How to Be More Meta-Rational about Politics

Arnold Kling has been one of my favorite economics bloggers for nearly a decade, which is even longer in Internet time than it is in real life. At some point last year, Kling went through a crisis of…something…and abruptly announced that he was leaving EconLog, the blog he founded in 2003. Two months later, he reemerged at his own domain, promising to avoid a particular kind of discourse, one aimed at closing the minds of those on one’s own side. Although Kling was never among the worst offenders on this score, one could indeed sense a shift in his tone. He prioritized framing his opponents’ positions in the most favorable light, and he developed a framework for understanding political issues from progressive, conservative, and libertarian perspectives.

Kling’s new ebook, The Three Languages of Politics, is a pleasantly short, authoritative expression of the framework. Kling argues that the use of three different heuristics account for differing political beliefs. Progressives tend to respond most favorably to language that frames issues in terms of oppressed versus oppressor groups. Conservatives tend to respond to a frame of civilization versus barbarism. And libertarians, unsurprisingly, tend to respond most favorably to a frame of freedom versus coercion. By cultivating the ability to weigh political issues using all three heuristics, we can come to see our opponents’ positions as reasonable, even if we ultimately continue to believe they are wrong.

Kling’s goal of promoting detachment and understanding is rare in political discourse. It is also laudable. The ability to use constructive rather than motivated reasoning has both social and individual benefits. People who can reason constructively with reference to all three heuristics are more likely to arrive at sound conclusions than those who are incapable of such modes of thought. Fluency in the three languages is an important component of political meta-rationality. If we want better voters, better politicians, and better political discourse, widespread internalization of the three-axis model is a concrete step, however improbable, in that direction.

But even if Kling’s model does not conquer the political landscape, its use has substantial individual benefits. As a self-help measure, Bryan Caplan has notoriously advocated the creation of a personal bubble, even going so far as to offer ten easy steps one can take to emulate him in this quest. Caplan’s first five steps involve eliminating various frustrations associated with participating in society. Because politics is such a prominent stressor—people become frustrated when they talk past each other—Kling’s exhortation to detach, become open-minded, and learn to speak multiple political languages seems like good advice for those who find Caplan’s prescription, “ceasing to follow national and world news,” too extreme.

The three-axis model has academic and political value as well as social and personal value, which is to say that it can be used for evil as well as for good. For example, it can be applied to make predictions about the effectiveness of political discourse. Sen. Rand Paul, who primarily uses freedom-versus-coercion language, recently visited historically-black Howard University as part of a long-neglected Republican effort to reach African-American voters. Putting aside whether Sen. Paul’s speech was successful, Kling’s model helps political scientists and practitioners understand what, in theory, Republicans would need to do to reach black voters. Since the African-American experience in the United States is best understood as a history of oppression, Republicans are unlikely to make inroads with blacks until they become fluent in the language of oppressed versus oppressor groups. The model can also explain why the “liberaltarian” project has yet to succeed—Republicans have become more adept at melding freedom/coercion language with civilization/barbarism than Democrats have with oppressed/oppressor.

If Kling’s book has a weakness, it is its foray into the social origins of language—in general, not just political language. Rather than evolving to help people understand each other, Kling argues, language is like an “audible” in football, designed to be understood by one’s own tribe, but not by others. While the point that some divergence in language emerges due to the desire to show tribal loyalties is well taken, these linguistic differences seem to pale in comparison to the variation introduced by geography and other factors that engender physical separation. And applied to political language, the idea that we use certain modes of expression to signal tribal loyalties, while not false, is at odds with the very real frustration we all have felt when trying to communicate our views to members of the other tribes. Although political disagreement has social elements, much of our disagreement persists even in private conversation, where there is no benefit to signaling tribal loyalties.

This last quibble aside, The Three Languages of Politics is well worth the $1.99 and the one hour of your time it will cost you to read it. It is short, insightful, useful, and above all, subversive. The political-industrial complex benefits from the Babel in which we live. If we all came to see our political opponents not as nonsensical fools but as basically reasonable speakers of another language, we would not elect the demagogues we do now, or watch the same clowns on cable news. This is a goal worth pursuing, though the odds are long. In any event, I expect the book to do a brisk business as gifts for political enemies.