George Rebane
This is proposition is presented by Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis, professors at Harvard and BYU respectively, in their ‘The Myth of Ideological Polarization’. They use a series of weak arguments and erroneous facts to conclude that “polarization is a myth” and the Left/Right labels are better thought of as names of tribes whose belief systems change over time. The claimed changes are so radical that their tenets even switch sides over the years.
For example, one of their claims is that today’s Left supports free trade that used to be supported by the Right. Given the Left’s desire to double-tax US corporations that do business overseas, this characterization is clearly wrong, as is their representation of the Right’s opposition to free trade. The Right imposes tariffs on selected foreign goods only 1) when foreign governments subsidize certain products/industries to distort competitive markets, and 2) when certain such products/industries are critical to maintaining our sovereignty and national security.
The authors claim that the Right has turned ‘statist’, which formerly was a forte of the Left. Well, statism still is the Left’s overarching prescription to solve the nation’s ills. The Right cannot support any kind of statism through its constant initiatives to reduce taxes (i.e. government revenues) and regulations (i.e. the currency of government bureaucracies). Without a blink or further justification, our scholars write, “Republicans favor lower taxes than they did in the 1960s, but so do Democrats.” (emphasis mine) Mind boggling.
The Lewises even miss the claim about free speech that “the Democrats ‘moved left’ when it was once a defining value of ‘the left’.” The Left was never a proponent of free speech, even during the anti-war years of the 1970s. Anyone claiming membership of that ‘tribe’ who did not parrot the anti-war party line soon found themselves abandoned and shunned by their former comrades. While the Left’s party line narratives have always been malleable – they regularly rewrite history to serve their ideological needs du jour – they have always demanded instant recommitment from their loyal constituents when, sometimes overnight, north turns into south and east turns into west. And we see this happening daily in the lamestream with its asymmetrical coverage of events that favor the Left’s retention of power.
Finally, the good professors entirely miss the nature, role, and utility of the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ labels. They misunderstand these as single-dimensional attributes like temperature, instead of names of umbrellas under which are gathered the more or less stable collections of ideological tenets that continue to point their adherents toward their unchanging global government collectivism or open market capitalist sovereign nation-state futures. These seminal reasons for our ideological polarization are completely missed by our scholars.
As if to underline all of the above, today’s (18jun22) Union features the sentiment of its editorial board in the op-ed section – ‘There’s always another election’ (not yet online). Therein the editorial board exhorts Nevada County voters to participate in greater numbers and in all elections, primaries and the November main events. They wonder what really sparks a big turnout and lament that some significant offices – e.g. sheriff and DA – really had but one contender, the incumbent. Surprisingly what they totally miss is the issue of election integrity on motivating voter turnout. Half the country is concerned about the confirmed reports of fraud and irregularities, and why many of these failed to gain traction in our judicial system. Letting this sentiment fester unresolved does not invite the sometime voter to get educated, involved, and cast a vote.
The thing that sticks out to readers paying attention is that only one of our polarized sides is concerned about voter integrity, and those are the Republicans. The Democrats care only about voter access, seeking to maximize those qualified to vote that may include some who no longer can even fog a mirror. The Republicans on the other hand demand that only franchised citizens should be able to cast ballots, and want procedures in place to vet these qualified voters. To the Left, this all amounts to voter suppression and the diminishing of our democracy.
So the Union’s piece on voting that completely ignores election integrity and voter qualification confirms that the newspaper is another politically tinged outlet of the nation’s progressive wing and a solid member of the Left’s lamestream. This assessment would be incomplete without acknowledging that the privately owned newspaper has every right to be a handmaiden of the county’s purple-to-blue transition as it caters to its leftward marketplace. However, it would suit me more if The Union would admit to its ideological leanings and not attempt to represent itself as traveling close to the nation’s political center stripe. After all, a media outlet identifying itself as tacking Left or Right would be a refreshing change and provide useful clarity to the many readers still in doubt.
