with it. The ignorant will invariably victimize themselves along with others. The most elementary civic physics predict it. It is almost a tragicomic trope.
Like diversity, empathy is another nexus point of liberty, equality, and democracy. And the trajectory of the far right’s anti-empathy mentality is not in doubt. Take this revealing little nugget of wisdom from Rush Limbaugh:
[T]here is no equality. You cannot guarantee that any two people will end up the same. And you can’t legislate it, and you can’t make it happen. You can try, under the guise of fairness and so forth, but some people are self-starters, and some people are born lazy. Some people are born victims. Some people are just born to be slaves.[11]
Limbaugh attributes this to God: “It’s just probably a matter of intelligent design.” This view was also advocated by slavery defender James Henry Hammond in his 1858 “Mudsill Theory” of history. He argued that somebody has to be at the bottom of society and some people are just born to do the shit work. And since he saw that as God’s plan, Hammond argued that it was both policy folly and morally wrong to oppose it. I have heard no word yet on Rush Limbaugh’s position on the Divine Right of Kings.
Thus, when I say that conservatives like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh assault empathy, I am not just saying they are mean-spirited bullies. (Of course, they are that too.) I am saying their basic civic spirit and understanding are stunted. Their mentality undermines America’s identity and sabotages America’s democratic operations.
By contrast, our founding fathers emphasized the necessity of civic spirit repeatedly. Just as Dr. Benjamin Rush said, “Every man in a republic is public property,” John Adams had similarly said a republic required “a positive Passion for the public good” that should be “Superior to all private Passions.”[12] (emphasis original) This was no ethos of selfish individualism, nor one that was focused on the family. So, both wings of the Republican Party are fundamentally at odds with the culture of a true republic.
Of course, how could it possibly be otherwise? Democracy is inherently about public participation and our shared stake in society. In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine wrote that a republic was all about the “object for which government ought to be instituted, and on which it is to be employed, res-publica, the public affairs, or the public good; or, literally translated, the public thing.”[13] (italics original) So, Republicans scorn the origin of their party’s name!
The founders took civic duty seriously. They would have surely recoiled at Margaret Thatcher’s strange claim that “There is no such thing as society.” They would have called her a Tory – which is, of course, what the late baroness was.[14]
In The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Stephanie Coontz had expounded on this early American ethos:
In the Jeffersonian tradition, public engagement was considered the primary badge of personal character; honor and virtue were political words, not sexual ones. They designated an individual’s “civic altruism,” especially a man’s willingness to take on political responsibilities. To describe someone as a “private” person was unflattering; a preoccupation with private morality and happiness, no matter how upright, had antisocial connotations.[15]
Unfortunately, this civic altruism evaporated shortly after the U.S. Civil War as many whites succumbed to compassion fatigue. They discarded the idealism that had defeated slavery and then abandoned blacks to the Klan. Then they turned inward and focused on sexual morality and getting rich. As Coontz noted:
The Gilded Age of the mid-1870s to mid-1890s resembles the period since the mid-1970s in some intriguing ways. … Turning away from social activism, many people focused on their personal lives and material ambitions. It would only be a partial exaggeration to argue that this era provided a foretaste of what we would later call the yuppie phenomenon, including the recent rediscovery of the joys of “cocooning.”[16]
Post Civil War Evangelicals were not immune to this change in the national mood. Indeed, they mirrored it instead of resisting it. Ministers dismissed the high-minded notions of social reform they had previously helped spearhead. They no longer preached doing good but instead preached doing well. In 1870, the Reverend Russell Conwell wrote his famous “Acres of Diamonds” sermon in which he preached “[I]t is your duty to get rich.” He also argued that the poor only suffered from their own sinful lack of industry.
This civic disengagement is of course poisonous to participatory democracy. Societies have responsibilities which citizens must come together to meet. But, beyond policing people’s morality, many conservatives have very little interest in community. For them, community begins and ends at ethnicity or religion. For all their talk of honoring the founding fathers, conservative “values” date back to the Victorian Era and no further.
Again, things were very different in the founders’ day. That was a secular time when civic holidays like Independence Day eclipsed Christmas in importance. It was before the Victorians made almost every holiday an isolated family affair. It was back when people remembered that the first Thanksgiving was a communal meal. You celebrated national holidays rowdily in the street instead of quietly around the dinner table. And what better way is there to honor our heritage, given public protest’s role in our country’s origin?
I watch David Simon’s HBO show Treme and realize that New Orleans preserves something that America has largely lost – a sense of public participation and involvement. As an introvert, this is a strange thing for me to say. I like my quiet time, I do not party often, and I find obligatory jollity obnoxious. But the historical record is quite clear here and, like it or not, I must thus honestly acknowledge it. (I do party some.)
But, this is not just about partying – although holidays are, by definition, occasions to reaffirm collective identities and strengthen mutual goodwill in any community. Empathy also safeguards our very rights. Remember how liberty and equality reinforce each other: “All for one, and one for all.” Give more people freedom and more people have a stake in defending it. But, ignore the rights of those you dislike and liberty’s alliances fall apart. Obviously, empathy makes you more likely to do your civic duty.
The key is seeing the larger community – to “extend the sphere” as James Madison put it. Of course, he meant a strong federal government to protect minority rights. Again, the Civil Rights Movement succeeded because we no longer ignored Jim Crow laws as a “local problem” and finally made ending them a national responsibility. But empathy is part of this as well. Widening empathy means more allies, and strengthening it means we are more likely to actually act rather than simply sympathize from a distance. Empathy adds energy to our abstract, theoretical understanding of how rights work. If we feel it, we are more likely to get up out of our chairs and take a stand. But this works both ways. Without that abstract stuff, we do not realize that we have both a right and an obligation to do something about it. And so, again, we sympathize from a distance. Both components are important: We need the theory and the energy. Alone, neither does much good.
Extending empathy to all humanity is not only consistent with this logic, it was also anticipated by Enlightenment era’s patriotism. As I wrote in the first chapter, Viscount Bolingbroke’s definition of patriotism was “actuated by the noble Principles of universal and unconfin’d [sic] Benevolence” for “the Peace and Prosperity of Mankind.” Look at the French Revolution’s motto: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” – That last word translates as “brotherhood,” and there is a reason that it goes with the other two.
Also consider the Friedrich von Schiller poem “Ode to Joy” which Ludwig van Beethoven set to music in his Ninth Symphony. It was about universal brotherhood – and, apparently, drinking.
Beethoven originally considered incorporating Schiller’s poem into an opera about Bacchus, the Greek god of wine. But he eventually decided to use it in a symphony instead. According to musicologist Micaela von Marcard, “[I]n the spirit of the later Enlightenment” such a musical tribute to Bacchus “would have been associated with humanitarian ideals.”[17]
This can be seen in lines like “Beggars are a prince’s brother” (in the original 1786 version of the poem) and “Let our book of debts be cancell’d!”[18]
It was understood that there was an organic connection between conviviality and generosity, between feasting and community. There was a spread-the-wealth ethos in this choral drinking song, and thus it was the anthem of socialists before “The Internationale” was written. Later on, Paul Robeson would sing a different version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” that emphasized this brotherhood even more but, alas, omitted the wine.[19]
This explains the internationalism of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. As I wrote in chapter one, the American and French revolutions were internal conflicts rather than external ones. Patriots directed their hostility against the established order rather than against outsiders. Sympathy for the oppressed defined it, which is why many of the revolutionaries explicitly tied their cause to the abolition of slavery (more on that matter is in my next book). This fact also explains American enthusiasm for revolutions in Europe in the 1700s and 1800s. While conservatives are fond of saying that “charity begins at home,” that era’s patriots were happy to aid other people’s revolutions.
This was the exact opposite of the xenophobic authoritarianism that conservatives temperamentally tend toward. Enlightenment patriotism was solidarity with ordinary people, sympathy for the “little guy.” Thus, conservative callousness is not just unconscionable but un-patriotic because actual patriotism is essentially empathy.
Needless to say, I do not give conservatives high marks in doing their civic duty. Usually, they are either bullies or bystanders who reflexively sympathize with power. Whether it is rape, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, economic exploitation, or anything else, conservatives’ automatic response is to blame the victim and/or defend the violator. And, sadly, such examples of this tendency are legion.
No doubt conservatives will howl at being called bullies. But it is hard to for them to object when they are so often bullies’ apologists.
Remember when Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin defended former Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice who was fired for both verbally and physically abusing his players.[20] Ms. Malkin lamented that “political correctness has run amuck.” Hannity speculated, “Maybe we need a little more discipline in society and maybe we don’t have to be a bunch of wimps for the rest of our lives.”
