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Should Republicans and Democrats Be Friends?

photograph of stuffed Republican elephant and Democrat Donkey face-to-face atop American flag

America’s polarization crisis extends to its friendships: a 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that only thirty-one percent of Democrats have at least some friends who are Republicans, while only four-in-ten Republicans said they have some friends who are Democrats. Should we be alarmed by this? Should we be friends with people who hold views we believe to be immoral?

It seems that we have dueling intuitions about the moral permissibility of friendship with those who do not share our values. Consider a peaceful neo-Nazi — someone who has genocidal beliefs but will never act on them. I think most people believe it is wrong to be friends with such a character, and I can think of three arguments in support of this belief. First, there is the “signaling” argument. Being friends with the neo-Nazi will likely be interpreted by others as expressing approval for, or lending credibility to, their beliefs. One ought not signal one’s approval for beliefs one takes to be immoral, so one ought not be friends with the neo-Nazi. The second argument is the “incentive” argument. The idea is that withholding friendship from the neo-Nazi might incent him to abandon his beliefs, which is something we ought to encourage him to do insofar as we believe his beliefs are immoral. If one ought to withhold friendship from the neo-Nazi for this reason, then one ought not be friends with him. Finally, there is the “disesteem” argument, which is that disesteem — that is, feelings of disdain or disapprobation — are an appropriate response to the neo-Nazi’s immoral beliefs, and these feelings are incompatible with genuine friendship. If we ought to A (in this case, feel certain emotions towards the neo-Nazi), and A is incompatible with B (in this case, be friends with the neo-Nazi), then we ought not to B.

So, we certainly have intuitions, backed by reasons, that support not being friends with individuals solely because of their moral beliefs. On the other hand, consider a Kantian and a consequentialist. These two may have fundamental moral disagreements over a host of issues, such as our obligations to the foreign poor, the morally optimal distribution of all-purpose goods, the morality of lying, the morality of infanticide, and whether it is morally permissible to intentionally kill one person in order to save five. Only one of them can be right, so one of them has immoral beliefs. Yet we do not think it would be wrong for them to be friends.

I will assume that Democrats and Republicans have moral disagreements, for example over abortion. The question is whether friendship with someone of the opposing party is like the Kantian’s friendship with the consequentialist or like being friends with a neo-Nazi.

It might be argued that the neo-Nazi’s immoral beliefs include immoral beliefs about how others can be permissibly harmed, which distinguishes them from the beliefs of Kantians and consequentialists, or Republicans and Democrats. But from a Republican’s perspective, Democrats impermissibly believe that it is permissible to harm the unborn; and from a Kantian perspective, consequentialists impermissibly believe that it is permissible to intentionally kill one in order to save five. Furthermore, since the neo-Nazi is peaceful, her genocidal beliefs cannot be distinguished from the others in terms of disposing her to act violently.

The Kantian’s friendship with the consequentialist also nicely illustrates why the distinction between cross-party friendships and friendships with neo-Nazis cannot lie in the sheer number of disagreements, or their moral importance. The Kantian has a large number of fairly fundamental moral disagreements with the consequentialist, including over what makes actions morally right or wrong. Nor can the distinction lie in the idea that Democrats (or Republicans) shouldn’t believe that Republicans (or Democrats) as such hold moral beliefs, while they should believe neo-Nazis hold immoral beliefs. Either the Kantian or the consequentialist should believe that the other’s beliefs are immoral, yet they are seemingly still permitted to be friends.

Nor can the distinction lie in the confidence with which we hold the moral beliefs that differ from our opposite party friend. Plenty of people are just as confident that consequentialism (or Kantianism) is the correct moral philosophy as that racism, or racially motivated genocide, is morally right or wrong. Yet confident consequentialists should not disdain friendships with Kantians and vice versa. On the other hand, we should not be friends with a neo-Nazi just because he is not confident about his genocidal beliefs.

