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Your Political Party Isn’t Right About Everything: Intellectual Humility and the Public Square

photograph of cluttered telephone switchboard

Our political affiliations affect us in many ways, influencing how we vote, where we live, and even who we connect with as friends. But let’s take a moment to consider not just how our political affiliations influence how we vote, but also what we believe. Before reading the rest of this article, pause and consider how you would answer each of the following questions:

Is abortion morally wrong in most circumstances?
Should homosexual couples be allowed to marry?
Is illegal immigration into the United States a serious problem?
Should the United States federal minimum wage be raised?
Is it okay to consider race when making college admissions decisions?

Chances are, if someone knows your answer to one of these questions, they could probably predict how you answered the others. If you said that the United States should not raise its federal minimum wage, then you likely also said that abortion is wrong in most circumstances, and if you thought that homosexual couples should be allowed to marry, you probably also think that race should be a factor in college admissions.

But this is rather surprising. After all, these issues are very complex. To decide whether we should raise the minimum wage, we would need to know a good deal of economics, and to settle whether abortion is wrong, we would need to know a fair bit of ethical theory. Furthermore, these questions appear to be unrelated. What does the morality of abortion have to do with the minimum wage? And what does college admissions have to do with illegal immigration? Having a particular position on whether we should raise the minimum wage seems to have very little, if anything, to do with deciding who gets into college.

Because these issues are both complex and unrelated, someone that is not familiar with United States politics would probably expect that people’s opinions would be all over the map. Just because a person thinks that homosexual couples should be allowed to marry does not mean that they will think that illegal immigration is not a serious problem. But this, of course, is not what we find. Instead, the answers that people give to these questions are highly correlated. If someone thinks that affirmative action is okay, then they are much more likely to think that the minimum wage should be raised.

The reason we can predict how people will answer is because of our political affiliations. Republicans and Democrats tend to give diverging answers to the above questions, and so the party that you typically vote for can be used to predict what your answers will be. So just by knowing what party you vote for, we can anticipate what you think about issues ranging from abortion to affirmative action to minimum wage laws.

Perhaps this is not much of an issue. After all, maybe the political party you chose is the right one, and it gets things correct the vast majority of the time. But is this really plausible? Let’s examine a couple possibilities.

It could be, for example, that one political party is simply more intelligent than the other. There has been research suggesting that Republicans IQ scores might be 1-3 points higher than Democrats, but other research has shown that, once we take socioeconomic status into account, those differences disappear. And both Republicans and Democrats make the same sorts of logical errors when evaluating arguments for and against their respective positions.

It could also be that one side has respect for experts and defers to their opinions while the other does not, enabling the former to be right far more often than the latter. But again, the evidence here is mixed at best. While Republicans may be less likely to listen to the experts when it comes to anthropogenic climate change, their views on economic policy are more aligned with economists than those of Democrats.

So maybe there is not a good reason to think that one political party gets things mostly right, while the other side gets things mostly wrong. But if we do not have a strong reason to think that Democrats are consistently better at answering political questions than Republicans, or vice versa, then we are faced with a bit of a dilemma. If our opinions on many complex and unrelated political issues are best explained by our party affiliation, and we have no reason to think that one side is right more often than the other, then maybe we ought to be less confident in our political beliefs.

One way to put this plan into action would be to become more intellectually humble. Not only does intellectual humility reduce polarization and increase empathy, but most importantly for our purposes, intellectual humility increases how open we are to considering opposing points of view. Maybe if we were all a bit more intellectually humble, we would be less likely to simply parrot the beliefs of our chosen political party.

But even though it might seem obvious that we could all benefit from having some intellectual humility, some have argued that this comes with certain political drawbacks as well. In order to thrive, democracies not only need their citizens to take care when forming their political beliefs, but democracies also need their citizens to put those beliefs into action by becoming civically engaged. But at the same time that intellectual humility opens us up to reconsidering our political beliefs, it also makes us less politically involved. As our confidence that our way of seeing the world is correct decreases, we also lose some of our motivation to make sure our views are politically enforced.

Is there any middle ground here? Can we stay civically engaged while at the same time growing in intellectual humility? Perhaps there is a way to balance the two considerations, but it will likely transform our current forms of political participation. Instead of engaging in politics like overly confident activists, we might think long and hard about a single issue before taking a stand. Instead of dreaming up grand ways that the government should transform society, we might admit that any utopian vision likely has many unforeseen flaws. And instead of rushing to judgment, we might admit that we do not know the answers to many of the questions our society faces.

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Are Voters to Blame for the Polarization Crisis?

drawing of political protest crowd

Even before Donald Trump was elected president, political polarization was on the rise. In his final State of the Union address, Barack Obama said that one shortcoming of his time in office was his failure to curb polarization. He acknowledged that “the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better,” calling it “one of the few regrets of [his] presidency.”

Even though Obama was aware of the growing political divide, it still would have been difficult to anticipate what would happen next. During the Trump presidency, the United States became one of the most, if not the most, polarized democracies on Earth. In the summer of 2020, 76% of Republicans thought that the U.S. government was doing a good job dealing with the pandemic, while only 29% of Democrats agreed. Across the nations surveyed, this was the largest such divide. Americans strongly distrust those who vote for the other party, a trend that only worsens amongst younger voters.

Who is responsible for this growing political impasse? To many, the answer is obvious: irrational voters are to blame.

To begin with, polarized citizens are less likely to listen to opposing views, looking primarily to party identification to guide how they vote. Hearing less and less from those who disagree, their confidence increases that they are in the right, further deepening the political impasse.

In this way, extreme polarization can become a vicious cycle. Voters increasingly pay attention only to what supports their existing political views. The news stories they hear, and the policy proposals that they take most seriously, come from those with whom they already agree. Whether this is because they are uncomfortable with the uncertainty, or simply like belonging to their political tribe, avoiding the opposition only exacerbates the political divide.

Even when voters do hear things that challenge their views, they often engage in motivated reasoning – evaluating information in a way that favors their prior beliefs.

Suppose I believe that district-based public schooling leads to better results than school choice programs. I am presented with two studies, one that provides evidence in favor of mandatory public schools and the other that supports school choice vouchers. Because of my previous beliefs, I engage in some motivated reasoning. I more closely scrutinize the second study, identifying several methodological flaws. I walk away more convinced than ever that school choice programs are inferior to mandatory public schooling.

So there you have it. Not only do citizens listen primarily to their own political party, but when faced with information that might challenge their political opinions, they reason in a way that merely confirms their beliefs. Because of their irrationality, it seems voters are at fault for our descent into toxic partisanship.

While this assessment might seem straightforward, some question whether the blame should be laid so squarely at the feet of voters. Citizens face a number of challenges in deciding how to vote. Political issues are complex, requiring competence in things like history, sociology, and economics to fully understand.

