{"id":5134,"date":"2017-10-18T16:01:23","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T16:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/18\/on-the-supposed-political-equivalence-of-the-two-tribes\/"},"modified":"2017-10-18T16:01:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T16:01:23","slug":"on-the-supposed-political-equivalence-of-the-two-tribes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/18\/on-the-supposed-political-equivalence-of-the-two-tribes\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Supposed Political Equivalence of the Two Tribes"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I  read Andrew Sullivan's recent tribalism essay<\/a>, he is bravely attempting to maintain an equivalency thesis: roughly, the two tribes, the Left tribe and the Right tribe, are equally tribal and equally in the wrong. But in some places in his long essay he does a pretty lame job of it. Here is one:<\/span><\/p>\n

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As for indifference to reality, today\u2019s Republicans cannot accept that human-produced carbon is destroying the planet<\/a>, and today\u2019s Democrats must believe that different outcomes for men and women in society are entirely a function of sexism. Even now, Democrats cannot say the words illegal immigrants<\/em> or concede that affirmative action means discriminating against people because of their race. Republicans cannot own the fact that big tax cuts have not trickled down, or that President Bush authorized the brutal torture of prisoners, thereby unequivocally committing war crimes. Orwell again: \u201cThere is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when \u2018our\u2019 side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case \u2026 still one cannot feel<\/em> that it is wrong.\u201d That is as good a summary of tribalism as you can get, that it substitutes a feeling \u2014 a really satisfying one \u2014 for an argument.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Let's start with the first sentence. That different outcomes for men and women are entirely<\/em> a function of sexism is a preposterous claim that anyone with common sense and knowledge of the world should immediately see to be false. It implies that biological differences between the sexes have no bearing whatsoever on behavioral outcomes. But there is good reason to be skeptical of the claim that human-produced carbon is destroying the planet.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose we grant that there is global warming, and suppose we grant that human activity plays a role in its etiology. There still remain questions as to the extent to which global warming is anthropogenic and what exactly the various causal factors are. The claim that human-produced carbon is destroying<\/em> the planet is an extremely strong claim.  Compare that to the trivially obvious claim that there is more to the explanation of differential outcomes for the sexes than sexism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly with the other examples. One cannot, unless one is insane or else a truth-disregarding leftist ideologue, deny the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. But that Bush authorized torture presupposes that waterboarding is torture<\/em> which is far from obvious and is a reasonably contested assertion. See Is Waterboarding Torture<\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

So while I respect Sully's attempt at being "fair and balanced," I reject his equivalency thesis. The Left is far more mindlessly and destructively tribal than the Right. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/a>The Rising Danger of Left-Right Tribalism | Minding The Campus<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I  read Andrew Sullivan's recent tribalism essay, he is bravely attempting to maintain an equivalency thesis: roughly, the two tribes, the Left tribe and the Right tribe, are equally tribal and equally in the wrong. But in some places in his long essay he does a pretty lame job of it. Here is one: … Continue reading “On the Supposed Political Equivalence of the Two Tribes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[251],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disagreement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}