We might try to appeal to the admittedly vague idea of reasonability to distinguish between cross-party friendships and friendships between Kantians and consequentialists on the one hand, and friendships with neo-Nazis on the other. The thought is that the disagreements that occur in the former cases are reasonable, but not in the latter case. It’s not clear that all would agree that this feature does distinguish them, since many people think the beliefs of people of the opposing party are unreasonable. For these people, if reasonability is what distinguishes friendships between Kantians and consequentialists and friendships with neo-Nazis, then cross-party friendships will fall on the side of friendships with neo-Nazis. These people will have to conclude that people of the opposing party do not deserve friendship, that being friends with them lends credibility to their views in a morally problematic way, and that disesteem that is incompatible with friendship is an appropriate response.

More fundamentally, if it’s true that having what we take to be immoral beliefs unfits a person for our friendship, it’s hard to see why they should be unreasonable immoral beliefs. What’s doing the work in our intuition that we ought not to be friends with people because of their beliefs is the moral character of their beliefs, not their rationality or reasonability. Just because a prima facie compelling argument can be given for consequentialism and not Nazism does not make the consequentialist’s beliefs less morally heinous from the point of view of the Kantian.

Another suggestion is that neo-Nazi beliefs are somehow simply worse than, for example, the beliefs of Democrats as viewed from the perspective of Republicans, or the beliefs of consequentialists as viewed from the perspective of Kantians. However, the “signaling,” “incentive,” and “disesteem” arguments are not based on Nazis’ ideas being particularly heinous in the eyes of others, but just on their being believed to be immoral.

We’re left, then, with a troubling conclusion. If one ought not be friends with neo-Nazis solely because of their beliefs, then there is in principle no way to distinguish such friendships from cross-party friendships, insofar as each member of a cross-party friendship believes that the other side holds immoral views.

Still, perhaps we ought to deny the claim that we should not be friends with neo-Nazis, at least in its unqualified form. Some former Nazis strike up friendships with neo-Nazis in order to de-program them; ought we condemn that action? Similarly, if a Democrat believes his Republican friend is racist, might he not justify his friendship on the ground that he is likely to be more successful at persuading his friend to abandon his racist beliefs by remaining friends? A friend of this conception of cross-party friendship might point out that withholding friendship is but one way, and perhaps not the most effective way, to incent others to abandon their beliefs; that simply because feelings of disesteem are appropriate does not mean they are morally required, all-things-considered; and that there are ways to signal one’s disapproval of a friend’s beliefs.

Note that even if these counterarguments are successful, they will not justify a “de-politicized” or “de-moralized” friendship — a friendship wherein at least one person believes the other has immoral beliefs, but decides to do nothing about it. But this raises a further problem, which I can only gesture at: if genuine friendship requires accepting the friend as they are in some sense, then the kind of cross-party friendship that seems morally permissible may not be genuine. In the end, then, it may turn out that genuine cross-party friendships are morally impermissible.

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.

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.

Under Discussion: The Multiple Ironies of “Law and Order”

photograph of a patch of the confederate flag

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: Law and Order.

You hear a person running for office described as a “law and order” candidate. What, if anything, have you learned about them and their policies? The answer is either “nothing” or “nothing good.” The only wholesome association with the phrase is the infinitely replicating and endless Law and Order television franchise. Otherwise, this seemingly staid phrase misleads — and that is exactly the intention. As we all are routinely reminded, “law and order” is a deliberate verbal irony. When people don’t heed these reminders, it becomes a tragic irony.

In 1968, two conservative candidates were running for President of the United States: Richard Nixon and George Wallace. Nixon, the Republican nominee, won the election. However, Wallace won the electoral votes of five southern states and garnered 13% of the popular vote. Both candidates ran on explicitly law and order platforms and articulated them as such. During the course of that campaign, Nixon was often challenged to distinguish himself from Wallace on the issue of law and order. During a televised interview on Face the Nation, Nixon demonstrated the slipperiness of the term “law and order.” He said that each of the three candidates in the 1968 presidential election — Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, and himself — were each in support of law and order. The difference was what they meant by it and how they would achieve it.