Voters have limited time and resources. They cannot become experts in every area necessary to make good political choices. Inevitably, they must rely on others to sort through all the relevant information.

Because they depend on others to help them determine how to vote, citizens must decide who to trust. Should they trust members of the other political party, politicians and pundits that they already think are mistaken about many issues? Or should they trust those that share their perspective, those that they already think advocate for better policies? From this perspective, the answer should be clear. Surely, they should trust those they believe to be more reliable. In fact, it is rational for them to do so. Why trust someone who you think makes a lot of mistakes rather than someone who you think makes good choices?

What about motivated reasoning? Voters, as we have discussed, do not have the time to evaluate all the relevant evidence. When their evidence conflicts, they may have to make a choice about what to inspect more closely. From their perspective, the evidence that challenges their beliefs is more likely to be misleading, so it makes sense to scrutinize that evidence more closely. Using our example from before, it is rational for me to take a closer look at the study that supports school choice, leading to finding more flaws with that study rather than the one that supports district-based public schools.

If all this is right, then political polarization is a predictable consequence of the challenges that voters face. Due to their limited time and expertise, it is rational for citizens to trust their political party and be more critical of evidence that challenges their beliefs.

But if voters are not to blame for political polarization, who is?

Perhaps polarization is more a product of our current political culture than individual voter behavior. Democrats and Republicans each have their own newspapers, magazines, and cable news networks, creating conditions where citizens only hear the same views and opinions parroted. To make matters worse, both liberals and conservatives are quick to vilify those who disagree with them, undermining trust in anyone that doesn’t stick to the party line. Even when voters are behaving rationally, these dynamics encourage citizens to become more and more entrenched.

Regardless of who is to blame, recognizing the challenges that voters face makes it clear that cultural change is needed to turn the tide of political polarization. Helping citizens productively navigate the complex political arena will require reestablishing social trust and focusing on our shared values. As it stands, voters might be doing the best they can with what they have. They are simply being set up to fail.

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Why Bother with Political Arguments?

photograph of protestors marching

Moral arguments can seem pointless in our hyper-polarized, post-truth society. People rarely seem to change their minds on hot-button political issues, like abortion, gun control, or climate change. Yet Congress recently passed a bill protecting same-sex marriage, and with the support of many Republicans. That bipartisan effort would have been impossible ten years ago.

Does social change like this result from moral arguments, though? Moral reasoning gets a bad rap, but it truly fuels moral progress, so long as it comes from a place of mutual trust and respect.

Ethics professors (like us) might be prone to valorize moral reasoning. We study moral arguments for a living, yet don’t appear to be more ethical than other people. We’re just skilled at poking holes in opposing moral views or coming up with reasons to support our own.

If anything, arguing about politics only seems to make each side dig in their heels (or worse, become more extreme). Cognitive science reveals that, when it comes to ethics and politics, we regularly use reasoning to rationalize the values we already hold. Climate activists often assume that skeptics just don’t understand the science. But research increasingly suggests that the more skeptics know about the science the less they think climate change is a serious threat.

Yet some political partisans do change their minds in light of arguments. For years, Jerry Taylor, a former fellow of the Cato Institute, churned out talking points for climate skeptics. Respected peers eventually convinced him of flaws in his sources and holes in his arguments. Eventually Taylor’s skepticism eroded, and he left Cato to become a climate activist.

It’s not just conservatives who change their minds in response to reasons. The science writer, Bethany Brookshire, once produced a viral tweet about the apparent sexism hitting her inbox. Of the scientists who correspond with her, men seemed much less likely to start their emails with her proper title, “Dr. Brookshire.” However, going back through her emails revealed that it was women who were slightly less likely to use the more formal and respectful title. So Brookshire publicly corrected her mistake.

Even if some people are persuaded by rational argument, aren’t these cases incredibly rare? These stories are anecdotes, but they make vivid a tendency present in us all that’s usually just blocked by other factors. As Julia Galef puts it, although we commonly adopt a “solider mindset,” hellbent on defending core beliefs at all costs, it isn’t inevitable. We are able to adopt a “scout mindset” aimed at an accurate map of the complex terrain.

Recent experiments suggest ordinary people’s attitudes and behavior can respond to arguments about contemporary moral issues. One intriguing study found that students in a college ethics class who studied a famous moral argument for vegetarianism purchased less meat from the dining hall, compared to another group of students who were randomly assigned to study an argument in favor of donating more to charity. Another series of experiments provided participants an opportunity to donate part of a bonus to a charitable organization. The researchers found that reading moral arguments could increase charitable giving, provided the arguments are engaging. These and other studies provide evidence that moral reasoning can change real moral behavior, not just self-reported attitudes.

The trick is to recognize the many forms of reasoning. Moral arguments can be presented as a boring set of premises that logically lead to a conclusion, or lobbed at opponents within a culture of contempt. But these aren’t the only, or the most effective, forms of moral reasoning.

Us humans are not cold robots designed to dispassionately reason alone. Moral reasoning evolved among social primates to resolve problems of interdependent living. Competing ideas arise in dialogue with others, and you’re not going to buy an argument from someone you despise or distrust, and certainly not from someone who treats you with contempt. Mutual trust and respect are required for arguments to be taken seriously in the first place.

Should we conclude that emotions, not reasons, drive social change? It’s both. Mutual trust and respect enable reasoning to do its work of changing moral attitudes.

Consider one way support for same-sex marriage has increased dramatically in the past few decades. Many people — including Republicans like Rob Portman and Dick Cheney — have discovered that a beloved friend or family member is gay. Existing empathy and respect for a loved one removes barriers to understanding the oppression of gay people and to seeing true love between same-sex partners. People have reasoned that if their loved one doesn’t deserve discrimination and stigma, then other gay people don’t either. Consistency reasoning of this sort is ubiquitous in moral life.

Moral arguments from the opposing side are certainly hard to swallow, for they often conflict with our values and challenge our identities. But when we deride reasoning in politics, we’re no better than a physician who concludes that a drug is ineffective because patients refuse to take it. As Taylor emphasizes, once he heard arguments from people he trusted and respected, he opened up, and over time his skepticism began to weaken because he appreciated the arguments.

When moral arguments are planted in fertile ground, they are merely sowed seeds. And we’re not talking about jalapeño seeds, which produce peppers in a few months. Think avocados, which can take a dozen years to bear fruit. During that time, the ground must remain fertile as well. Combative arguments brimming with contempt can poison the well and yield crop failure.

Moral reasoning so conceived is truly a driving force for social change. Without it, progress is impossible. The key is patience, persistence, and mutual respect. Under the right conditions, moral arguments can move mountains — slowly but surely.