This certainly illuminates Hannity’s dismissive defense of the Bush Administration’s use of torture. (Incidentally, he still has not made good on his promise to endure water boarding.) Hannity added, “My father hit me with a belt, I turned out okay!” This made Daily Show host Jon Stewart exclaim, “Seriously? You’re okay? Have you seen your show? Because it seems like the show of a guy who was hit with a belt as a child.”
But then Jon Stewart missed something essential. “By the way, it’s got to be so exhausting to have to categorize everything that happens through your right/left, two dimensional goggles. This isn’t a liberal, left-wing media, persecuting on politically correct grounds. This was a basketball coach who acted like an asshole and got fired.” I quite agree that the coach’s behavior should be condemned by people across the political spectrum. In a better world, this would be a totally apolitical story. But the authoritarian personality type is not apolitical. Where Stewart saw politicizing every news item to fill air time, I see the conservative mind at work. Defending bullies is a natural reflex, given their world view. In fact, in an old Daily Show segment entitled “Raging Bully,” anti-feminist author Christina Hoff Sommers touted the benefits of bullying. She said they “toughen us up.” Anticipating Sean Hannity’s argument, she explained, “We don’t want a nation of crybabies.” Life’s not fair, remember?
To the authoritarian personality, bullying is just normal and healthy male behavior. Take former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R), who shouts at public school teachers and possibly closed a bridge to a town to punish its mayor for not endorsing his reelection.[21]
As with Mike Rice, it is the Governor’s defenders on Fox News who prove my point. As Brit Hume explained, “Well, I would have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere, in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and kind of old-fashioned tough guys run some risks.”
I am not sure how closing a public bridge is “private conduct.” But, even more interestingly, Hume found a way to both praise and insult women in the same breath by implying that integrity is just some silly girly thing. Translation: “Abuse of office is just something dudes do. Don’t get your panties in a wad over it.”
Brit Hume seems to feel that being a bully is fine, but that it is a sad sign of the times when someone is actually called one. To conservatives, that guy is the real victim.
Of course, Chris Christie’s pugnacious public persona is precisely what made him so popular among Republicans. Before the bridge scandal broke, he was the GOP’s top presidential contender for 2016. Brit Hume’s comment was part of a panel discussion on how Christie’s personality is a double-edged sword. Christie’s thuggishness resonates with conservatives.
It is silly to contradict this verdict. After all, we are talking about voters who avidly supported torturers like Tea Party darling Allen West.[22]
Likewise, American conservatives have long loved Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. This predates Donald Trump becoming president: Jon Stewart’s Daily Show did a segment on this called “Big Vladdy” back in 2014. Conservatives adore the fact that the former KGB agent is a macho, homophobic hunter who upholds traditional values. To Fox News pundits, Putin is a “real leader” who “gets things done.” Something about that nationalist authoritarian really speaks to them.[23]
You have got to wonder how Liberal Fascism author Jonah Goldberg would spin this pre-Trump conservative enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin.[24]
Let us revisit how Chris Christie illustrates conservatism’s callousness.
Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast in the midst of the 2012 presidential election. President Obama temporarily suspended his campaign to prioritize federal relief efforts. That was his job. Chris Christie, in turn, did his job and cooperated with Obama. The photo ops of them inspecting the devastation together told the hopeful story of Democrats and Republicans putting aside their partisan differences in a time of crisis.
Of course, this infuriated rabid conservatives who accused Christie of helping Obama look presidential at Mitt Romney’s expense. But what was Christie supposed to do? Refuse help? Hide from the cameras?
Yes.
In fact, their ideology demanded it. Election aside, they felt accepting any help was inherently a betrayal of individualist conservative principles.
And strategy and ideology were one. Voters saw events torpedo the right’s anti-government rhetoric at the most inopportune moment. Americans were glad to have their Uncle Sam; and to conservatives, that was the real tragedy which should have been avoided at all costs.
But it seems that Governor Chris Christie might not have been doing his job after all. In the wake of his bridge closing scandal, yet more “muscular” regular guy shenanigans came to light compelling even Christie’s advocates to voice second thoughts. As the Star-Ledger’s editorial board wrote in 2014, qualifying their earlier endorsement:
Yes, we knew Christie was a bully. But we didn’t know his crew was crazy enough to put people’s lives at risk in Fort Lee as a means to pressure the mayor. We didn’t know he would use Hurricane Sandy aid as a political slush fund. And we certainly didn’t know that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer was sitting on a credible charge of extortion by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.[25]
As the editorial tacitly admitted, this is predictable behavior for a bully, even if they stupidly did not predict it. They thought about degree, not direction – they never dreamed that Christie would take things that far.
But that is what bullies do. And if indulged, bullies are invariably the first people to exploit any latitude they are given and push things further. They are already drunk with power, so self-restraint ain’t a hallmark of their behavior. It is ridiculously naïve not to realize this.
And the editorial board was still half asleep after their wake up call. They ended their editorial by arguing that Governor Chris Christie was still preferable presidential timber to Senator Rand Paul. Remember when everyone thought the 2016 GOP primary would be all about those two?
Pause to consider what this says about the Republican Party. The voice of moderation already had the ring of desperate rationalization. Again, this was well before Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. Chris Christie, the acknowledged bully, still got portrayed as the party’s savior against some other nut. And really, Christie is just Trump minus the dementia. The petty abuse of authority, the cocky corruption – it is all there.
It is almost as if conservatives do not quite grasp that being a bully makes you the bad guy. They want to be seen as the good guys, but they also like to bully and do not see any contradiction there. It bewilders them.
This is a result of their tribal us-vs.-them mindset. To them, being the good guy is a matter of birthright rather than behavior. Everything your side does is clever and justified – it is only treachery if the other side does it. You are loyal to your team and you do not snitch. You provide for your kind, but everyone else should fend for themselves.
Therefore, playing favorites is just part of the game. You reward loyalty and punish dissent. Screw the public trust – to the victor belong the spoils. Again, John Adams wrote that government is instituted for the common good and not “for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.” But, to conservatives, that is a naïve and unmanly way to move in the world. Might (and guile) make right.
Of course, conservatives can quickly point to many famous examples of Democratic corruption as well. That party’s history is no stranger to smoke-filled rooms with cigar-chomping good old boy networks either. But those mostly come from a less liberal time, hence Brit Hume’s attack on our more “feminized” culture. In fact, Republicans had once spearheaded efforts to root out corruption in government; but that was way back in the Progressive Era that conservatives now despise and criticize. Reforming government went hand-in-hand with busting monopolies, legislation against child labor, passing the eight hour work day, and giving women the vote. It was a time when Republicans were more liberal than they are now – and when Democrats were more conservative.
The dots just connect themselves. Acceptance of corruption rises with the acceptance of privilege and advantage, whereas honest reform is always driven by those who demand fairness. The connection between conservatism and corruption is both organic and obvious because selling legislation to the highest bidder obviously benefits the rich who can most afford it. And that arrangement has been advocated by conservatives going as far back as Alexander Hamilton. It subverts the democratic process, but conservatives have never been all that fond of democracy. Authoritarians rarely are.
What is an authoritarian personality type? Chris Mooney gives us a glimpse in his 2012 book The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality: “Authoritarians are very intolerant of ambiguity, and very inclined toward group-think and distrustful of outsiders (often including racial outsiders). They extol traditional values, are very conventional, submit to established leaders, and don’t seem to care much about dissent or civil liberties.”[26]
And they are bullies.
Chris Mooney hastens to clarify that authoritarians are not inherently conservative. For example, in a Stalinist regime, like North Korea, their loyalty would be directed toward an entirely different ideology, status quo, and set of traditions. But, here in the States, authoritarians skew conservative. Mooney quotes Vanderbilt University political scientist Marc Hetherington: “The Tea Party is an overwhelmingly authoritarian group of folks.” Therefore, their libertarian rhetoric is just that – rhetoric. If they lived in Russia, they would be arresting dissidents and trying to justify Vladimir Putin’s “muscular,” regular guy corruption – such as the vast, galloping cronyism at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.
Of course, the general population does not fare too much better. As I had noted in the introduction, almost half of Americans score over .75 on a 0 to 1 scale of authoritarian attitudes. And there is your Red State/Blue State divide.
My specific point is that conservatives reflexively sympathize with power. When British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, the fireball could be seen from thirty-five miles away. It killed eleven men and caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Conservatives were appalled – appalled that the company was being made to pay for the oil spill’s damages to the Gulf Coast. Michelle Bachman (R-MN) called the escrow account a “redistribution-of-wealth fund.” Rush Limbaugh, Stuart Varney, and Sean Hannity all called it a political “slush fund.” And when BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, was called to stand before a congressional hearing, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) actually apologized to him. “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown.”[27]
Gee, I guess dying in an oil fire because your employer ignored safety is a tragedy of the second or third proportion.
This tone-deaf, unpopular position was a sympathy-defining moment if ever there was one. But it was also an ideological stand. And when Bachman and Barton backpedaled later on, Limbaugh castigated those who did not hold firm. For Limbaugh, this was a litmus test of their personal character and conservative credentials. So there should be no objection to my judging conservatism by its own yardstick.