Each presidential candidate in 1968 presented a different vision of law and order, during a period of significant unrest. Wallace gave full-throated support to a segregationist and populist message, couched in terms of the rights of states to shape their culture free from heavy-handed federal meddling. Hubert Humphrey was an advocate of civil rights legislation and nuclear disarmament. Though his anti-war credentials were tarnished by his role as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice-president during the Vietnam conflict, Humphrey’s view of law and order was broadly one of egalitarianism and peace. Nixon’s avowed interpretation of law and order was the rule of law, and freedom from fear. Here, the irony begins.

The details of the strategy by which Nixon and the Republican Party won over voters in the states of the US south are now well-known. The practically named “Southern Strategy” first took the presidential stage with the 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater. He took a pronounced stance against civil rights legislation that garnered him the few electoral votes he received in his presidential run —all from southern states (and his home state of Arizona). Opposing civil rights legislation, and any other federally mandated policies of integration and egalitarianism, was the core. This was not done in an explicitly racist manner, but under the banner of preserving the sovereignty of individual states, as Republican strategist Lee Atwater laid bare in a 1981 interview.

This is deliberate verbal irony: the strict meaning of the words actually uttered differs from the meaning intended by the speaker. Atwater confirms that when Republican candidates for office say, “preserve state’s rights” what they mean is “preserve the white southern way of life.” Nor is this an idiosyncrasy of Atwater. The intellectual basis for the Southern Strategy comes from William F. Buckley‘s 1957 editorial in the National Review, in which he states that whites in the south are entitled to ensure they “prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically.” Law and order, but only for white people. Freedom from fear, but only for white people. This is the Southern Strategy.

This direct verbal irony entails more irony at the level of political philosophy and general jurisprudence (i.e., theories of the concept of law). Predominant theories of general jurisprudence, especially among conservatives, see law as being generally applicable: that is, every person is subject to the same laws in the same way. This is the meaning of the phrases “rule of law” and “equal under the law.” However, talk of states’ rights in the context of the Republican Southern Strategy stands for exactly the opposite proposition: the law should apply in one way to white people and a different way to non-white people. The legal legerdemain achieved is profound in its pernicious effect. When the law is articulated in a sufficiently abstract fashion, it will not say that one group will be disparately, negatively affected. Because it doesn’t say it, many people will be convinced that it doesn’t actually affect people differently. This allows people to shift blame onto those whose lives are made more difficult, or ruined, by the law.

Disparate impact, however, has become one of the trademark U.S. Supreme Court tests for unconstitutional practices. The test arose from Griggs v. Duke Power Co., in which Black employees sued their employer over a practice of using IQ tests as a criterion for internal promotion. Previously, the company had directly forbidden Black employees from receiving significant promotions. However, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, formally discriminatory policies were unconstitutional. The Griggs court expanded the ambit of the Civil Rights Act to policies that were substantially discriminatory in their effect, even if they were non-discriminatory in form. This rule was later limited by the Supreme Court in Washington v. Davis, in which the court required that it be proven substantially discriminatory policies were adopted with the intent to achieve that discriminatory effect.

The Supreme Court, the ultimate authority on U.S. law, holds that laws which have disparate impact are bad law. But disparate impact, as it is defined by the Court, is exactly what the Southern Strategy aimed at. Say one thing, which is superficially acceptable, but mean another thing, which is expressly forbidden. Hence the “law” of the Southern Strategy’s “law and order” is not law at all.

How much of this dynamic any particular law-and-order candidate, much less the people that vote for them, is aware of is an open question. Here, the deliberate verbal irony becomes tragic irony. Anyone who has learned the lessons of history knows what will happen, while those who have not learned do not.

Does a Post-COVID World Change the Plan for Court-Packing?

"Equal Justice Under Law" Supreme Court facade

In recent weeks the United States Supreme Court has made several landmark decisions that have surprised many legal observers. Recent rulings on immigration, LGBTQ rights, and abortion highlighted the importance of Chief Justice John Roberts as a potential swing vote, tempering the conservatism of the Court. Recent headlines highlight this development: “John Roberts Shatters Expectations for the Supreme Court,” and “Chief Justice Roberts Steers High Court to a Surprising Term.” I imagine that the surprise many seem to have is owing to the expectation that with the appointments to the Court over the last four years, the Court would take a far more conservative approach. If Joe Biden wins in November (and if the Democrats gain control of the Senate) the matter of whether to “pack” the Court will become relevant again, but in light of recent events, would this be appropriate?