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‘Don’t Look Up’: Willful Ignorance of a Democracy in Crisis

image of meteor headed toward city skyline

“Don’t Look Up spends over two hours making the same mistake. In its efforts to champion its cause, the film only alienates those who most need to be moved by its message.”

–Holly Thomas, CNN

“it’s hard to escape the feeling of the film jabbing its pointer finger into your eye, yelling, Why aren’t you paying attention! … The thing is, if you’re watching Don’t Look Up, you probably are paying attention, not just to the news about the climate and the pandemic but to a half-dozen other things that feel like reasonable causes for panic. … So when the credits rolled — after an ending that was, admittedly, quite moving — I just sat there thinking, Who, exactly, is this for?”

–Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

“[The film’]s worst parts are when it stops to show people on their phones. They tweet inanity, they participate in dumb viral challenges, they tune into propaganda and formulate conspiracy theory. At no point does Don’t Look Up’s script demonstrate an interest in why these people do these things, or what causes these online phenomena. Despite this being a central aspect of his story, McKay doesn’t seem to think it worthy of consideration. There’s a word for that: contempt.”

–Joshua Rivera, Polygon

And so on, and so on. Critics of Adam McKay’s climate change satire all point to the same basic defect: “Don’t Look Up” is nothing more than an inside joke; it isn’t growing the congregation, it’s merely preaching to the choir. Worse, the movie flaunts its moral superiority over the deplorables and unwashed masses instead of shaking hands, kissing babies, and doing all the other politicking necessary for changing hearts and minds. When given the opportunity to speak to, it speaks down. In the end, this collection of Hollywood holier-than-thou A-listers sneers at their audience and is left performing only for themselves.

But what if the critics have it all wrong? What if the movie’s makers have no intention of wrestling the various political obstacles to democratic consensus? Indeed, they seem to have absolutely zero interest in playing the political game at all. Critics of “Don’t Look Up” see only a failed attempt at coalition-building, but what if the film’s doing precisely what it set out to do – showing us that there are some existential threats so great that they transcend democratic politics?

“Don’t Look Up” takes a hard look at the prospects of meaningful collective action (from COVID to the climate and beyond) with democratic institutions so corrupted by elite capture. (Spoiler: They’re grim.) Gone is any illusion that the government fears its people. In this not-so-unfamiliar political reality, to echo Joseph Schumpeter, democracy has become nothing more than an empty institutional arrangement whereby elites acquire the power to decide by way of a hollow competition for the people’s vote. This political landscape cannot support anything as grand as Rousseau’s general will – a collection of citizens’ beliefs, convictions, and commitments all articulating a shared vision of the common good. Instead, political will is manufactured and disseminated from the top down, rather than being organically generated from the ground up.

The pressing question “Don’t Look Up” poses (but does not address) is what to do when democracy becomes part of the problem. If our democratic processes can’t be fixed, can they at least be laid aside? With consequences as grave as these, surely truth shouldn’t be left to a vote. When it comes to the fate of the planet, surely we shouldn’t be content to go on making sausage.

Misgivings about the democracy are hardly new. Plato advised lying to the rabble so as to ensure they fall in line. Mill proposed assigning more weight to certain people’s votes. And Rousseau concluded that democracy was only rightly suited for a society composed entirely of gods.

Like these critical voices, Carl Schmitt similarly challenged our blind faith in democratic processes. He remained adamant that the indecisiveness that plagued republics would be their downfall. Schmitt insisted on the fundamental necessity of a sovereign to address emergency situations (like, say, the inevitable impact of a planet-killing comet). There has to be someone, Schmitt claimed, capable of suspending everyday political norms in order to normalize a state of exception – to declare martial law, mobilize the state’s resources, and organize the public. Democracies which failed to grasp this basic truth would not last. The inability to move beyond unceasing deliberation, infinite bureaucratic red tape, and unending political gridlock, Schmitt was convinced, would spell their doom. In the end, all governments must sometimes rely on dictatorial rule just like ancient Rome where time-limited powers were extended to an absolute authority tasked with saving the republic from an immediate existential threat.

This is the savior that never appears. The tragedy of the movie is that our protagonists know the truth, but cannot share it. There remain no suitable democratic channels to deliver their apocalyptic message and spur political action. They must sit with their despair, alone. Much like John Dewey, Kate Dibiasky and Dr. Mindy come to recognize that while today we possess means of communication like never before – the internet, the iPhone, Twitter, The Daily Rip – (so far) these forces have only further fractured the public rather than being harnessed to bring it together.

By the end, when the credits roll, the film leaves us in an uncomfortable place. In documenting the hopelessness of our heroes’ plight, is “Don’t Look Up” merely highlighting the various ways our democracy needs to be repaired? Or is it making the case that the rot runs so deep, democratic norms must be abandoned?

Whatever the answer, it’s a mistake to think “Don’t Look Up” fails to take the problem of political consensus seriously. It simply treats division as immovable – as inescapable as the comet. The question is: what then?

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On the “Canceling” of Liz Cheney

photograph of Liz Cheney at Trump inauguration

On May 12th, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to remove Wyoming congressperson Liz Cheney from her leadership position as their conference chair. Previously the third-highest ranking member of the Republican Party in the House, Cheney’s responsibilities were focused primarily on maintaining an organized, unified approach to policy and governance among Republican lawmakers. Earlier in 2021, Cheney came under fire from her party members when she publicly criticized former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and behavior — including voting to support Trump’s second impeachment trial. After surviving an initial vote to revoke her chairship in February, Cheney was censured by the Wyoming GOP for failing to support Trump (Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina faced a comparable backlash for his similar vote). But after a tense leadership retreat at the end of April, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (who had supported Cheney in February, but was recently caught criticizing her to a reporter with an unexpectedly hot microphone) instigated another attempt at her removal; after only sixteen minutes of debate, Cheney’s position was revoked by an unrecorded voice vote behind closed doors.

Prior to 2021, Liz Cheney had enjoyed relatively consistent political success as the sole representative of Wyoming in the House, routinely winning elections with supermajorities of the vote (her 2020 campaign, for example, saw her win 73% of primary ballots and nearly 70% of the general election). Particularly considering her political pedigree (her father is former Vice President Dick Cheney), it is perhaps unsurprising that Liz Cheney has been frequently mentioned in speculations about the future of the GOP’s leadership. Despite her recent setbacks, Cheney has indicated her plans to fight for her political future in the coming primary election (several additional candidates have already filed to run for the Republican nomination and Trump’s political team has indicated its intent to support one of her challengers).

The question for us to consider here is: what did Liz Cheney do wrong?