What accounts for this selfishness and misplaced sympathy? I am not a psychologist any more than Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I cannot stress this point enough. But I have a theory about it. It is actually someone else’s theory – or rather, my take on his theory.
In Jean Piaget’s pioneering studies of childhood development, he had identified a stage called the Preoperational Stage (age 2 to 7). At this point, the child still cannot yet grasp others’ perspectives or connections to each other. For example, Junior knows who auntie is, but he does not yet grasp that auntie and mommy are each other’s sisters.
The child is the hub of an egocentric bicycle wheel, with each isolated spoke pointing toward another person or association. As Robert Frost once wrote, “an idea is a feat of association,” but the child is not yet fully equipped for this feat unless the association directly affects him. Objective thought is not yet possible so magical thinking dominates instead.
Eventually, everyone figures out who their relatives are in relation to each other and starts to develop a more objective understanding of their family and the world. The bicycle wheel then becomes more of a concentric spider web or radar screen. It is still a highly egocentric perspective, but at least it now recognizes that other people have their own outside lives and separate connections with each other.
Of course, a more objective model of the outside world would be dynamic and three dimensional, like interacting complex molecules where chunks or individual atoms break off and recombine in new ways.
But few think that objectively and, egoism aside, it is just easier to simplify things. It is like putting the earth at the center of the solar system – it was wrong, but it was tidy. And it worked well for most people, most of the time, which made the notion pretty difficult to dispel.
This egocentric model is probably not conscious for most. But for many, this flat, static, map best represents how they see things – especially for those who are selfish, tribalistic, or resistant to change.
“What’s in it for me and mine?” is the central question for them. If the answer to that question is “nothing directly,” then the issue at hand is simply not on their spider web-like radar screen.
I am not saying that conservatives and libertarians are all still stuck at Piaget’s Preoperational Stage. But simply realizing that other people have their own lives and rights is not enough. You cannot just file that abstract concept away in your head – you actually have to apply it. You actively have to keep it in mind when dealing with them or making any decisions that might possibly affect them. That is just part and parcel of being a decent person and a fully functional citizen.
For the conscientious, this is established habit. But for others, it might be an awkward, unfamiliar difficulty or a sorely resented chore, and thus sullenly performed or deftly avoided. Unused skills get rusty, and people do not like to do things they are not good at.
So I am not arguing that conservatives are hardwired toward selfishness, but habits reinforce themselves and conservatives have constructed a subculture that self-righteously tries to justify their negligence. Therefore, they cheer greed and dismiss altruism.
This may also explain the frequent stupidity of selfish people and the tendency of intelligent people to be more compassionate. Again, empathy and objectivity both require stepping outside your subjective perspective – hence the irony of Ayn Rand’s acolytes calling themselves “Objectivists.”
Looking at things from other people’s perspectives gives you information as well as compassion. You can spot this in the dual definition of the word “thoughtful” – it means contemplative, but it also means kind.
Ditto with “considerate” – “considering” means thinking – including thinking about others.
Getting a second opinion is also a check on misperception. Therefore, egoism breeds self-sabotaging shortsightedness. There is a reason why the vain are typically vapid: They do not solicit or listen to honest feedback, so their cluelessness endures without outside input.
Psychological studies suggest that this explanation is valid. Researchers have found that reading literature makes us both nicer and smarter. And these qualities are even linked in small children. The more stories you read to them, the sharper their mental model of other people’s intentions become.[28] You can spot this in the dual definition of the word “understanding” – it means both sympathy and comprehension.
It is a great deal like how Mark Twain described travel’s effect in Innocents Abroad:
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.[29]
Of course, by this definition, we must all remain conservatives to some extent because there is so much more going on in the world than any one person can possibly process or absorb. Thus, there has to be a cutoff point at which you say that you cannot be bothered to think or care about it. You have to prioritize your concerns and obviously you are going to start with yourself and those around you. Beyond that, you will then look and see how much energy you have left to spare. It is like that line in David Simon’s HBO show The Wire: “It’s not your turn to give a damn.” In the episode, it is a sarcastic quip on widespread negligence in police work, but it also describes a greater human truth.
Thus, liberalism and conservatism are relative. They are a measure of how vast or narrow the boundaries of your curiosity and concerns are. Broader often means smarter and more compassionate, while narrower promotes the opposite.
Obviously, the elasticity of these boundaries is related to how far they can stretch. Flexible people tend to be more curious and caring. But there are still only so many hours in the day and everyday cares consume a lot of those as well. People need time to think. Without it, they may become impatient and intolerant of more information. At that point, new perspectives – and the inconvenient extra facts they bring – become unwelcome complications. In short, your behavior becomes more conservative.
This may explain why some stressed working class people can be swayed by the Culture Wars to vote against their own economic interests. Intimate issues eclipse the big picture – even when the big picture directly affects you.
However, it must be stressed that working people are far less conservative than they are stereotypically portrayed and largely do not vote against their own economic interests.
This came as a profound shock to some when a study discovered that most Tea Party members were actually comfy suburban professionals.[30] Later, the same was found of Trump supporters.[31] Small wonder: They are the same people. In other words, they are typical Republicans.
Alas, the shocked promptly forgot these findings both times. Stereotypes are strong. They remain resilient in the face of contradictory facts.
Moreover, this chapter is about empathy and, culturally, working class people have more of that. In an article in The Guardian, David Graeber opined that “caring too much” was the true “curse of the working classes.”[32] Why? Because middle class people prioritize personal ambition and advancement whereas working people prioritize the community. It is a longstanding survival strategy. As George Orwell wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier, “You cannot have an effective trade union of middle-class workers, because in times of strikes almost every middle-class wife would be egging her husband on to blackleg and get the other fellow’s job.”
Additionally, my previous use of the word “stupid” should probably be qualified. When you focus your attention on developing specific areas of knowledge, they become strengths while neglected areas become weaknesses. Anyone who has played tabletop role-playing games should know that. It is all about where you allocate your character points. Yes, I am a geek. But, do not ask me about quantum mechanics, nanotech, or even computers.
In modern, complex societies, our roles become highly specialized – far beyond coopers and cobblers – and of course we are all encouraged to find out what we are best suited for and “play to our strengths.” Accordingly, libertarians are hardly stupid, but their intelligence is typically restricted to technology or business and therefore their sociological and citizenship skills often suffer as a result. But they are generally more pro-science and cosmopolitan than conservatives are. Thus, they are more knowledgeable because they are less xenophobic. Of course, this does not apply to the anti-immigrant paleolibertarians who animate the sign-misspelling Tea Party.
I strongly doubt that Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage of childhood development applies to conservatives as anything more than a metaphor. Although, it is an awesome metaphor – they answer to the description in so many ways, especially magical thinking. More on that shortly.
But whatever psychology may find, we know for certain that conservative media personalities can routinely vilify empathy, celebrate selfishness, and defend bullying without alienating their audiences. Quite the opposite – statements that repel decent people resonate deeply with their followers. And it is hardly unfair to put two and two together from there.
You might ask, “What about ‘compassionate conservatives’?”
Well, what about them? President George W. Bush paraded that label and he tried to privatize Social Security. Of course, conservatives have always sought to destroy Social Security one way or another since it was signed into law by FDR.
Then there is George W. Bush’s mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, who wondered “why should I waste my beautiful mind” on body bags when the invasion of Iraq was imminent. After Hurricane Katrina, she was alarmed to learn that many New Orleans evacuees were thinking of staying in Houston. “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”[33] Score!
And then there is one Arthur C. Brooks who wrote a book called Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism which claims that religious conservatives give more to charity. Defensive conservatives are certain to invoke the American Enterprise Institute’s president. And, if I had a lesser work ethic, I would just counter with Glenn Beck and Ayn Rand and call it a day.
But Brooks and Beck make such an interesting comparison/contrast on the topic of compassion. And how could I possibly ignore a book almost as evil as The Bell Curve or as ass-backwards as Liberal Fascism? His book is also a picture window into the right’s magical thinking which shapes their opinion on so many other issues.
Philanthropy professionals have not been particularly kind to Arthur Brooks’ book. As the peer-reviewed Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly soberly noted, “Citing the discredited generosity index, Brooks asserts that residents of states whose electoral votes went to George W. Bush in 2004 are more charitable than others. Havens and Schervish (2005) show a much more mixed list of states whose residents give more than the national average.”[34] Moreover, self-reported data on charitable giving is notoriously unreliable, or as one professional calls it, “mushy.”[35] Survey respondents are prone to exaggeration – especially if they feel constantly guilted into giving once a week.[36]
Number-crunching is not my forte, but you do not have to be a social scientist to spot big problems in Arthur C. Brooks’ book. To prove that liberals are stingy, he repeatedly cites this Ralph Nader statement: “A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.”[37] Brooks takes issue with this position since he wants more charity. And if less justice does the trick, then so be it. For him, it is only the thought that counts – real world results are irrelevant. He does not care if things get better or worse or even work. Since giving is good for the soul, he seeks to promote it for its own sake – or rather for the giver’s sake.
