Of course that almost never happens. People rarely change their political opinions because of argument, spectacular or otherwise.
So what determines people's political opinions? There are several points of view.
The first may be called Marxian. It maintains that politics derives from economics, and a person's political opinions will roughly follow their economic status. In the narrowly Marxist sense this reduces to bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, and proletarian sympathies. As this blog has relentlessly pointed out, that taxonomy no longer fits the modern world very well.
The larger Marxian premise is alive and well, however. It's shows up in simple-minded form in the MSM as blue-collar voters elected Trump. A more sophisticated, Marxian perspective is proposed by Joel Kotkin, author of the recently released The New Class Conflict (which I have not yet read). It is summarized in an important article here.
In Kotkin's view, US society exists in four classes: the Oligarchy, the Clerisy, the Yeomanry, and the Serfs. The oligarchs are the top 0.1% of our society--roughly equivalent to the bourgeoisie. The clerisy are "made up of academics, the media and well-paid professionals — represent[ing] some 15 percent of the American workforce." The yeomanry represent "small business and property owners." I'd suggest it constitutes most Americans with a positive net worth. Bringing up the rear are the serfs--people who are too poor to accumulate any wealth at all, or who have smothered themselves debt that they'll never be able to pay off.
That all sounds very clear, and it has considerable explanatory power. But it falls apart when I try to apply it to myself, my family, friends and colleagues. Am I a member of the clerisy? After all, I retired as a professor at full rank, making me an academic in good standing. But I retired from Two-Bit State College--not Harvard. How far down in the academic pecking order can one get and still be a cleric in good standing?
Unlike most of my colleagues, I retired on a 401K rather than with a state pension. That means I have a lot more money than they do--if I can't rise to clerical status I'm definitely a yeoman. My retired colleagues, while they have much less money, do get a state pension--which politically isn't much different from a welfare check. Are they clerics, yeomen, or serfs? (Or are retired folks declassed altogether, as a traditional Marxist might maintain?)
And so on. It all dissolves into ambiguity. And none of this predicts my vote or that of anybody in my family. Maybe we're just special--but I don't think so.
A second explanation for political opinion is that it is a personality trait. A leading exponent of this model is Arnold Kling, author of The Three Languages of Politics. My review (here) briefly summarizes the thesis:
Kling suggests that there are three political ideologies in America, which he roughly labels as Progressive, Conservative and Libertarian. These three groups use different languages--that Kling calls heuristics--and from this he derives a three-axis model. Progressives organize ideas around an oppressor/oppressed axis. Hence they are primarily interested in social justice, and in righting historical wrongs. Conservatives think in terms of a civilization/barbarism axis. Accordingly they emphasize stable institutions (church, family, law), and tend to resist sudden changes. Finally, Libertarians orient according to a freedom/coercion axis. They're worried about big government, too much taxation, gun control, and too much environmental regulation.How one aligns along the three axes (I'm halfway between the conservative and libertarian) is personality trait. Given that the adult personality is roughly 50% genetic and 50% random chance, a person's political opinions are substantially inherited and in any case unchangeable in adulthood--at least in terms of basic priors as summarized by the three-axes model.
This, of course, contradicts Kotkin's Marxian view--neither clerics nor yeomen share a common set of personality genes. It also means that political conversation is mostly a waste of time--we'll always be talking past each other no matter what we do.
The third model is group affiliation. A core human desire is to be part of a group, to have a reliable set of kin and friends who will stand with each other through thick and thin. People thus go to great lengths to demonstrate their allegiance to the group. Religious practice is a common example. The devout parishioner visibly demonstrates his loyalty to the group, proving that he can be trusted no matter what.
Some groups demand not a religious faith, but rather a shared set of political principles. The academy is an obvious example. To be a member in good standing of the academic club you have to hold reliably Progressive opinions. It doesn't matter what your genotype is, nor is any randomness in your background a factor. Absent vocal progressivism your chances at getting an academic job, much less acquiring funding and tenure, shrink dramatically. Accordingly academics are ostentatiously Woke and aggressively Green.
A lot of this is self-selection. People who aren't Woke or Green often shy away from academic careers. Though some of my colleagues are nowhere near as committed to those principles in private as they are in public. In many cases they're just not interested in politics at all and only go through the PC motions. Others (like me) are actual Conservatives, and mostly we just keep our mouths shut.
Nevertheless, group affiliation explains why the academy is so relentlessly Leftist. To a lesser degree the same is true of school teachers and civil servants. On the other side, some religions also impose a political dogma on their adherents--they will often be Conservative.
The fourth and last possible determinant of political opinion is identity politics. It maintains that people of a given ethnicity share common genes, culture and/or experiences, and thus will share common politics. The Progressive version of this story has become cartoonish, but I have succumbed to it myself. Since reading Albion's Seed, I have been seeing Yankee, Quaker, and Scots-Irish influences everywhere. (See my review of Colin Woodard's book here.)
While Progressives say they subscribe to Identity politics, what they really mean is a form of group affiliation. The latter easily explains why academics vote 90% for Democrats. African-Americans also vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Progressives claim this is because of their unique genetic/cultural heritage, i.e., their identity. Though it is a stretch to think that African-Americans are so uniform in genotype and culture. Of course they're not, but voting Democratic has become a cultural touchstone--you're not genuinely African-American if you can't toe the line.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley recently put it very well. She said "we don't need Black faces that don't wanna be a Black voice." She's not playing identity politics, but rather trying to enforce group affiliation.
It won't work. Unlike academics, Blacks are not self-selected. They were born into an ethnic culture. That culture is much more heterogeneous than Ms. Pressley will have us believe. I think the days when Democrats can simply take the African-American vote for granted are coming to an end.
None of these models are mutually exclusive, and all of them describe some aspects of reality. Surely people respond to economic stimuli. For example, teachers vote to pass school budgets. But to suggest that blue collar workers voted for Trump for economic reasons stretches credulity. For that phenomenon group affiliation is a better predictor. Likewise, identity politics might have some merit--there really are many Americans of Scots-Irish descent, and they often vote similarly. But to think they'll vote as a solid block is to overstate the case.
While I'll give much credit to all of these models, I still think they're incomplete. It's a quaint thought, but I do believe people have free will. Its remit is pretty small, but it's still there. It means that ornery, unpredictable, thoughtful people still can change their minds independently of money, genes, or culture.
So there is reason for me to write my blog after all.
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