On its face, one answer to this question is plain: Cheney failed to show fealty to Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican party. Although once an ally of the former president (and supporting over 90% of his policy positions with her votes), various events during his final months in office — and particularly his instigation of the mob that attacked Congress on January 6th — led Cheney to break from what John Hudak and others have called “the Church of Trump.” Insofar as Trump’s political persona has become a synecdochal representation of the party as a whole, Cheney’s critiques of Trump’s behavior might be seen as critiques of the party itself — certainly by members of the party’s rank and file; consider how one man in Gillette, Wyoming explained his anger at Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump: “’We are very loyal people here,’ said Paul Roberts, 47. ‘We didn’t elect her to vote her conscience.’”

One might, then, be tempted to draw comparisons between the contemporary adulation Donald Trump receives from Republicans and the political theory of philosopher Thomas Hobbes. When Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina (who has represented his state in Washington since 1995), states that the Republican party can not “move forward without President Trump,” Graham is evoking an image of Trump as a political figurehead whose authority and power is of supreme importance for the continued functioning of the government — much like Hobbes’ notion of the Leviathan. To Hobbes, the world is a frightening and violent place filled with dangers — he infamously describes life in this so-called State of Nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” — and only the strength of an absolute monarch can protect the citizenry and maintain social stability. Certainly, much of Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric, his fear-based politics, and his persistent cultivation of an authoritarian strong-man image over the last half-decade suggest a desire to be seen as a Hobbesian Leviathan (and the acquiescence of many long-standing party members within the GOP to such a vision is telling). By casting doubt on the primacy of the leader, Representative Cheney might be viewed by Republicans as a seditious enemy who needs to be removed from her influential position within the party.

However, this explanation seems incomplete — and not least because of the formal presumption that the United States recognizes no actual king. Although Cheney is one of the only party members to experience official punishment for her conscientious objections to Trumpism, she is not the only influential Republican to criticize Donald Trump. Consider, for example, the former governor of Massachusetts and current senator from Utah Mitt Romney: not only was Romney the sole Republican to vote for Trump’s conviction in both of the president’s Senate trials, but he has repeatedly criticized the former president’s approach to politics and even indicated publicly that he did not vote for Trump in 2020. Nevertheless, Romney has enjoyed relatively consistent support from many of his constituents and managed to avoid a censure vote from the Utah GOP in April (though a few Utah counties have since voted separately for his censure). Arguably, Romney, as a former Republican presidential nominee and long-standing representative of the party on a national scale, is an even bigger threat to Trump the Would-Be Leviathan than Liz Cheney, so why is she in even hotter water?

It might well be thanks to Cheney’s gender. Philosopher Kate Manne has argued that “misogyny” is not merely a matter of women being hated in virtue of their gender, but rather that misogyny manifests when women are systematically mistreated because of social structures that disadvantage them. More specifically, misogyny is “primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the “bad” women” who do not conform to the roles expected of them by those in power. Even if Trump is not a full-blown Leviathan, he certainly still wields considerable clout within the GOP: criticizing him, as Cheney has, could easily earn her the label of a “bad” woman who “deserves” to be exiled.

Consider, too, Cheney’s expected replacement as chair of the conference: four-term Representative Elise Stefanik from upstate New York. Although Stefanik’s voting record has been far less aligned with typical Republican positions than Cheney’s, she has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump for some time. During Trump’s first impeachment trial, Stefanik found the spotlight with her passionate defenses of the accused president and has since continued to consistently back Trump, amplifying his claims about alleged voting irregularities in the 2020 election and voting to reject some of President Joe Biden’s electoral votes. In this way, Stefanik might be understood as someone who is playing the game so as to be included on the GOP/Trump team — she is a “good” woman serving well the interests of the system in which she finds herself (contrast this with Stefanik’s first few years in Congress when she was actually quite critical of Trump). Now, her pro-Trump performances have earned her praise from the former president, even as he has been increasingly critical of Cheney. By speaking her mind and voting her anti-Trump conscience, misogyny demands that Cheney be punished — even by Stefanik, who twice nominated Cheney for the leadership position she is now poised to assume.

The future of the Republican party — and whether the Cheneys/Romneys or Trumps/Stefaniks come to define it — remains to be seen. One thing, though, is certain: the consequences of hyper-partisan political attitudes negatively affect many people (both external and internal to the parties in question) — and women, in particular, bear uniquely potent pressures. When an authoritarian figure demands loyalty above all other virtues (and functionally “cancels” people who choose independence), everybody beneath the Leviathan’s boot loses.

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The Broader Moral Issue Behind the Filibuster

black-and-white photograph of U.S. congress in session

This week, the American Rescue Plan became law after being passed along party lines despite overwhelming bi-partisan support from state and local figures as well as voters (according to opinion polling). The massive stimulus measure has been taken as an indication that “the era of big government” is back, and indeed given the challenges faced with COVID-19, the threat of climate change, the urgent need to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, it isn’t particularly shocking that a significant share of voters now want government to be more proactive. It should be no surprise then that the Senate filibuster continues to be a lightning rod of controversy as more Democrats have called for reform. But is this just politics or are there more subtle moral concerns at stake when it comes to changing the filibuster?

Those who oppose getting rid of the filibuster tend to point to three general reasons to keep it. The first is that the filibuster is in keeping with the general philosophy behind the Constitution, specifically to prevent swift passage of laws. The second is that the filibuster protects minority rights. The third reason is more political-practical in nature; warning of the dangers of what would happen if the other side were able to do as they wish, and nothing could be done to stop it.

In response to the first reason, two important points need to be noted. In a 1995 article defending the filibuster, Bill Frenzel notes, “The Framers created our system based on their profound distrust of government […] Their intention was to prevent swift enactment of laws and to avoid satisfying the popular whimsy of each willful majority.” However even if slow government was the goal of the Constitution, it isn’t clear that the filibuster was a good means of accomplishing this. James Madison argued requiring more than majority support would reverse “the fundamental principle of free government,” while Alexander Hamilton argued that such requirements serve to “substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.”

What is more important, however, is that the Framers of the Constitution were influenced by 18th-century political philosophy and were responding to 18th-century problems. So, the question is whether such conditions still hold today, and if we should be bound by what the Founders wanted? The answer appears to be no, as even Thomas Jefferson argued that the Constitution should be revised and updated to meet the needs of new generations. While it is tempting to think about political philosophy in a-temporal terms as establishing stable institutions to protect an invariant set of fixed human rights, we might instead consider political institutions the instruments that allow the public to conduct its business.

In response to the second reason — the protection of minority rights — the question is always one of which minority and which rights we are talking about. If we are talking about the rights of a minority of citizens against the tyranny of the majority, then we already have a solution to that; it’s called the Bill of Rights. If we are talking about the rights of a minority of Senators, then we need to ask how far those rights should be extended. The right to review and debate legislation is important for any legislator in the minority, but whether there is a right for a minority of lawmakers to effectively veto legislation is another. Senator Raphael Warnock, for example, recently posed this very question, asking whether the minority rights of Senators should outweigh the voting rights of citizens.