It is hard to fathom how this is compassion. Perhaps Brooks thinks that his motives cannot be selfish if they are spiritual. Yet, they are selfish by every objective measure because others must suffer to benefit his spiritual well-being. It reduces other people to vehicles – to plot devices, like minor characters in a story that live and die only so that the hero has an opportunity to be heroic. Although necessary when writing a novel or a movie, it is a monstrous approach to real life. It sees social problems as difficulty settings on a video game – except that others must struggle against them. His worldview does not see this world as fully real because it is so focused on the next.
Martin Luther King once wrote, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”[38] But Brooks much prefers the haphazard and superficial because restructuring would spoil his warm fuzzies. Again, he wants more charity, so he demands less justice. He is hostile to European social programs because they are effective and thus lessen giving. Apparently, boasting about generosity is what is most important. It is not hard to spot the sin of pride in his thinking.
Arthur Brooks makes many broken arguments. As James Halteman noted in The Christian Century, “[I]f all the annual religious contributions in the U.S. were used to offset public expenditure for the poor, the amount would fund less than 15 percent of current aid to poor people. If all charity, religious and non-religious, were included, about 42 percent of current aid would be covered.”[39] In other words, when you add-in secular donations, total private giving almost triples. So how are the religious more generous?
But the more important point is that this total is still less than half of government social spending on the poor. Brooks assumes that people will give more once government stops being involved. But that is an assumption – like the one that tax cuts do not swell the deficit because they “pay for themselves.” Of course, we already know that people do not give more in hard times when it is needed most. People give less when they have less to give. We discovered that during the Great Depression and we are seeing it once again.
On the same page, James Halteman also notes, “[T]he public sector is required to deal with all cases, including the tough ones, while private groups can skim off the easy cases or at least avoid the most problematic ventures. Private groups get blamed for errors of commission in their work, but public agencies get blamed for errors both of commission and omission and thus seem less efficient.” He notes, for example, that private charities got praised for pitching-in after Hurricane Katrina, but not blamed for failing to fix problems, as FEMA was. Getting “an E for Effort” is not “good enough for government work.” Private charities are judged by a more charitable yardstick.
Speaking of public vs. private efficacy, many private charities are actually incredibly inefficient, wasteful, or just plain corrupt. Some are not actually charities but scams. The majority of their donations go to hiring for-profit telemarketing outfits and their founders’ consulting firms.
In other words, most of their fundraising goes to fundraising with the needy often getting almost nothing.
A year-long investigation by the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting discovered “The 50 worst charities in America devote less than 4 percent of donations raised to direct cash aid.” Six devoted zero.[40]
I suspect that most government programs are quite a bit more efficient than that. Of course, that is, provided they are not privatized, as FEMA was under George W. Bush. In that scenario, government contractors and subcontractors had basically the same inflated overhead as charity scams, so almost nothing got to the folks who needed help. The cash got passed along from one contractor to another until the last of it finally disappeared. It seems that those who advocate trickledown economics also favor filter-out relief. And with all those subcontractors, it is a multi-filtered system.
Of course, the Tampa Bay Times focused on the worst offenders and there are many very excellent, well-run charities out there. But waste and fraud happen because the charity industry is effectively unregulated.[41] We need more government involvement, not less. And yet, less is exactly what Arthur Brooks urges.
By way of analogy, it is nice that the guy with the SUV is generous with giving folks rides, but he sounds a lot less benevolent when he suggests getting rid of public transit. Slashing taxes so that he can buy a bigger SUV is not practical public policy. Instead, it is like the feel-good inefficiency of a charity whose budget primarily goes to for-profit call centers and lavishly catered galas.
Arthur Brooks is, at best, ridiculously unrealistic, if not surreal. He actually blasts Jimmy Carter for saying that many Americans are indifferent to suffering around the world. Brooks invokes Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 picture of an America filled with civic groups, charities, and other voluntary organizations and then asks the reader who is right about American generosity – Carter or Tocqueville?
Several things instantly spring to mind at this point:
First, is the indelible image of Jimmy Carter swinging a hammer for Habitat for Humanity to build low income housing shortly after leaving office. (He started in 1984.) You do not talk shit about Jimmy Carter.
Second, Jimmy Carter is discussing present day international aid rather than local giving in 1835. Times have changed and people are more moved by need that they see in person. The apples-to-oranges nature of the comparison is plain.
Third is the fact that not all of the groups that Alexis de Tocqueville described were conventional charities. On the contrary, Tocqueville was emphasizing the great diversity of organizations that Americans formed – including “for entertainments.” He was arguing that Americans were joiners. Today, you would not argue that a bowling league is a philanthropy group, although they might join a blood drive or pass the hat if a member needed an operation. Many early American associations focused on fostering fellowship or affirming cultural identity. Charity was often only a corollary of community – a going concern of most groups, but not the focus.
Fourth, the mutual aid these groups provided was usually between people of roughly the same economic strata. It was often about the poor pooling their resources rather than a transfer of funds from one class to another. They were motivated by the realization that they were all in the same boat. The African American social aid and pleasure clubs of New Orleans are in this grain. They are more like Social Security or paying union dues than charity – you pay into the system because you know that one day you will need it yourself.
But pooling resources is not limited to the working class. The rich and middle class practice in-group generosity too. Not all non-profit groups are philanthropic. A lot of it is like members of a club creating or upgrading facilities that only members enjoy. For Arthur Brooks, giving to a suburban high-tech mega-church is the same as giving to an inner city soup kitchen.
Indeed, he specifically says we must not judge other’s priorities lest we invite criticisms of our own. Translation: church racquetball court.
In his enthusiasm, Brooks touts efforts that are essentially ordinary dues-paying. He boasts, “About 40 percent of volunteer hours go to religious causes, followed by about 30 percent for youth-related activities, such as PTA and children’s sports. Poverty-related causes, health charities, and political activism causes also receive significant amounts of volunteer time.”[42] Brooks adds “These statistics are impressive.” Well, no, not really. Seventy percent is devoted to getting into heaven or just being an involved parent. Actual charity is a distant afterthought and bundled-in with other things.
I am not knocking after school softball. But people often join a group because there is some perceived benefit. And, on the other side, there is often the expectation that you will also contribute in some way. These are reciprocal obligations, but you all come out ahead because the group dynamic magnifies everyone’s efforts.
That is just how groups work. Recall Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine’s argument that wealth comes from society – cooperation has a multiplier effect. See also the folk saying first coined by dramatist John Heywood (1497-1580) “Many hands make light work.”
But clearly that is not charity – it is self-interest. It is a civic investment from which you expect to get dividends. If your kids are not enjoying softball, you stop – unless you are getting a bigger kick out of it than your kids and living vicariously through them. But either way, you are benefitting. This is just basic dues-paying, albeit paid in time instead of money. It would be generous to say that Brooks stretches the definition of generosity.
Fifth is the fact that Brooks totally misreads Tocqueville’s take on voluntarism and democracy. Tocqueville was arguing that equality and democracy foster an ethos of cooperation that stresses that all have a stake in the improvement of the community. This can be seen in every benevolent association proposal Benjamin Franklin ever wrote – and he drafted plenty, encouraging both voluntarism and government involvement.
Thus, democracy is not just a system of government, but an entire way of life. As both Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine wrote, a republic is a town hall meeting writ-at-large. But, by saying that government should get out of the way, Arthur Brooks is de-democratizing government as a vehicle for people to get things done. Brooks is turning the collective ethos that Tocqueville saw on its ear by limiting the scope of civic participation. He is thereby denying people their most powerful tool.
Of course, that is how divide-and-conquer works – you separate large groups into smaller, weaker ones. Tocqueville was talking about Americans spreading the burden and recognizing that citizens share a wider responsibility. Where Tocqueville expands civic engagement, Brooks restricts it.
There is an old saying that goes “Half-truth is whole lie.” Arthur C. Brooks is correct when he says that public efforts sometimes lessen private ones. When your neighbor’s house catches fire, you do not grab a bucket anymore – you call the fire department and let them handle it. But professional fire fighters are better at it because they are both trained and equipped to go into burning buildings and you are not. The result is fewer people die. But the fire department’s budget still depends on the same grab-a-bucket public spirit that Brooks is trying to undermine. His target audience does not like paying their taxes, so he crafts an argument that essentially says we were better people before fire departments – so let’s get rid of them. His rationalization has a counter-persuasive desperation.