The debate over court-packing is not necessarily a new one. During the Depression, several New Deal provisions, like the National Recovery Act, were struck down. With five aging conservative justices to deal with, FDR proposed to expand the Court to appoint a new justice for every sitting justice older than 70 and who had served for 10 years. Had that proposal been carried out, six new justices would have been added to the Court. The move attracted controversy, but in the end one of the justices who opposed the New Deal retired a few months later and Roosevelt was able to appoint his own justice and shift the balance of the court.

It is important to note that nothing in the Constitution mandates that there be 9 justices on the court, and recently there have been calls to “pack” the Court with more liberal justices in order to shift the balance yet again. These calls follow the wins of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, both of whom became president despite losing the popular vote and who managed to appoint four justices between them (including Roberts himself as Chief Justice). Had the presidency been given to Al Gore (possibly assuming re-election in 2004) and Hillary Clinton, those three to four justices would have been able to tilt the Court heavily to the left. It is worth noting that Republicans have only won the popular vote of a presidential election once in the last 28 years. There is also the matter of Merrick Garland. Garland was nominated by Obama following the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. Had he been confirmed, the Court would also have shifted leftward. But Republicans refused to hold a hearing or vote, and after Trump became president in 2016, the vacancy was filled by Neil Gorsuch instead.

If Biden and the Democrats win in November and retake the Senate and the White House, the (now) lack of a filibuster on such votes could allow for more justices to be appointed. But with Roberts’ tendency to be a swing vote, tempering the more conservative voices on the Court, why would packing be needed? After only a few recent decisions, assertions like “John Roberts is Just Who the Supreme Court Needed”, that Roberts is “steering the court on a middle course,” that Roberts is “leading from the center” or that the Roberts Court defies partisanship have been made, and if it were true then the case for packing the Court would be undermined. Those who make such claims suggest that Roberts is trying to protect the integrity of the court from being seen as too partisan.

However, there is good reason to be cautious about these claims. As lawyer Tom Goldstein told NBC News, “The chief justice is more of an incrementalist than a swing justice…He is moving the law to the right, but slowly. And the liberal justices are willing to go along with him, to minimize the damage.” The LA Times reports that while trying to demonstrate that the Court is not in Trump’s pocket, “they quite often hand down ideological cases that go his way.” Indeed, in other cases, such as on the matter of voting rights, Roberts supported the conservative position. In other words, the evidence for the notion that the Court is now balanced or nonpartisan may be more anecdotal than conclusive. Given that these recent swing votes have taken place during an election year, it may be that Roberts is trying to prevent public resentment which might lead to court-packing. While political participation is generally low, issues concerning the makeup of the Supreme Court can be a significant motivator for voters.

Despite recent rulings, there are more arguments to be made for and against packing that are poignant during the current crises taking place in America. Courts are now ruling on the legality of COVID-19 orders, and this may be the most litigious election ever, setting countless precedents regarding voting by mail and absentee ballots. The Supreme Court itself ruled on cases in Texas and Alabama which have made it more difficult for people to vote by absentee, meaning that voters will have to risk infection if they wish to cast their ballots. The rulings that could be made following COVID-19 could have massive social, ethical, economical, and legal consequences. Climate change may require massive shifts in state intervention that conservative jurists regard as unconstitutional. In fact, hostility to voting rights are one of the reasons made for court packing. But court-packing may also be a useful threat to either gain voluntary compliance from the court on key issues or spur action to depoliticize the judiciary.

On the other hand, the arguments against packing tend to focus on the worst-case scenario where all the Court’s credibility is lost. With this in mind, certain proposals, like Pete Buttigieg’s, provide for the appointment of both conservative and liberal justices. But, as yet, there is no hard evidence to suggest that court-packing would work for or against public respect for the Court.