If we put aside the first two reasons, as, by themselves, they aren’t reasons to keep the filibuster specifically, we must address the actual perceivable consequences of making changes to lawmaking policy. For example, Mitch McConnell recently warned of a “scorched earth Senate” where Republicans would use every rule at their disposal to halt the chamber and once returned to the majority would pass all manner of laws unacceptable to Democrats with “zero input” from them.

First, it is worth noting that most other legislative chambers do not have a filibuster rule like the Senate, despite hailing from nations which rank high on the democracy index. For example, prior to the 1990s the Legislative Assembly of Ontario was far more permissive about the length of speeches, allowing one member to tie up the legislature for weeks, culminating in a 17-hour long speech. The rules of the legislature were later amended to limit the time for members to speak, but even after this filibuster was eliminated, there were plenty of opportunities for obstruction. For example, one member was able to tie up the legislature for hours by introducing a bill whose title included every lake, river, and steam in the province. The title had to be read aloud by the member and the clerk.

Despite eliminating the chance to filibuster, the sky did not fall in Ontario. Just as McConnell has threatened to tie up the Senate using tactics like having bills be read aloud, legislators in Ontario resorted to new tactics and procedural moves to obstruct which were only permitted until they also became a nuisance. Yet, what follows from jurisdictions that allow for the easy passage of legislation based on a majority vote? Firstly, it means that administrations are far more able to enact the platforms they run on. Thus, voters more often see their political preferences be reflected in law.

But this also means that a newly elected government can always repeal and replace what came before far easier. This can be problematic because it creates greater instability and uncertainty. Sometimes this happens as a major piece of legislation can be repealed in short order by a new government who may choose their own policies. Good examples in Canada include a national childcare program that was almost enacted before a newly elected Conservative government cancelled it. In Ontario, the Liberal government’s cap and trade program was abolished quickly by a new Conservative administration.

While the swinging pendulum of political winners does mean that laws and programs can be enacted and repealed more frequently, it is rarely a free-for-all either. Certain programs, policies, or laws simply have too much public support to allow new governments to wipe the slate clean. For example, even when Conservative governments enjoy large majorities and could easily do so, you don’t see them repealing programs like public healthcare because the public would not stand for it.

So would a filibuster-less Senate be a disaster? Certainly McConnell is right that even if Democrats pass all the legislation they want, Republicans can just as easily repeal it next time they’re in power and further enact all sorts of reforms that would be objectionable to Democrats. However, in the long term the back-and-forth of major legislative reforms, repeals, and replacements would not be sustainable. It is in the public’s interest to have some degree of stability even if it takes voters a while to realize this. However, this kind of legislative experimentation might make it easier for the public to connect policies and ideas with real-life consequences. It’s one thing to vote Republican if you know little can get done, it is another thing to vote Republican if you know they can and will take away your healthcare. And if they do, your future voting preferences might change. In essence, eliminating the filibuster reveals how important it will be for voters to be more informed advocates when it comes to policy and to be less inclined to knee-jerk defenses of ideology.

Reforming the filibuster may not be merely a matter of exacerbating political problems, but rather it reveals and identifies a moral one. In a time where political reform is easier without the filibuster, what kind of changes to political culture should result? What are our responsibilities to be informed when we vote? Given that fellow citizens may not agree with all of our policies and may have the option to repeal them in the future, are we obligated to seek input from opponents in order to ensure that policies have enough support not to be undone after the next election? Would a scorched-earth approach with “zero input” from the other side ever be a good thing? In essence, are we not forced to ask how we can better “get along” with opposing voter blocks and what would that look like? Could this actually lead to more compromise and less polarization? And in our present political culture, where is the line drawn between pure obstruction and a meaningful challenge from the voting minority? And if some obstruction is welcome to protect the rights of the minority, how far should those rights go?

As I said, even if you eliminate the filibuster there are other tactics that can be used, just as they were in Ontario. The issue will not just go away. The debate for the nation is not whether a legislative tactic should stick around, but about the kind of political culture we should have.

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Winning Graciously and the Problem with Empathy

photograph of Joe Biden speaking with microphone with American flag in background

In his first speech as president-elect, Joe Biden placed a strong emphasis on national unity and reconciliation. “For all those of you who voted for President Trump, I understand the disappointment tonight. I’ve lost a couple of times myself. But now, let’s give each other a chance,” Biden said in between bouts of cheers and honking car horns. “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. And to make progress we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies.” Biden presents himself  as a president for all, a message which many Democrats and centrists have wholeheartedly embraced as a path to ending, in Biden’s words, a “grim era of demonization” (though he did not specify who or what exactly has been demonized, or whether one side of the political divide is more blameworthy for this demonization than the other).

In the wake of his victory, celebrations have erupted across the globe. People in blue Biden-Harris t-shirts dance in the streets of New York, and across the Atlantic, fireworks are being set off over London. While this outpouring of joy feels well-earned, it’s worth considering what attitude the left ought to take towards Trump supporters going forward. One of the central questions of ethics, famously taken up by T.N. Scanlon in his 1998 book, is what we owe to each other. Many Democrats are wrestling with this question now: what obligations do those on the left have toward their (somewhat) vanquished political foes?

On the one hand, gloating over the defeat of an opponent seems more likely to sow further division than mend bridges. This is primarily a practical consideration for politicians and legislators. As political scientist Ian Bremmer points out, the Republicans may still maintain their hold over the Senate, depending on how the upcoming election in Georgia turns out, so a commitment to compromise and teamwork between both sides will be key going forward. In a tweet, he suggests that “Now is the time for every Biden supporter to reach out to one person who voted for Trump. Empathize with them.”

However, many on the left are pushing back, citing an inextricable problem with the brand of amnesiac empathy Biden encourages. Karl Popper’s famous “tolerance paradox,” inspired by observations of facism in Europe in 1945, states that,

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

Unfettered tolerance contains the seed of its own destruction. An America that is truly for all, for both Trump supporters and the far left, cannot help but destroy itself. The solution, it seems, is for the tolerant to commit to uplifting the downtrodden and disenfranchised while opposing those groups that perpetuate structural violence, a kind of qualified tolerance. Biden’s call for reconciliation may ultimately feed into the pernicious logic that allows for good people “on both sides,” though it seems unfair to preemptively attribute such reprehensible moral equivocation to Biden’s fledgling administration months before he’s even been sworn into office.

