[View here as a Twitter Thread]
I think the way to understand Boot’s journey & the answers he’s still searching for is through the prism of NYU prof. @JonHaidtwork on the psychology of conservatives v. liberals. So first, a digression.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SOQduoLgRw&feature=youtu.be …
Here’s what Haidt has to say: Across cultures we find 5 “foundations of morality.” #1: The ability to feel compassion for others. #2: Fairness and reciprocity, the “golden rule” #3: Loyalty to the group. #4: Respect for authority #5: Purity/Sanctity
Purity, BTW, doesn’t just mean sexual morality—can also be the desire for pure food, healthy living, etc. Liberals value 1 & 2 and tend to reject 3,4,5 as not part of morality. Conservatives embrace all 5, but they don’t place 1 & 2 as highly as liberals.
#3, #4, & #5 are the basis of authoritarianism, xenophobia & racism. But without each in some measure we have chaos & lack of cooperation. ALL are necessary (in some measure) for society to function. The crux of the disagreement between liberals and conservatives is this:
Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed; they want change and justice, even at the risk of chaos. Conservatives speak for institutions & traditions; they want order even at cost to those at the bottom. (True conservatives also feel compassion: Remember, they stand on all 5)
The conservative insight is that order is precious & hard to achieve—and easy to lose. Liberals and conservatives both think they’re “right” In a way, they both are. Both have something to contribute: They form a balance: change v. stability (Think yin and yang).
The hitch is that the modern GOP isn’t conservative; it is authoritarian. (What do I mean by authoritarian? Click here.)
Boot is a traditional conservative. A Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union, came to the US with his family as a boy of 6.
At the age of 13, his father gave him a subscription to the National Review. He fell in love with conservative values and aspired to be another George Will. He graduated from Berkeley, which he characterized as Bezerkley, and eventually landed a plum job at the WSJ.
He became an influential spokesperson for the GOP. He advised Rubio’s campaign. When Trump came to power, and all Boot’s idols abandoned what he thought were genuniely held beliefs & traded their souls for power—he was stunned. Blindsided. So he looked inward, and back.
He searched for how he contributed to the rise of a dangerous demagogue. He saw what he’d been missing all those years. The heart of the book begins on page 165, with his awakening. He came to understand that Trump is “a symptom of a deeper underlying disease” in the GOP.
He painstakingly traced how the GOP morphed from a conservative to an authoritarian party. He explains that by 1964, the GOP entirely ceased being the Party of Lincoln and became the Party of Southern Whites.
“With the clarity of hindsight” he saw that “whatever GOP candidates claimed to stand for” GOP voters understood that the GOP candidates were promising to keep minorities in their place and maintain power for white men.
He came to understand that his gender and skin color gave him special opportunities—even as an immigrant fleeing persecution; the US was the land of equal opportunity—for people like him.
He defended GOP leaders of the past few decades, like the Bushes, by saying that despite their racist dogwhistles (or foghorns) they governed like traditional conservatives. But they flirted with populism, conspiracy mongering, and know-nothingism. They tolerated bigotry.
Their very moderation stoked fury on the far right, and eventually the GOP became what it had long pretended to be, the “Party of Stupid.” After Boot’s awakening, he commented that, “It’s amazing how little you see when your eyes are closed.”
It seems to me he didn’t see it because he was blinded by his conservative instinct for loyalty —which is, to be fair, one of the foundations of morality (when kept in check). In his words, he received: “a chastening lesson about the price of loyalty.”
PART II: [view here as a Twitter thread]
Boot understands that the way to save democracy from Trump is that “all people of goodwill must come together . . ” He adds that the most “salutary developments of the Trump era is how it has bought Trump’s critics, from the left and the right, together.”
Boot’s views on this in line with the authors of How Democracies Die, who tell the cautionary tale that Chileans were finally able to get out from under the cruel dictatorship of Pinochet when all sides—left and right—learned to work together and compromise.
Boot also concludes that “America needs a center-right party,” which happens to be exactly what Levitsky & Ziblatt conclude. In addition, Boot agrees with Levitsky and Ziblatt that center-right party must never compromise support for rule of law or give in to racism.
Thus, I think Boot’s ideas for moving forward are spot on. I saved my criticism of Boot for the end. It seems to me that Boot projects conservative values onto liberals, and hence misunderstands them.
For example, he talks about the enormous pressure on Republicans to conform. The right wing values loyalty, respect for authority, and purity, so it makes sense that the right wing forces members to conform.
Then he says, “I assume similar pressures exist on the left that can be just as straightening. . . This is how all . . . movements police their members.” Actually, as Haidt points out, liberals have a hard time maintaining order among their ranks.
Haidt shows the Garden of Earthly Delights as a depiction of how order naturally descends to chaos. He says with liberals, this happens more quickly. He then jokes that “chaos” is liberals is the 60s. Recall the cliche: “Republicans fall in line; liberals fall in love.”
Cliches tend to contain a grain of truth. And Will Rogers: “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.” Remember when the joke was that Dem primaries were circular firing squads? Boot also projects conservative thinking onto liberals in the speech debate.
He seems to assume that the liberal desire to prevent racist or harmful speech is somehow authoritarian in nature and that liberals seek to deny essential liberties (which is how it would look on the right, where the values of control and order are more highly placed.)
In fact, the desire to restrict harmful speech comes from the impulse to protect the vulnerable from harm. Words hurt; Liberals want to protect people from being hurt. This is, after all, the first pillar of morality: Compassion — and the one most highly valued by liberals.
Boot also makes the common mistake of conservatives in believing that freedom of speech (in the classical liberal sense) allows a person to say whatever he pleases, even if hurtful. It doesn’t, and never has. I’ll explain: The classical liberal freedom of speech means the freedom to engaged in debate and criticize the government; which is why the First Amendment protects from government control of speech. Freedom to debate and criticize the government makes democracy possible.
Classical liberal freedom of speech doesn’t give a person the right shout “fire” in a crowded building, make threats, spread deliberate lies, etc. Saying things that harm fellow citizens does nothing to further the interests of democracy.
The question is: How we determine which words are harmful or hurtful? Who decides? Remember, we’re talking about words that harm vulnerable people. The fact is that a privileged white man has no business deciding what a member of a persecuted minority finds offensive.
Besides, if Boot allows for racist speech under the guise of personal liberty (as per p. 191, Kindle edition) how will he avoid compromising with racists? From Haight: Moral humility requires understanding that the other side has a reason for what it thinks and does.
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