Former Obama White House Counsel under Barack Obama Bob Bauer has argued that attempts to pack the Court are ill-considered. He notes, “It seems that Trump’s opposition would do better to distinguish its reform politics from anything resembling the approach of this president, which seeks to undermine institutions and associated norms to engineer his preferred outcomes.” Institutional reform can be done in a way that is “bona fide” or in a way that will “merely result in additional or perhaps irreparable institutional damage and political fallout.” Bauer is clear to distinguish between institutions and outcomes, noting that court-packing secures chances of winning cases but does not strengthen the institution or our trust in it. In essence, it may delegitimize the Court, however, there is no reason to think that evaluation of an institution and evaluation of its outcomes are distinct endeavors. Certainly, some outcomes have undermined the legitimacy of the institution.

But this distinction between the Court as independent body or the Court as political tool requires further explanation and justification. Otherwise, the definition being adopted is that “bona fide institutional reform” merely excludes consideration of desired political ends for arbitrary reasons. On the other hand, while potentially useful even as a potential threat, if there is going to be a plan for packing, it also cannot be arbitrary. That plan must come from a particular vision of the purpose and function of the Court.

The Politics of Ego

Photograph of former Starbucks CEO sitting on a stage gesturing with his hands spread

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.


It is no secret that hyperpartisanship amongst the American electorate is rampant and is only growing worse. In 1994, 17 percent of Democrats had a very unfavorable opinion of Republicans, with that number at 21 percent for Republicans’ attitudes towards Democrats. As of 2016, those numbers have risen to 55 percent and 58 percent, respectively. About eight-in-ten Americans now even say that Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on basic facts. This partisanship has had a paralyzing effect on American political functions in recent decades. The 100th U.S. Congress (1987-1988) was able to pass 7 percent of bills that hit the floor into law. For the 115thU.S. Congress (2017-2018), that number has been cut by more than half at 3 percent. However, at what appears to be the pinnacle of American partisanship, a push for centrism has emerged amongst the candidates for the 2020 presidential race.

Ex-CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, announced he is “seriously considering” a presidential bid as an Independent in January of this year. In a statement he wrote on Medium, Schultz called out hyperpartisanship, accusing  “the far right and the far left” of “holding our government hostage by engaging in revenge politics and preventing sensible solutions to big challenges.” He highlighted America’s “broken two-party system” which fails to give power to every person’s vote, and emphasized most Americans’ desire for “cooperation in Washington.” The solution to America’s shortcomings, in Schultz’s opinion, is to have a “credible, centrist independent on the ballot in all 50 states.” Schultz appears to believe that this “credible, centrist independent” is himself, given his interest in casting a presidential bid. Despite his apparent devotion to truly representing the American people, Schultz appears to be lacking a platform.

In an interview with CNBC, Schultz gave hollow answers about his political positions. For instance, when pressed about immigration, Schultz stated that the U.S. should pursue a “good immigration policy.” Similarly, when asked about the national debt, Schultz claimed that the debt is “the greatest threat domestically to the country,” but made no allusion to how it should be addressed. According to his original statement on Medium, his primary policy strategy is to “draw upon the best ideas from all sides.” Yet, on the issues, it seems as though Schultz is merely criticizing both sides of the political spectrum instead of highlighting their best ideas. A lifelong Democrat up until this point, Schultz believes that the Democratic Party is moving too far to the left, and has expressed disdain for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed Green New Deal. Schultz has been less specific in his criticism of the right, but has made his distaste for President Trump very clear, accusing him of “creating episodic chaos every day.” In an interview, Schultz claimed, “I will do nothing on any level to proceed [in his campaign] if I thought that in proceeding I would in any way persuade Americans to vote and re-elect Donald Trump.” Since Schultz was a lifelong Democrat, one might expect it would most effectively block Trump from being re-elected if he ran as a moderate Democrat and pushed bipartisan policy from there, as it would mitigate the risk of him splitting the Democratic vote. However, Schultz insists on running his campaign as an Independent, making it appear as though he expects the American people to trust him to be the solution to the nation’s woes. Schultz wants to run for president not because he believes he can fix hyperpartisanship, but because he believes he is entitled to the post.