So, do we strive for unity which may elide the very real struggles of the disenfranchised, or sink deeper into mutual estrangement, which risks stagnation in the aim of moral purity? The reality is that many of us have no choice but to compromise with one another, to enact change step by step rather than in a glorious blaze of revolution. Political compromise may constitute a moral compromise, but it may pave the road for a future where such concessions are less difficult to make. This may feel like a deeply unsatisfying approach to those long ignored by mainstream political discourse, and it doesn’t always address the deep hurt victims of structural inequality have faced for centuries in this country.

Regardless of the difficult road that lies ahead, this is a moment where celebration is warranted. In particular, Biden’s stance on climate change and immigration are a source of hope for many across the globe, though it is still to be seen whether or not his administration can enact substantive change within our deeply fractured system. But once the euphoria wears off, Democrats and Republicans alike will have to reckon with Scanlon’s question in the tumultuous months to come.

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Political Fragmentation and Experimentation

image of US map with flags of states

On Tuesday September 22nd, the conservative lawyer and political commentator David French published his new book Divided We Fall. The book provides a careful diagnosis of current American polarization, a chilling prognosis of where this polarization might lead us, and ends with a prescription that we reinvigorate American federalism by devolving power out from the federal government and back to the states.

I found Divided We Fall especially interesting because one of my favorite books published this year was Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized. French and Klein end up discussing and addressing many of the same issues; French from a more conservative position and Klein from a more liberal one. As such, it is fascinating to note where they agree and where they disagree.

Both think political polarization is increasing and that other forms of division are aligning along the political spectrum. Increasingly if you disagree with someone about who should be president, then you also likely live in a different state, read different books, watch different shows, shop at different stores, and disagree about religion.

Democrats don’t just support more redistributive taxation, they also live in cities, tend towards secularism, shop at Whole Foods, read The New York Times, own a copy of Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, watch Game of Thrones, and are terrified of the political power of the oppressive conservative right. Republicans, in turn, don’t just support free-market deregulation, they also live in rural and suburban areas, regularly attend church, eat at Cracker Barrel, watch Fox News, own a copy of Tim Tebow’s Autobiography Through My Eyes, watch Walking Dead, and are terrified of the cultural power of the ideologically intolerant progressive left.

The number of ‘landslide’ districts are increasing. People increasingly live around those with similar political views. As such, those they meet in real life are likely to agree and reinforce their views. Layered atop that geographical siloing, we also find ourselves in curated online environments surrounded by those of like mind.

Both books provide an excellent overview of these issues. French’s delves more into the cultural differences between liberals and conservatives, while Klein spends much more time discussing the historical polarization between the democratic and republican parties. But the essential diagnosis is quite similar.

Though French and Klein agree almost entirely on the diagnosis, they disagree partially on the prognosis. French and Klein both worry that American politics is on a trajectory to grow increasingly bitter, and become increasingly dominated by hate and fear. However, French takes his prognosis several steps further and argues the situation could grow so bad that we should currently take seriously the possibility it leads to secession. The discussion of secession is the weakest part of the French’s book. But since I don’t want this to turn into a book review, I’ll put my particular criticism aside (interested readers can keep an eye out for a forthcoming blogpost in which I review French’s book at greater length). Whether or not you take seriously the possibility of secession, however, both French and Klein agree, and are right to agree, that the health of our democracy is compromised by continual polarization into fear-filled communities.

Now here is what is fascinating. French and Klein agree on the diagnosis and much of the prognosis, and yet, their prescriptions are radically different, indeed they are almost opposite. French calls for a renewed Madisonian federalism. He thinks that as Americans grow further and further apart ideologically, it is less and less tenable to adopt one-size fits all political solutions at the federal level. Klein, in contrast, calls for reforms to increase the effective power of the federal government. Klein thinks that we should make it easier for the government to pass sweeping federal policy because if politicians were forced to actually govern they would need to find actual solutions and, more importantly, it would create track records of policy to which voters can hold politicians accountable.

Interestingly, even here, there is a profound agreement about what is needed for reform. French and Klein both think that we need greater policy experimentation. We need policy proposals to be put into effect so that we can see what the effects are. French wants to see this occur synchronously between states. He wants California and Tennessee to both attempt sweeping health care reform. In each state attempting different solutions, what works can get more broadly adopted. As more states adopt the successful policies they can each try different refinements giving us even more useful data about what works best in what sort of states. Klein wants to see this experimentation occurs asynchronously between administrations. When democrats are in control let them pass Obamacare, when republicans are in control let them actually repeal it, and then let the American people decide which approach they actually liked.

There are lots of arguments one could make for either proposal, and you can hear many of these arguments made in this discussion between David French and Ezra Klein (given how much I liked both books I was super excited that French showed up on Klein’s podcast).

French’s central argument against Klein is that sweeping federal policy is just too dangerous in a fractured political climate. If you see the future of your nation at stake, then seeing the other side empowered to enact sweeping federal change will drive your political tribe out of its mind. And given that you receive your news from the news sources sanctioned by your tribe, you won’t even end up with the meaningful data that allows you to see when the other side’s policies actually were not so bad.

Klein has several arguments against French. Perhaps the strongest being that federal action really is just necessary. We can’t wait forty years to see the effects of state by state climate reform, we need a massive federal response to global warming and we need ten years ago. We can’t wait three years to see which state’s COVID response worked best, we needed a unified federal strategy back in March.

Both French and Klein have a point, and it is useful to just note that I think there is a plausible middle ground between their views. Perhaps what we need is a federal government that can do more, but chooses to do less. Where the federal government is able to pass sweeping policies where a federal response really is needed, but which also leaves to the states anything that need not be done at the federal level. This solution would be a form of subsidiarity — the view that problems should be tackled by the most local form of authority competent to handle the problem. Thus, if states really can adopt healthcare reform, then they should be empowered to do so. But if we require national coordination to solve the free-rider problem of fossil fuel use then the federal government should be ready and able to act.

Klein and French both draw our attention to the current problem of political polarization. It’s scary to think their solutions differ as much as they do, and makes it clear there might be no perfectly good options before us. But I think it is clear that something at least needs to be done. For now, I’d start by reading both books!

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We’ve Got Politics Wrong

photograph of democratic and republican party figurines atop the American flag

In the heat of partisan divisions, it is tempting to think different sides of the dispute are deeply committed to distinct and irreconcilable political and moral principles and values that explain their disagreement: partisan rifts are about ideology, not party affiliation. However, despite the intuitive appeal of this view, we have good evidence that it’s backwards: party affiliation trumps ideology. Understanding why will clarify our thinking about politics.

First, let’s begin with an unnerving fact: your single vote doesn’t matter to the outcome of an election (except in astronomically rare cases). It isn’t hard to see why: in a large democracy, for your vote to count, it must break a tie. But there are scant opportunities for your individual vote to break any ties. As a Louisiana resident, voting in the upcoming presidential election is highly unlikely to make a difference; the state will be carried by the Republican. And the same holds, to varying degrees, up and down the ballot.