I should expound more on my previous fourth point about in-group mutual aid. Arthur C. Brooks looks at giving among the poor and finds that they give a larger portion of their income than the rest of us. I can see that. Brooks also finds that the working poor give more than those on welfare, even if they have equivalent incomes. Why this discrepancy? Brooks concludes that it is because recipients become more liberal and thus stingier(!) He is particularly critical of those miserly single moms who he presumes do not teach their children that charity is a duty. On page 105, he writes, “single parenthood is a disaster for charity.” Yeah, it’s pretty inconvenient for the parent too.
Two likelier explanations for this giving pattern exist.
First, research shows that welfare recipients often do not have access to the same support networks as the working poor, who often help each other in ways that are rarely tabulated in cash.[43] You may give a friend free babysitting or let relatives temporarily move in with you after they have lost their home. It is not hard to imagine working class culture evolving to promote this ethos – especially when everyone is similarly leaky boats.
Second, community involvement also means knowing more people in need as well as having access to more resources. You see the need. It is not a distant, abstract thing that you have to imagine like, say, poverty in another country or another part of town – which, for many, may as well be another country. In addition to seeing, there is the “grapevine” – people ask after each other. “How is your mother doing? I heard about her surgery.” etc.
In short, sharing burdens frees up money for dollar donations. By contrast, the isolated must pay for all the services they need and thus they have less cash-on-hand to give than better-connected people in a similar economic situation.
Indeed, if you are in the same dire straights with nothing to spare, you are going to prioritize your family first if you have no support networks to fall back on. Thus, you are likely to be more conservative, not more liberal.
That is all just basic common sense. How is Arthur Brooks so stupid?
Oh, right: Because he has never experienced anything like this.
But whether employed or on assistance, this is money that the poor can still ill-afford to part with. On page 81 of his book, Arthur Brooks admits the working poor are more likely to belong to churches that he delicately says “are especially demanding about tithing.” I believe I have an example of that. The late Reverend Jerry Falwell frequently told struggling couples that they could solve all their money troubles by giving to his church. He called holding back “robbing from God”:
Let me say a word to you who are struggling with debt right now. A bad attitude about money got you in debt. Whenever I am counseling a couple who’s having financial difficulties, I’ll say, “Give me a budget now. What’s your income? How much are you spending? Where [are] you putting it?” And if I do not see tithes and offerings at the top, [I’ll say] “Oh so there’s your problem right there: You are robbing from God.”“Oh, we can’t afford it right now, Pastor.”“No, no. You can’t afford not to. If you need a miracle, you better put the miracle-working God in your budget.” I’ve never led people into that where they didn’t come back a few months later and say, “I don’t know how it works, but it does. I don’t know how in the world why I give more to God and [have] less to keep, I wind up with more.” That’s spiritual mathematics![44]
It certainly is! It is the Laffer Curve of giving – less is magically more!
You may suspect that this is an unfair comparison or somehow taken out of context. Unfortunately, it is not, and I can prove it with a little history.
As I mentioned before, Arthur C. Brooks admires the infamous oil baron John D. Rockefeller. Brooks defends Rockefeller’s boast “God gave me my money” by arguing that the quote should be taken in full context. Rockefeller said, “I believe the power to make money is a gift from God. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.”[45]
His conscience? You may recall that this was the same man who said he would sooner kill all his employees than see them join a union, so his idea of the public good was unique. Arthur C. Brooks does not quote John D. Rockefeller’s draconian congressional testimony or mention his dynamiting a rival’s oil refinery. Rockefeller’s frequent bribery is likewise ignored.
No, Brooks takes Rockefeller’s piety at face value and claims that God rewarded Rockefeller for his generosity. Of course, controlling ninety percent of the nation’s oil refineries helped to fatten Rockefeller’s wallet as well, but Brooks does not mention this immense detail.[46]
Mark Twain was a contemporary of Rockefeller, and less impressed with the oil mogul’s piety. Twain sardonically described Rockefeller as the “Admiral of a Sunday school” who liked to explain “how he got his dollars.” For their part, Rockefeller’s flock “listened in rapture and divided its worship between him and the Creator – unequally.”[47]
Arthur Brooks subscribes to Reverend Jerry Falwell’s “spiritual mathematics,” only he calls it “Rockefeller’s Hypothesis” instead. This makes the spiritual sound scientific. Brooks writes, “Rockefeller’s blending theology and capitalism may sound odd to some. But for most Americans, who are comfortable with God and money, it represents and intriguing hypothesis: Charity and prosperity are interconnected.” (emphasis original)[48] Of course, there is that inconvenient bit in Matthew 6:24 that reads “You cannot serve both God and money.” But never mind that. Brooks’ book is essentially Rev. Russell Conwell’s 1870 “Acres of Diamonds” sermon reheated for the twenty-first century.
The concept that God rewards the righteous in this world as well as the next is the central tenet of Prosperity Theology, so this idea is nothing new in today’s conservative circles. There is also a religious business book called God Wants You to Be Rich. Their peculiar version of Jesus is less “eye of the needle” than “eye of the tiger.”
And, speaking of religious conservatives, The Rev. Pat Robertson had told his flock that they should not adopt abused children because they might be “weird.” “You don’t have to take on somebody else’s problems.”[49] Good to know.
In short, God wants you to be rich so that you can give more to the church of your choice. Of course, Arthur Brooks argues that ending redistributive taxation would help, ultimately making the poor richer. It sounds great, but I have to ask, if “Rockefeller’s Hypothesis” really works, why are the working poor – who give a larger portion of their income than anyone else – still working and poor, rather than comfortably retired on their divine dividends? God’s Karmic Rewards™ program is not performing as advertised. No Dickensian deus ex machina benefactor arrives to rescue the humble, upright protagonists from poverty in the last act.
I suspect that Arthur C. Brooks used “spiritual mathematics” throughout his book because he makes so many suspicious claims. He says that he was converted by his data, which he says he initially disbelieved. And yet, elsewhere, he has also said that admiring Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve was what inspired him to become a social scientist in the first place.[50] It seems he cannot keep his ideological origin story straight.
Also, remember that The Bell Curve used massaged data to argue that intelligence is determined by race. This may explain why Who Really Cares has such gems as, “Public school students (myself included) were being forcibly bussed out of their neighborhoods to comply with racial mixing criteria set by bureaucrats and judges.”[51] That sentence is part of his larger catalog of Carter era grievances.
Now, ignore his racist dog whistle for a minute and consider the scientific rigor of his inspiration. Saying Charles Murray got you into social statistics is like saying Bernie Madoff got you into investing. It suggests that you are as dishonest as you are callous.
Magical thinking frequently lends itself to hard-heartedness. For example, witness The Secret, an Oprah Winfrey-promoted book which tells its readers that people attract or repel wealth and good fortune with their attitudes. In sum, positive thoughts bring good things, whereas negative ones invite problems. It all seems merely trite until you consider its sinister implications: Slavery, the Holocaust, AIDS, etc. all look a lot different in this sunny light.[52] What starts out as fluffy cheerleading leads invariably to victim blaming.
Conservatives’ notions of where wealth and property come from also illustrate their penchant for magical thinking. They talk a lot about hard work, but are just as keen to avoid it as anyone else. Indeed, get-rich-quick schemes have added appeal for the religious ones because of their highly faith-based mindset. “Miracle methods” of making money are a frequent motif because they believe in miracles. Spiritual mathematics is hardly limited to charity. It shapes most of their notions of how wealth is generated and therefore who is truly deserving of our sympathy.
For example, the Evangelical tent revival atmosphere seen at Amway rallies is unmistakable.[53] The Jesus flows freely, identifying both the typical foot solider and the diamond-level distributor. But surprisingly, the pro-capitalist rhetoric seems stridently anti-capitalist. Testimonials of those who say the system has failed them are a basic staple. You will usually hear several stories about how working for The Man is a dead-end and a fool’s game. That is why they say you should work for “yourself,” except, of course, in their network enriching the person who brought you in.
Clearly, hard work alone is not cutting it if this message resonates with so many.[54] Indeed, they explicitly say so: Success is the sum of their system, hard work, and God’s favor. Of course, they never say that your failure is a part of God’s plan, because God wants everyone to be rich. But, if despite all your hard work you still do not succeed, it means you have not yet proven yourself worthy of celestial investment. Yes, they really say that to those who do not realize their material dreams.[55]
This callous hybrid of piety and greed is hardly surprising. And it is representative of a wider mentality. After all, how different is “spiritual mathematics” from putting your faith in the stock market? As Thomas Frank observed in One Market Under God, the business press often portrays markets as unknowable, benevolent forces that work in mysterious ways. New Economy booster Kevin Kelly’s book, Out of Control vividly illustrates this faith-based finance. As Thomas Frank summed it up:
We were part of a “hive mind,” more akin to a swarm of bees than a collection of rational, thinking persons. We were smart, but not enough to be able to order the world in any successful way. The key was to surrender control, an imperative Kelly repeats like a mantra throughout the book, to realize that the big things are simply beyond us. The way we will finally and correctly learn to understand “network economics,” he writes, is through a “new spiritualism.” Appliances and even clothes may learn to talk to one another, to do miraculous things, but we humans must realize our limitations and embrace the laissez-faire way as we would a religion.[56]
Again, termites do not write environmental impact statements. They just follow their appetites and consume wood. In this worldview, humans are similar consumers. We do not need to understand the big picture because we have no business trying to reorder things anyway.