Schultz’s ego infiltrating the political sphere is not an isolated case, nor have political egos ever been uncommon. The ex-CEO considering a presidential bid simply because he can afford to do so is somewhat reminiscent of Victorian-era monarchs and industrial party bosses from the U.S.’s Gilded Age. While those examples both lie in the extreme, ego in American politics now shows itself in more subtle ways. For instance, just earlier this month President Trump autographed Bibles while on a trip in Alabama to survey disaster damage from recent tornadoes. Similarly, and also occurring earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a sweeping voting rights bill from reaching the Senate floor. When asked why he would not even see the bill, McConnell responded simply by saying, “Because I get to decide what we vote on.” The egos that dominate the political sphere also trickle down to infect public discourse.

While not a direct cause, inflated egos in American politics definitely contribute to the nation’s hyperpartisanship. The most apparent example of this relationship is the bloated field of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. So far, 13 candidates have announced their campaigns, while two more have announced exploratory committees. The large number of candidates has already begun a trend of hyperpartisanship within the Democratic Party, with centrists and progressives settling in to polarized camps. This not only poses the risk of the Democratic Party dividing itself and alienating potential voters, but also of an unrepresentative candidate being nominated as happened with Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2016 (the largest primary in American history). This is not to say that all of the Democratic candidates are running glamour campaigns, and even those who are do not rival the ego of Howard Schultz.

Schultz poses a particularly interesting case in ego politics, as he claims a platform of bipartisanship, while espousing beliefs that deepen partisan ties. In merely criticizing Democrats and Republicans alike, Schultz does not draw people closer to the center, but drags them further into negative partisanship. In order for centrism and third parties to be successful, they must forge their own path in addition to highlighting the shortcomings of other parties. This work, however, does not begin with a presidential candidate, but with a shift in political culture. A major weakness of centrism, and of third parties in the U.S. in general, is that it tends to lack a direct path.  Third parties in the U.S. typically fall into defining themselves by relative comparison to what they are not or what they are against, making them more susceptible to becoming about candidates rather than about ideas (as is the case with Schultz). Thus, Schultz’s potential campaign becomes a test for American centrists to either accept unhelpful criticism without resolve in supporting Schultz, or to forge their own initiatives to escape polarization if they truly wish to do so. America’s two-party system deserves to be reevaluated, but jumping onto the political scene without solutions does not offer any potential for progress.

What The Supreme Court Is(n’t) Doing About Gerrymandering

A map of a gerrymandered district in Chicago in 2004

In early January, a panel of judges in North Carolina ruled that North Carolina must redraw its Congressional maps. The state’s 2016 plan was believed by many critics to was drawn “with the intent of discriminating against voters who favored non-Republican candidates.” Being that the 2016 plan was passed by a Republican-led legislature, the judges ruled that the plan violated the First Amendment by discriminating against voters based on their prior political preferences. The judges ordered that the North Carolina General Assembly enact a redistricting plan in order to allow time to redraw the district lines. However, on Thursday the Supreme Court froze the opinion of the lower court. The action by the Supreme Court has seemingly delayed redistricting to eliminate gerrymandering in North Carolina for another election.

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Tax Reform and the Value of Economic Equality: Part Three

An image of the Capitol Hill dome with a statue in the foreground

Egalitarianism is the assumption behind the criticisms of the recent Republican tax reform legislation (“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”) that were presented in the first two parts of this series. Egalitarians of all stripes believe that all persons deserve equal moral consideration. Unequal treatment is the exception and needs justification. Egalitarians disagree on what is required by equal moral consideration. Most egalitarians would criticize the Republican tax legislation for disproportionately benefiting the rich and exacerbating economic inequality in the United States.

The argument in Part One held that economic equality was itself desirable, while the argument in Part Two held that a more economically equal society is desirable because it would promote a society where everyone was treated as equal citizens. Both arguments presume that all persons deserve equal consideration in policy decisions; they just disagree what that consideration would entail regarding the distribution to tax benefits and burdens.