You may object that “even if an individual vote doesn’t matter in deeply blue and red states, the same isn’t true of swing states.” A swing state is likely the best chance one has to decide an election outcome with a single vote. Even this is highly unlikely: an optimistic estimate is that an individual vote has a 1-in-10 million chance, and on average about a 1-in-60 million chance, of deciding the outcome of an election. Just to get a feel for the odds: this is roughly equivalent to the odds of winning a state lottery twice. (Since no one rationally thinks that will happen, we should think the same of deciding an election with a single vote).

When I bring this point up, people often cite the U.S. Presidential election in 2000 as a case where a few votes mattered a lot. However, this is a poor response for a couple reasons. First, the fate of that election was ultimately decided by the courts; so there’s a sense in which even in that rare case, individual votes didn’t matter. Second, the fact that something unlikely happens — like someone winning the lottery — doesn’t show it will likely happen again. The fact that we focus on that particular example, at least in American politics, is itself revealing.

Partisan affiliation trumps ideology partly because a single vote doesn’t effectively influence policy; but it can signal allegiance to those in one’s tribe. The incentives at play are revealing: voters are rationally ignorant because it is rational for them to be politically ignorant. Indeed, the average voter lacks the most basic of political knowledge: which party controls the White House; which party is in favor of banning abortion; which party supports free trade. There are many examples like this. There are poor incentives to be politically informed: if an individual vote is incredibly unlikely to decide the outcome of an election, voters lack the incentive to be politically informed. It would make sense to be informed if an individual vote would likely make a difference; one would want to study to ensure their vote had the desired impact.

Sometimes political commentators argue voting only takes a few hours: one must register, pick their preferred candidates, and then vote. This is nonsense. It would only make sense if voting didn’t require knowledge. However, we should vote well if we’re going to vote; even if a single vote won’t influence the outcome of an election, voting badly in aggregate does. And voting well requires substantial expertise in economics, foreign affairs, and educational policy, to name but a few. Voting well is costly too: it is hard to undertake, requiring thousands of hours, and with high opportunity costs.

Worse still, even if someone is informed enough to vote well, there is no guarantee that they will; there’s a good chance they’ll vote badly for reasons unrelated to how informed they are. We are susceptible to what psychologists call ‘motivated reasoning’: the unconscious tendency to find arguments for conclusions we want to believe stronger than arguments for conclusions we dislike. A creationist may require a low level of evidence for her view, but require that evidence for evolution meet a much higher evidential bar. Likewise, a smoker may dismiss studies showing a link between cigarette smoke and cancer, but accept similar studies showing a relationship between trans-fat and heart disease. Consider a real-time example: the partisan divide over police and teachers’ unions. Democrats favor the latter, but not the former; Republicans are the reverse. This is odd: if one thinks police unions are corrupt because it is very hard to fire a bad cop, then by similar reasoning they should think teachers’ unions corrupt too (and vice versa). If, however, support for one’s preferred union were an exercise in signaling partisan affiliation, this strange mix of policy positions would make sense.

Everyone engages in motivated reasoning; but the more politically informed someone is, the more likely they are to engage in such reasoning. Perhaps greater political knowledge enables one to better defend their prior convictions. This speaks to an epistemic paradox at the heart of democracy: we can’t vote well without sufficient expertise; but the more politically informed we are, the more likely we are to engage in politically motivated reasoning. This is why some philosophers argue it would often be morally better to ignore politics. We lack the incentives and psychological objectivity to vote well. And given the opportunities costs of voting well, and that an individual vote isn’t worth much, civic-minded citizens among us, who sincerely want to make the world a better place, would be better off doing something other than voting, like say, working at a homeless shelter.

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Treating Principles as Mere Means

photograph of US Capitol Building with mirror image reflected in lake

With the Republican about-face concerning Supreme Court Senate votes, hypocrisy is once again back in the headlines. Many accusations of hypocrisy have been directed at Senator Lindsey Graham, whose support for a Senate vote for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee so clearly clashes with earlier statements — he said in 2018 that “if an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term and the primary process has started, we’ll wait till the next election” — that his behavior seems like the Platonic form of a certain kind of hypocrisy. Graham has responded with a hypocrisy accusation of his own, writing to Democrats on the judiciary panel that “if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same.” Amidst this controversy, it’s worth taking a step back to ask what force the accusation of hypocrisy is supposed to have.

In earlier columns, I have explored some suggestions for why hypocrisy is morally objectionable and rejected them. In this column I want to consider a theory first articulated by the philosopher Eva Feder Kittay. This account says that hypocrisy is morally objectionable because it involves treating important religious, political, or moral principles as mere means.

Immanuel Kant famously intoned against treating persons as mere means, or using them as mere instruments for the satisfaction of our own desires. What’s wrong with this is that it involves a kind of category error — it treats persons, beings with the capacity to rationally order their lives, as if they were things.

Clearly, however, this can’t be exactly what Kittay means when she talks about hypocrites treating principles as mere means: principles are not persons. Yet there is a link here. The kinds of principles Kittay is concerned with — moral and religious principles — are supposed to be adhered to because they are right, and not because they are useful to the adherent. Kant expressed this point with his distinction between categorical and hypothetical imperatives. A categorical imperative is one that is binding on you regardless of what you happen to desire. You can’t claim that some moral principle — “don’t kill innocents,” say — is not binding on you because you happen to want to kill innocents. That principle provides a reason for you not to kill innocents regardless of what you happen to want. By contrast, a hypothetical imperative — for example, “go to the store” — is only binding if you have some desire that will be promoted by acting according to the imperative. If there were nothing you wanted that you could get by going to store, that imperative would not be binding on you.

So, when Kittay says that hypocrites treat principles as mere means, she means that they treat categorical imperatives as if they were merely hypothetical. The hypocrite will adopt and discard moral principles as it suits them. Sometimes that adoption will be merely rhetorical — some hypocrites are entirely conscious that their pretense of principle is a charade. But other hypocrites will sincerely adopt moral principles, only to discard them whenever holding to them becomes inexpedient. In the case of Senate Republicans, their hypocrisy lies in their adoption of the principle of not confirming Supreme Court justices during an election year when it was convenient for them to do so, followed by their abandonment of this principle when it was convenient to do that. In doing this, they treated what seemed to be a categorical imperative — one that was binding on them even if they didn’t want to adhere to it — as if it were hypothetical.