Yes, the stock market was for everyone – especially those who did not understand it. As cartoonist Tom Tomorrow had pointed out, small investors are important to the stock market the same way that stranded motorists are important to horror movies.[57]
Of course, those who bought into this spiritual mindset were heartily encouraged to congratulate themselves for being in the know even though they did not actually grasp it. The attitude was both populist and elitist. Anyone can do this! I pity the fool who doesn’t! Thus, the typical convert was both humble and smug. This was a consistent theme in the literature that Thomas Frank surveyed, which claimed that the average salt-of-the-earth investor bought generic but invested in name brands. As Frank described this mentality, “We are never fooled; everyone else, though is a TV-watching, ad-believing dope.” (Italics original) Thus, the “common man” did not think much of his fellow man. There is that compassionate conservatism for you. It is like a giant game of poker – if you sit down at the table and cannot figure out who the sucker is, then you are the sucker.
Ultimately, conservatives do not really believe that wealth comes from work – at least, not from the work of workers. That is something they consider Marxist, although the idea is much older. Thomas Paine had argued that workers were robbed of the true value of their labor long before then. In Agrarian Justice, he wrote, “[T]he accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence.”[58] And Abraham Lincoln essentially said the same:
And inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large portion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.[59]
Therefore, the Industrial Workers of the World’s motto, “Labor is Entitled to All it Creates,” is completely in keeping with early American thought on property. Or, as the great American poet-humorist Don Marquis had put it back in the 1930s, “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose.”
Indeed, this critique even predates Thomas Paine. Similar thinking was in wide circulation during the English Civil War in the 1600s. But I will cover that in my next book. The point here is that rhetoric against stealing other people’s labor is nothing new.
Interestingly, just as Jerry Falwell told his flock that they were robbing God by not tithing, Ben Franklin accused the rich of robbing society by resisting taxation. Of course, there are two salient distinctions.
First, there is the alleged thieves’ ability to pay. While Dr. Franklin favored taxing the rich, Dr. Falwell squeezed the poor.
Second, apart from Margaret Thatcher, we can all agree that society exists and we expect to see our taxes at work. Yet, the operations of the Holy Ghost remain invisible to us.
But both doctors said that the entity that had originally created all wealth was entitled to partial reimbursement to keep the engine going.
Like Franklin, I have more faith in the entity that I can see. And accordingly, I have none whatsoever in Falwell’s “spiritual Mathematics” or “Rockefeller’s hypothesis.”
Conservatives have all the cognitive tools they need to progress beyond Piaget’s Preoperational Stage, but they are not accustomed to using them because conservative culture discourages that. This is the distinction between capacity and habit, ability and atrophy, can’t and won’t. But the results remain the same, and thus Piaget’s model aptly describes why stupidity and selfishness so often coincide. To function, a republic requires public-spirited, informed voters. Yet today’s conservatives consider educated people to be the enemy and tout their own blindly selfish subjectivity as “objectivity.” Out of selfish stupidity, they resist paying for schools, libraries, roads, and bridges.
We literally have bridges collapsing into rivers in the news now. A U.S. Department of Transportation study discovered that eleven percent of bridges are structurally deficient.[60] But Republicans filibustered the 2011 American Jobs Act, which would have funded repairs. In the past, such a commonsensical bill would have sailed through with bipartisan support. But today, the GOP sees government as a monster and its strategy is “starve the beast.” As Grover Norquist once said, “Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” And if conservatives fail to appreciate such immense, visible things like bridges, no wonder they see the far subtler infrastructure of social services as wasteful boondoggles.
But how do they not see this? Even the subtle stuff is pretty obvious. If we were a nation of callous bastards, intelligent self-interest would still dictate that we have a safety net because other people’s misfortunes tend to have negative ripple effects.
For example, welfare slows the spread of unemployment. With food stamps, the unemployed can still shop at the grocery store, so the grocery’s employees are less likely to get laid off themselves. Belt tightening means less consumer spending, which results in more unemployment. Welfare mitigates this domino effect. It exists less to help the poor than to protect the economy as a whole. It is an economic shock absorber.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman once made a similar observation about austerity as a whole. “An economy is not like a household. A family can decide to spend less and try to earn more. But in the economy as a whole, spending and earning go together: My spending is your income; your spending is my income. If everyone tries to slash spending at the same time, incomes will fall – and unemployment will soar.”[61]
So, it is not enough to be callous to be a conservative – you have to be stupid too. Conservatism is the perfect storm of astounding callousness and infuriating stupidity. The chemical reaction requires both. Alas, selfishness and stupidity are frequently twins since, if you have ice water in your veins, it tends to cause brain freeze.
Of course, as I said before, the term “stupidity” should be qualified. Conservatives might be quite bright in other areas, but their civic intelligence is shit. They may know how to run a business, but their grasp of larger economics is nonexistent. Perhaps that is why they superstitiously imagine the market as a fickle deity.
Do you think my language is perhaps over the top? Well, it is not. In fact, the situation is difficult to exaggerate. Topeka, Kansas had actually decriminalized domestic violence to save money arguing that state law still prohibited it.[62] But that excuse just does not wash because the state was rolling out its own new tax cuts, and suspects were being released without charges because no agency was accepting new cases.
This shows the folly of “devolving” power to more local levels of government. Many states now need federal help just to make their budgets. No other cities that I know of have followed Topeka’s move on domestic violence, but some localities have stopped repairing roads. That is not going to attract outside business investment and spur local economic growth.
Granted, the world economic crash was, in part, at fault. But it was a three-decade-long addiction to tax cuts at every level of government that has left us vulnerable. Public resources were stretched to the limit while the economy was strong and ill-equipped to function when the economy stumbled. Government was told to imitate business when corporations were bewitched by daft management fads.
For example, both business and government outsourced tasks they formerly performed in-house. “Doing more with less” was the mantra as assets were sold off, department budgets cut, and experienced people let go because they had earned too many raises. Self-inflicted brain drain was all the rage, so institutional memory gave way to institutional stupidity.
Budget cutters did not seem to know or care whether they were cutting off meat or fat. As long as they were cutting, they felt serious and virtuous. It was pennywise and pound foolish (or to Americanize that English idiom, pennywise and dollar moronic). Therefore, preventative maintenance, safety inspections, and every other cost that did not directly generate profit for corporations or revenue for government often got neglected.
And things worked great – right up until they did not. All of this was done under the magical fantasy that the stock market would soar forever, as if what went up could not possibly come down. It is like selling off your roof for firewood or scrap metal: The extra money is fun, until it rains.
And what caused the economic crash of 2007? Three decades of deregulation and outsourcing. In 1933, the Glass-Steagall Banking Act was passed to prevent a repeat of the shenanigans that triggered the 1929 stock market crash. But it had been repealed because banks found it inconvenient. And conservatives and “centrists,” of both parties, gave tax cuts to corporations for moving their factories overseas. Obama tried to repeal these cuts, but he could not swing the votes in Congress. So, those laws remain on the books.
A lot can be blamed on the magical thinking that tax cuts fix everything. But, again, there is conscious sabotage afoot as well. As Thomas Frank explained in The Wrecking Crew, conservatives sabotage government from within and say “See? Big Government doesn’t work.” Sane, patriotic people might worry about how such policies would harm our country, but conservatives do not. During the invasion of Iraq, Ann Coulter accused liberal doves of “treasonous stupidity,” but I think the phrase she coined best describes conservatives. Had they pulled such stunts during World War II, they would have been shot for treason. The legislative behavior described in the previous paragraph almost seems designed to destroy our country. Yes, it was probably only the product of stupidity, greed, and wishful thinking, but other policies are indeed deliberate.
For example, their scheme to hamstring the U.S. Post Office was especially inventive. The Postal Enhancement and Accountability Act of 2006 required the agency to, within ten years, prefund healthcare retirement benefits for postal workers for the next seventy-five. In short, to provide for retirees who were not even born yet. No other public agency or private company has to do this. This absurd burden almost ended Saturday delivery in 2011. The strategy was to simply keep tying weights to Uncle Sam’s ankles until he could no longer swim. Republicans called the Post Office “bankrupt,” but before prefunding began the service boasted profits in the low billions. Remember that the Post Office has not accepted any tax money since it was made a self-sufficient, semi-private institution over thirty years ago.[63] Yet, despite this privatized status, the far right is still trying to destroy Benjamin Franklin’s creation.