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Bathrooms and the Board of Trustees: The Ethics of DePauw’s Restroom Protests

An image of three bathroom stalls, with one stall door open.

In a recent newspaper article for DePauw University’s student newspaper, Madison Dudley interviews five DePauw seniors about their decision to begin a petition. This petition implores certain members of DePauw’s Board of Trustees to end their support of politicians who “support laws that can be interpreted as regulating women’s bodies, fail to protect DACA students, and support the recent Republican tax plan.” The petition campaign was accompanied by posters hung in women’s bathrooms in every stall of every academic building on campus. Each poster pictures a conservative politician’s face, with information about the petition and the expression “He might as well be watching you pee.”

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The Republican Tax Plan: Is Simpler Always Fairer?

A close-up photo of U.S. Income Tax forms.

The Republican tax plan currently under construction in the House and Senate is touted as simpler and fairer.  President Trump often uses those two words, and so do House and Senate leaders. In fact, the website promoting the House version of the plan is fairandsimple.gop. Proponents of tax reform like to brag that their plan will make a tax return fit onto a postcard, the rules will be so simple. And clearly the message is not just “fair and simple.” We are being invited to believe that simplification of the tax code will make it fairer. But is a simpler tax code fairer?  
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Vote On Principle*

Donald Trump. Not a day goes by when I don’t hear that name. It is constantly on the news and it is what everybody is talking about. So much so, it is almost inescapable. This man has killed it. Since the start of his campaign he has managed to grasp the attention of the media, the nation and the world by saying whatever he wants, especially if it causes controversy. This tactic—whether purposeful or a mere reflection of his values and beliefs—has worked: Donald Trump is essentially the de facto Republican nominee. So hats off to you Mr. Trump, you have shown us how anger (against “Washington” politicians) and fear (of economic instability, foreigners, etc.) can be preyed on to mobilize a campaign to win. In the meantime, the Republican Party is struggling and making a concentrated effort to unite the party behind their champion. This might prove to be a challenge because Trump has essentially vilified everyone: not only his former opponents running for the Republican nomination (and in one case their wife) but entire nationalities, ethnicities and religions.

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Freedom and the 2016 Electoral Season

‘Tis the season for politics, once again, in the United States of America. And while some surprising new topics, like the size of candidates’ hands, have cropped up in this cycle, some of the mainstays of American political rhetoric are also at the rendez-vous.

Take Donald Trump, for instance.

In January, one of his campaign rallies featured the following performance:


While it features somewhat dated nationalist lyrics (including verses like “Come on boys, take them down!”), slightly updated for promoting Mr. Trump’s bid in the 2016 presidential contest, it also highlights a theme that is about as central to American political rhetoric as apple pie is to American cooking: freedom.

Whether freedom has been invoked as an empty rhetorical trope, as in this case, or whether it has been used more substantitvely, it has so completely permeated electoral discourse as to become inescapable.

Whether they have talked about government regulation, trade, national security, tax reform, education, abortion, or immigration, freedom has been Republican candidates’ preferred frame of reference.

Meanwhile, on the left of the political spectrum, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been quite as single-minded. While Clinton has spent a great deal of her time trying to square away her commitments to free trade and to an equalitarian progressive politics, Sanders has explained his commitment to democratic socialism as meaning “that we must create a vibrant democracy based on the principle of one person one vote.” “True freedom” according to Sanders, “does not occur without economic security. People are not free, they are not truly free, when they are unable to feed their family.”

And yet, these invocations are largely based on outdated conceptions of what freedom is. The idea at the back of Sanders’ viewpoint, that economic independence is the necessary precondition for democratic citizenship harks back to Thomas Jefferson’s glorification of the yeoman farmer, as historian Eric Foner was already noting in his book, The History of American Freedom. And as sociologists have been observing since the 1950s, such an ideal of economic independence is woefully inadequate to the corporate economy in which we live.