What’s wrong with treating principles as mere means? For Kittay, the problem has to do with trust. According to her, we trust that when people claim to hold to certain categorical principles, they hold to them as categorical. We rely on this belief in our dealings with them, assuming, for example, that they will hold to those principles even if it is inconvenient for them to do so. Moreover, their assurances of commitment are all we have to go on; we can’t look into their souls to see what their true attitude toward their principles is. Hypocrisy reveals that there can be a deep divide between what people say they are committed to and what they are actually committed to. Thus, hypocrisy shows us that the part of our lives structured by principles is actually quite fragile, depending as it does on our trust in what people say. We therefore have strong incentives to expose and condemn hypocrisy. As Graham’s Democratic challenger for his Senate seat recently tweeted, “Senator Graham, you have proven that your word is worthless.”

There is, I think, another point to be made about how hypocrisy undermines categorical principles. What hypocrisy reveals is that for at least certain people, categorical principles are a mere mask for the unvarnished pursuit of power, wealth, and self-aggrandizement. The trouble is that compared to such people, those who voluntarily restrain themselves in accordance with categorical principles are at a distinct disadvantage. This puts pressure on everyone to abandon their principles. Thus, hypocrisy tends to erode everyone’s commitment to categorical principles as such. And if we think that categorical principles are good on the whole — that they help solve certain coordination problems, for example — then this is a bad thing for everyone.

So, what Senate Republicans have revealed with their latest hypocrisy is that for them, politics is a game of power untempered by principles. But when Republicans throw their principles overboard when it is convenient for them to do so, this increases the incentives for everyone else to do the same. And that, I will wager, is worse for everyone in the long run.

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On the Question of Strategic Voting

photograph of "voting" sign on a wall

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

On October 21st Canada elected a new parliament. In this election the issue of strategic voting became prominent. There were six political parties considered to be capable of electing members to parliament. Three of those parties are commonly grouped as “progressive,” including the Liberal Party who won a plurality of seats in the election, the center-left New Democratic Party (NDP), and the environmentally focussed Green Party. Because of this competition voters had to weigh the option of voting for the party that is their first choice or strategically voting for a party that is less favored but more likely to win in order to avoid victory for a party that is more strongly opposed. This tactic has been discussed and debated amongst those in the media and in the academy. Strategic voting is an ethical issue because it can affect the quality of democracy, however even the language used to discuss the issue reveals something about how we make value judgments.

In Canada certain electoral ridings tend to be traded back and forth between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. If a voter prefers the NDP, for example, they are confronted with a choice: They can vote according to preference, even though it may be very unlikely those candidates will win, or they might decide to vote tactically. While they may not prefer the Liberal candidate to win, they may want the Conservative candidate to win even less; the voter may then strategically switch their vote for the Liberal Party in order to avoid a Conservative victory. The effect is that the vote share that would normally go to the NDP or the Green Party is suppressed.

This phenomenon is not foreign to American voters. Political scientist Gar Culbart has analyzed data from four presidential elections and found evidence that primary voters tend to select candidates more likely to win the Presidential election, rather than their first-choice preference. But strategic voting can apply past the nomination stage as well. In the last Presidential election left-leaning voters (particularly Sanders supporters) had to face a difficult decision between not voting at all, voting for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein, or, despite not liking her candidacy, voting for Hilary Clinton in order to prevent a Trump victory.

The issue of strategic voting has become a controversial topic. One the one hand, if a voter wishes to prevent a certain candidate from winning, and this is more important to them than voting for their first-choice candidate, it seems like a sincere preference and for some voicing it may be considered to be a moral obligation. Pundits like Bill Maher have been fiercely critical of those who do not vote strategically. Drawing attention to issues like climate change and the Supreme Court, Maher has criticized voters who opted for Jill Stein or even not voting at all instead of voting for Clinton because she was “the lesser of two evils.” Similar criticism followed the 2000 election where 537 votes separated George W. Bush from Al Gore in the state of Florida. Had left-leaning Nader supporters voted strategically, Gore would have won the state and the presidency. In other words, failure to vote strategically can lead to negative consequences.

On the other hand, arguments have been made that strategic voting is wrong. In 2006 in response to pressure placed on voters by the Liberal Party for NDP supporters to vote Liberal to stop a Conservative victory, Jack Layton noted that it is “frankly offensive” for Liberals “to tell Canadians they are limited to two choices, that they are limited to a choice between corruption and conservatives.” Indeed, it can lead to complacency amongst the political class if they can use the specter of the other side winning in order to secure votes, knowing that because voters lack a better option they don’t need to be as responsive to what voters want. This can lead to disengagement and frustration with the democratic process.

While the choice to vote strategically is an ethical issue, the way strategic voting is characterized can also raise ethical concerns. Strategic voting involves value judgments, and as a value judgment the language and rhetoric surrounding the issue is problematic and misleading, even amongst academic writers. In the wider public discussion, voting strategically has been described as “voting against” something rather than voting for something. To avoid a strategic vote, some politicians will suggest that voters “vote their conscience” rather than engaging in prudential reasoning. Academics studying the matter will compare strategic voting to “sincere” voting or will describe a strategic vote as a voter not choosing their “preferred candidate.”

But such language is misleading. As Philosopher John Dewey notes, value judgments are always specific. He argues that “A decision not to act is a decision to act in a certain way; it is never a judgment not to act, unqualifiedly.” Thus, if one does not wish to elect a politician, they are never merely voting against something. Instead. they are deciding that an election is worth boycotting, or that another politician is worth supporting (if they weren’t, one would have no reason to be strategic). Thus, it is never merely the case that we vote against things.

Dewey further argues that in forming a value judgment there is a difference between what we like and what we would prefer. Indeed, I may like the idea only eating donuts for the rest of my life. However, I consider both the means required to do this and the effects it would produce problematic and so I reject the idea. As Dewey sees it, “reflection is a process of finding what we want, what, as we say; we really want, and this means the formation of a new desire, and a new direction for action.” Does it make any sense then to claim that if my diet includes things other than donuts, I am not eating sincerely? Am I not, after careful reflection, eating my preferred diet?

The debate regarding strategic voting is complicated enough without including connotative language which suggests that a strategic vote is not “sincere,” not a vote “for something,” or that it means one is not following their preferences; all of these have the potential to illegitimately question the legitimacy of a vote and drag the debate in an unhelpful direction. By the same token, calling a vote that is not made for strategic reasons a “wasted” vote is not helpful either since the vote may be intended to avoid the long-term problem of an unresponsive political class. Perhaps the best way to examine the ethics of strategic voting is to clarify our language and to examine the issue carefully in terms of what voters are trying to achieve by making such value judgments and whether their judgments deliver the results they expect and are comfortable with.

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Putting Politics Aside: A Lesson in Common Courtesy?

President Obama has been making headlines lately for missing the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia, who passed away unexpectedly on Febuary 13th. When asked why the president would not be in attendance, his aid deflected the question, instead relaying that “Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will be attending Justice Scalia’s funeral.”

Continue reading “Putting Politics Aside: A Lesson in Common Courtesy?”