Why? Because conservatives think sabotage is patriotic and they feel no sympathy for those who will suffer as a result. Thus, they are fond of forcing government shutdowns – not just as a hostage-taking tactic, but because they find it desirable in itself. They love to see services suspended and government employees forced to work without pay. But the damage goes beyond that. The 2013 shutdown cost the economy $24 billion in only sixteen days.[64] The five week partial shutdown in 2018, cost the economy $11 billion with a quarter of it lost permanently.[65]
Conservatives do not acknowledge how much government spending stimulates the economy. They simply take its positive ripple effects for granted. They forget that World War II pulled us out of the Great Depression. While growing up, I had noticed that they often said that “war is good for the economy” but that government spending was not. I wondered where they thought the Pentagon got its money. At least Ron Paul and son are more consistent since they want to cut the military budget too – consistent, but fiscally suicidal. But both forms of conservatism ignore how government magnifies our wealth, albeit in slightly different ways.
Conservatives’ anti-civic attitude does not stop at defunding public schools or at demonizing teachers unions. It threatens every single bolt of our rusting infrastructure. Conservatism desires the literal disintegration of American civilization. I would say they are the secular equivalent of Evangelicals who want to hasten the Apocalypse, except they are not that secular. But the impulse is identical. They yearn to see the Last Days at Galt’s Gulch and this selfish, pessimistic yen is the very essence of every Glenn Beck broadcast. Starkly put, we are in a fight between those who want to improve society and those who want to implode it. And those who see tyranny in empathy have plainly chosen implosion.
It may sound touchy-feely to say that compassion is society’s attitudinal glue. Yet, recognizing how liberty, equality, and empathy all reinforce each other is simply steely-eyed realism. It is self-evident and conservative contempt does not change that.
Liberals often say conservative scorn for the poor is not very nice. But this goes far beyond nice. We have a civic duty which reactionaries reflexively deny and disparage. I do not go much for touchy-feely speak either. I believe all real writing is both tactile and tactless. Hey, I can be just as blunt and abrasive as, say, a Chris Christie. And if that is the only language that conservatives understand, I can do like Dr. Doolittle and “Talk to the Animals,” if any conservatives are still reading. I have actually done this throughout the book to various degrees – and, yes, I am doing it now. I have also written in second person on occasion. (I have noticed that conservative political literature does that a lot.) But this is not only an effort to speak their language. This is what I really think. And yet, ironically, this bluntness itself requires some explanation.
It is a familiar truism that conservatives are motivated by anger while liberals are motivated by guilt. And, as I explore more in the next chapter, psychological studies have shown that conservatives also respond to the rhetoric of disgust. Conservatives certainly do not have a monopoly on anger or disgust. But, in the interests of diplomacy, liberals typically hide these feelings. Since conservatives seem capable of expressing little else, their example makes liberals check themselves even further. In Poor Richard’s Almanac, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Take this remark from Richard poor and lame, Whate’er’s [sic] begun in anger ends in shame.” Or as Yoda put it, “Anger is the way to the dark side.” So liberals pull their punches. And, of course, empathy helps temper them as well.
The liberal temperament defaults to fairness and peace-keeping. All too often, this results in the mistake of soft-pedaling arguments or keeping silent. You can see this in a letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to his slave-owning friend, Joshua Speed. Lincoln wrote it in 1855, when the prospects for abolition looked dim and it seemed that the only thing that could be done against slavery was to stop its spread westward:
I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together in irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the constitution and the Union.[66]
The upshot is liberals are often seen as weak. On most debate shows, the conservative jock beats up on the liberal geek. Apart from two exceptionally charismatic presidents, Democrats cannot hold the White House because all their other presidential candidates are too nice to hit back. So, they all get Willie Horton-ed or Swiftboat-ed.[67] Having fighting spirit is often seen as suspect. Just ask Howard Dean.
On the other hand, this reluctance to express anger or disgust is also a social lubricant and thus a civic virtue. That is why liberals have it. Liberal political culture promotes the habits and attitudes that participatory democracy requires and empathy is one of them. But empathy can definitely be its own worst enemy and, eventually, you are forced to ignore the rule of etiquette that says it is rude to point out rudeness.
John Adams said we must put the public good before “all private Passions.” And what is patriotism but a loyalty to something beyond your front lawn? It is certainly not the Tea Party’s selfish fallout shelter ethics. It is obviously the opposite. It is looking out for your neighbors across the hall and across the ocean. It rings in Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” and in Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” It is the “civic altruism” that Stephanie Coontz found in the Jeffersonian tradition. It is the majesty of ordinary, everyday decency towards other people.
Of course, you do not have to be compassionate to be a patriot, but it helps. You can do the right thing out of duty. But empathy makes doing your duty far more likely. This explains why liberals are often excellent patriots even if they do not loudly trumpet it. All our country has to be proud of comes from acting on our liberal traditions and all we have to be ashamed of comes from neglecting them.
By sharp contrast, conservatives are frequently failures as Americans. What they consider a liberal guilt trip is simply citizenship and they resent it intensely. When they see poverty, they say, “I already gave at church” and buy Arthur C. Brooks’ book. When they hear about violations of minority voting rights, they just shrug or, worse, try to justify it.
Conservatives’ political reflexes are anti-civic. They typically vilify empathy, praise the bully, and blame the victim. They are at best oblivious drags on America’s character and at worst they are conscious saboteurs of the common good. The latter are politely called “conservative ideologues.”
This is not an unfair caricature. On the contrary, it is a photographic portrait that they are happy with and they have ordered duplicate prints. If it were otherwise, conservative media figures’ insane, callous statements would alienate their audiences. Instead, their audiences applaud and enthusiastically demand more. Therefore, these political pundits constantly compete to out-do each another and come up with something worse.
But what delights conservatives disgusts true patriots.
_____________
[1] Lewis Black, “Glenn Beck’s Nazi Tourettes,” Daily Show, airdate May 12, 2010.
[2] “Rick Perry Partners With Pastor Who Thinks Oprah Is The Precursor To The Antichrist,” Right Wing Watch (People for the American Way), July 8th, 2011. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-perry-partners-pastor-who-thinks-oprah-precursor-antichrist. As my friend Rachel Rosen pointed out to me, “[T]he authors of Left Behind are all about the Antichrist working for the UN. There’s a tendency in dispensational premillennialism to characterize the Antichrist as a man of peace; therefore, anyone talking about peace is suspect.”
[3] Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 395.
[4] Joshua A. Perper M.D., LL.B, M.Sc., Stephen J. Cina M.D., When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How, (New York: Copernicus, 2010) 57.
[5] Mary Wollstonecraft, The Feminist Papers, From Adams to Beauvoir, ed. Alice S. Rossi (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1973), 58.
[6] John Adams, Article VII, Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780.
[7] “Food Stamps, The Struggle to Eat: As Congress wrangles over spending cuts, surging numbers of Americans are relying on the government just to put food on the table,” The Economist, July 14, 2011.
[8] Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “Justice and Education Departments Announce New Research Showing Prison Education Reduces Recidivism, Saves Money, Improves Employment,” Thursday, August 22, 2013, http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/August/13-ag-948.html (accessed 05/11/14).
[9] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 10.
[10] Michelangelo Signorile, “Stacey Campfield, Tennessee Senator Behind ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill, On Bullying, AIDS And Homosexual ‘Glorification’” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/stacey-campfield-tennessee-senator-dont-say-gay-bill_n_1233697.html (accessed 1/29/14).
[11] “Rush: ‘[T]here is No Equality’ Because ‘[S]ome People are Just Born to be Slaves,’ While Others are ‘Self-starters,’” http://mediamatters.org/video/2010/10/08/rush-there-is-no-equality-because-some-people-a/171719 (accessed December 17, 2012).
[12] Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 96-97.
[13] Thomas Paine, The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine: Includes Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason and Agrarian Justice, ed. Phillip Sheldon Foner (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1993, 1974) 369.
[14] Although the Founders might have added that the Tories of their day at least had some sense of nobless oblige. Baroness Thatcher did, after all, take her party in a new direction. No doubt conservatives will seize on this to argue that the label should no longer be applied. But the Tories remain pro-rich and anti-working class, so the fundamentals remain the same.
[15] Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 99.
[16] Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 102.
[17] Micaela von Marcard, trans. Stewart Spencer, “The Apotheosis of Despair,” on page 13 of the liner notes for a 1992 Daniel Barenboim performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Erato records, disc D103194.
[18] I obtained these lines from the Schiller Institute’s website.
[19] The Robeson version ends: “Build the road of peace before us/Build it wide and deep and long;/Speed the slow and check the eager/Help the weak and curb the strong./None shall push aside another/None shall let another fall./March beside me, Oh my Brother/All for one and one for all.”