But it is just as true that the thesis that deregulation of international trade or of the labor market will result in greater individual freedom is based on the idea, first defended by classical liberals like John Stuart Mill, that government power threatens individual liberty. Mill’s disciples in the twentieth century, intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, argued that the crux of liberal freedom consists in the absence of coercion of the individual, either by private monopolies or by government power, so that the smaller the size of the government is and the less active it is in citizens’ lives, the greater will their freedom be.

But as early as the 1960s, the American social psychologist Stanley Milgram actually found, in a series of now famous experiments, that most people do not need to be coerced into doing things they don’t want to do, including engaging in actions which they are convinced will most likely result in the death of an innocent person: they will do these things of their own free will – a situation that suggests that “free will” and freedom may not be the same things after all.

In fact, a growing body of evidence has been produced in the human sciences over the past 40 years that suggests that the notion of a free-willing individual, who can make decisions independently of social and cultural contexts is a figment of our imagination. What this research reveals is that it is not the absence of context that enables individuals to act freely (whether it be the absence of a monopoly or the absence of a state bureaucracy), but on the contrary the presence of one.

This scientific research reveals several very surprising things about human nature that directly contradict the vision of human beings as rational, egoistic individuals, driven by an unquenchable lust for pleasure, money, or power, which we inherited from classical liberalism. The most recent of the great apes, it turns out, is a hypersocial being, whose subjective experience of the world is profoundly shaped by its empathetic openness to others, an openness that is not premised on any sort of fundamental or primitive goodness, but rather on the evolutionary mechanics of communication. Social psychologists, for instance, have discovered that in order to understand what someone else is saying we have to imitate the motion of their vocal chords (though in a much reduced fashion). We have to, in other words, become them. Neuroscientists have also found a specific type of neuron which corresponds to this process in the brain itself, the so-called “mirror neuron.”

Our identities, and therefore our desires, are profoundly affected by our cultural, social, and political contexts. To be free thus necessitates participating in the formation of the communicational contexts that affects and form us all. Freedom requires not only the freedom of expression cherished by classical liberals, but a certain freedom of connection – the power to shape the contexts in which this free expression happens. The freedom of choice advocated by classical liberals and their twentieth century followers confuses the fruit of freedom, the will, with its root. Likewise, those social liberals and socialists who emphasize economic independence while ignoring the other complex dimensions and processes involved in the creation of a free personality seem to be missing a significant component of the reality of the process of freedom.

This conception of freedom, if we examine it closely, suggests that democracy is not just a matter of elections or of constitutional rights (though it undoubtedly includes those concerns). Nor is the issue that of how “big” government bureaucracy will be. More fundamentally, political freedom consists in individuals and communities having the power to mutually affect each other and form each other. Democracy, understood from this perspective becomes a way of life rather than a formal mode of government, one that has consequences not only for the way in which ownership of the media of mass communication is organized for instance (a frequent complaint of the Sanders campaign is that this ownership structure is creating a bias in its coverage of politics), but also for every aspect of our lives, from the workplace to the bedroom, its fundamental principle being “equality of participation.” The aim of a “politics of freedom” in this context would be neither decreased regulation of the economy or increased government intervention but the creation of increased opportunities for participation by all members of society in both economic and political decision-making, regardless of their wealth or income level. Beyond the public funding of elections, one might imagine this agenda including decreased mediation of the mechanisms of political representation. Currently, for instance, the average ratio of representatives to represented in the US House of Representatives is something like 1: 290,000, making it extremely difficult for any but the most powerful interests to gain a hearing, regardless of the way elections are funded. And yet, there seem to be few technical impediments to cutting that ratio in half for instance. Any number of other reforms could be proposed that would enable greater citizen participation in the polity, from making congressional office-holders into recallable delegates in order to increase accountability, to instituting worker and consumer co-management councils in private corporations, legally entitled to raise concerns about the social and environmental consequences of business policies (corporations being legal entities to begin with, there seems to be little weight in the argument that this would be “undue government interference”).

Now, wouldn’t the transformation of everyday life from the standpoint of such a principle of “equality of participation” be the basis for a genuine “political revolution”?