[20] Raw Story, “Hannity defends Rutgers coach: ‘My father hit me with a belt, I turned out okay!’” http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/04/hannity-defends-rutgers-coach-my-father-hit-me-with-a-belt-i-turned-out-okay/ (accessed 04/21/13).
[21] As of this edition, his aides have already been found guilty of conspiracy, but the case against Christie himself is still in court.
[22] Crooks and Liars, “Allen West (R-FL) Brags about Torturing Iraqi Policeman,” http://crooksandliars.com/blue-texan/allen-west-r-fl-brags-about-torturing-i (accessed 1/27/14).
[23] For a brief catalog of conservative pundits’ Putin enthusiasm, see the Daily Show segment “Big Vladdy – Semi-Delusional Autocrats,” http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-6-2014/big-vladdy---semi-delusional-autocrats (accessed 03/08/2014).
[24] The only time I am aware of the rank and file ever coming up is a 2018 NPR Morning Edition interview with Jonah Goldberg in which David Green mentions that a lot of Republicans support Trump’s Russia policy. But he simultaneously says they are out of time, so we do not get Goldberg’s answer. Green closes with: “And we should say, I mean, a lot of Republicans – we don’t have time to actually dig into this, maybe next time – but I mean, polls suggest that a lot of Republicans in the country support what [Trump] has done this week, whatever it is. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review, always great having you.” And again, it does not address the fact that conservative enthusiasm for Putin predates Trump. (“Jonah Goldberg On Trump, Putin and the GOP, July 20, 2018).
[25] Tom Moran, “Chris Christie endorsement is regrettable: Moran,” February 09, 2014 at 6:04 AM, updated February 10, 2014 at 11:24 AM, http://blog.nj.com/njv_tom_moran/2014/02/chris_christie_endorsement_is.html (accessed February 10, 2014).
[26] Chris Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 72.
[27] CBS News, “Rep. Joe Barton Apologizes to BP’s Tony Hayward for White House ‘Shakedown,’” http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20008020-503544/rep-joe-barton-apologizes-to-bps-tony-hayward-for-white-house-shakedown-video-/ (accessed 04/22/13).
[28] Annie Murphy Paul, “Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer,” Time Magazine, June 03, 2013.
[29] Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad; Or the New Pilgrim’s Progress (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co., 1869) 650.
[30] Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan. “Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated,” New York Times, 14 April 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html (accessed May 8, 2019).
[31] Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu. “It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class," Washington Post, 5 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/caring-curse-working-class-austerity-solidarity-scourge (accessed May 8, 2019).
[32] David Graeber. “Caring too much. That's the curse of the working classes," The Guardian, 26 Mar 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/caring-curse-working-class-austerity-solidarity-scourge (accessed May 8, 2019).
[33] “Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off,” New York Times, September 7, 2005.
[34] David C. Hammack, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 38 (2009):549.
[35] As noted in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Alan J. Abramson, director of the nonprofit-research program at the Aspen Institute, a Washington think tank, questions whether Mr. Brooks is putting too much stock in data on giving, which Mr. Abramson describes as ‘mushy.’ He notes that surveys on giving put the percentage of American households who give to charity at between 50 percent and 80 percent – an incredibly wide range. ‘If somebody called you up and asked you how much you gave last year, God knows what number you would pull out of the air,’ he says.” Ben Gose, “Charity’s Political Divide,” Chronicle of Philanthropy 19, no. 4 (November 23, 2006): 3.
[36] The Christian Century wondered, “Do religious people have a tendency to overstate their participation in activities that they feel are virtuous?” (James Halterman, “Politics of Charity.” Christian Century, June 12, 2007, 33.)
[37] Brooks thinks this is such a brilliant argument that he uses that Nader quote four times in a 183 page book (not including notes and appendixes). I feel so much better about my quote recycling now.
[38] Martin Luther King, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990 ), 241.
[39] James Halterman, “Politics of Charity,” Christian Century, June 12, 2007, 34.
[40] Kris Hundley and Kendall Taggart, “America’s 50 worst charities rake in nearly $1 billion for corporate fundraisers,” Tampa Bay Times/CIR special report, June 6, 2013.
[41] Kris Hundley and Kendall Taggart, “Lack of regulation and meager penalties allow worst charities to thrive,” Tampa Bay Times/CIR special report, June 7, 2013.
[42] Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism: America’s Charity Divide--Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why it Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 4.
[43] Ben Gose, “Charity’s Political Divide,” Chronicle of Philanthropy 19, no. 4 (November 23, 2006): 3.
[44] Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders, dir. James D. Scurlock, 87 min., Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2006, DVD. Scene @ 51:12.
[45] Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism: America’s Charity Divide--Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why it Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 138.
[46] The closest Brooks gets to acknowledging any of Rockefeller’s wrongdoing is on page 137. “To someone negatively disposed to Rockefeller – because of his business practices or wealth itself – ‘God gave me my money’ sounds like an outrageous justification …” No dirty details there: Only the implication of petty jealousy.
[47] Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages about Men and Events, ed. Bernard De Voto (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940) 84.
[48] Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism: America’s Charity Divide--Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why it Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 139. There is a speech in Lawrence of Arabia where a sheik boasts about all the money the Turks give him for his cooperation. In it, he concludes, “And yet, I am poor – because I am a river to my people,” which is a pretty potent metaphor when you live in a desert. But I guess Rockefeller’s Hypothesis does not apply out there.
[49] David Edwards, “Pat Robertson: Don’t adopt sexually abused children that could grow up ‘weird’,” Raw Story, posted August 16th, 2012, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/16/pat-robertson-dont-adopt-sexually-abused-children-that-could-grow-up-weird/ (accessed August 21st, 2012). I would like to thank Reverend Robertson for coming through for me at the last minute with a quote that was both timely and on point.
[50] Marin Cogan, “Blowing Sunshine.” The New Republic, April 15, 2009, 5.
[51] Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism: America’s Charity Divide--Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why it Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 154.
[52] Peter Birkenhead, “Oprah’s Ugly Secret,” Salon, March 5, 2007. http://www.salon.com/2007/03/05/the_secret/
[53] Lars-Erik Nelson, “Profits, politics, proselytizing: It’s the Am-Way,” Daily News (New York), October 28, 1998, p. 43. See also Gary Tippet, “Inside the cults of mind control,” Sunday Age (Melbourne, Australia), April 3, 1994, p. 6.
[54] My brush with these guys was in the early 1990s, when libertarian rhetoric, happy talk on the economy, and downsizing were all just revving up. The moment was both paradoxical and self-explanatory. Corporations were then exporting jobs and downgrading the pay and benefits of those that remained stateside, so staying put at your job did not look promising. Although, on the other hand, striking out on your own when Walmart was wiping out actual mom and pop stores should have seemed dubious too. This is why the network is there to hold your hand and show you how to get “independently” wealthy.
[55] Blake E. Ashforth & Deepa Vaidyanath, “Work organizations as secular religions,” Journal of Management Inquiry, December 2002, p. 366.
[56] Thomas Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), 59.
[57] Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins), Penguin Soup for the Soul (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 104.
[58] Thomas Paine, The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine: includes Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of man, The Age of Reason and Agrarian Justice, ed. Phillip Sheldon Foner (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1993), 620.
[59] Abraham Lincoln, The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. John G. Nicolay and John Hay (Harrogate, TN: Lincoln Memorial University, 1894), 1:307.
[60] Marisol Bello, “Bridge collapse shines light on aging infrastructure,” USA Today, May 24, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/24/washington-bridge-collapse-nations-bridges-deficient/2358419/ (accessed 6/17/2013).
[61] Paul Krugman, “Belt-tightening has proven to be disastrous in Europe,” Post Bulletin, Jan 11, 2013. http://stories.postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1520448 (accessed 12/16/13).
[62] A.G. Sulzberger, “Facing Cuts, a City Repeals, Its Domestic Violence Law,” New York Times, October 11, 2011.
[63] Fredric Rolando, “The Postal Service is struggling, but not because of the mail” (op-ed), Washington Post, July 19, 2012.
[64] Melanie Hicken. "Shutdown took $24 billion bite out of economy," CNN Business, 17 October 2013, https://money.cnn.com/2013/10/16/news/economy/shutdown-economic-impact/index.html (accessed May 8, 2019).
[65] “Government Shutdown Cost Economy $11 Billion, C.B.O. Says,” New York Times, January 28, 2019.
[66] Abraham Lincoln, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 2:320.
[67] We will need another FDR or an LBJ without the albatross of Vietnam. But that is not to say that it is a “man’s job” – a strong woman can do that. Although, I would prefer an honest consumer advocate like Senator Elizabeth Warren over an Iraq War-supporting former Walmart board like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. From the grave, Molly Ivins, speaks for me on Hillary Clinton.
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