People worth reading: Arnold Kling and the three languages of politics

I subscribe to almost two hundred blogs, covering a wide range of topics. I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the more interesting ones, in case anyone else finds any of them interesting and also to provide some insight into the particular things I tend to blog about. First up is Arnold Kling and his “Askblog,” the tagline of which is “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.”¹

It was the attitude expressed in Kling’s tagline that actually led to my subscribing to his blog. Kling is an economist of generally libertarian views, part of a group that includes Bryan Caplan, Art Carden, Tyler Cowen, and others (many formally or informally associated with George Mason University). Economists of any political persuasion can be dogmatic and dismissive of those holding opposing views, as can libertarians whether they’re economists or not. It’s a fairly common conceit among some that they arrived at their own views by a process of disinterested reasoning, and that by implication those who disagree with them are stupid or malicious or both.

So when Kling stopped blogging at Econlog and moved to his personal blog it was a pleasant surprise to read his philosophy of blogging:

I want to model a very particular style of discourse, as indicated by the tag line “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.” . . . I will try to keep the posts here free of put-downs, snark, cheap shots, straw-man arguments, and taking the least charitable interpretation of what others say. So, if what you most enjoyed about my past blogging efforts were the put-downs, be prepared for disappointment with this incarnation.

That was enough to put Kling on my list of blogs to read regularly. In reading him since then I’ve found he’s generally kept to that stance, with only a few occasions where he’s become exasperated with what he thinks are others’ shoddy and self-serving arguments.

One of the most interesting features of Kling’s blog posts is his analysis of what he calls the “three-axis model” of politics:

My hypothesis is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians view politics along three different axes. For progressives, the main axis has oppressors at one end and the oppressed at the other. For conservatives, the main axis has civilization at one end and barbarism at the other. For libertarians, the main axis has coercion at one end and free choice at the other.

This is in some respects Kling’s own adaptation of the ideas of Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, who’ve argued that people are predisposed to view moral issues according one or more of several “moral foundations.” (I blogged about this previously in the context of possible genetic influences on political views. Kling has also written an excellent essay discussing Haidt’s ideas.) Thus, for example, the “civilization/barbarism” axis roughly corresponds to a combination of the “loyalty/disloyalty,” “authority/subversion,” “sanctity/degradation,” and (to some extent) “fairness/cheating” moral foundations hypothesized by Haidt et.al.

Kling has expanded on the three-axis model in a book, The Three Languages of Politics. It’s well worth reading, and you can’t beat the price. Kling has also further discussed and applied the three-axis model in a number of blog posts.

Kling frequently takes his own advice (in the essay on Haidt linked to above) to “call your own fouls,” that is, to “expose intellectual error on our own side” and “search as hard for holes in our allies’ arguments as if they were opponents’ arguments.” This often leads him to espouse what I might call (in imitation of Andrew Sullivan) a “libertarianism of doubt.” For example, in an essay on libertarianism and group norms he points out that libertarians’ emphasis on individualism leads them to denigrate the tendency people have to conform to group norms, a tendency that arguably makes modern liberal (in the classical sense) and democratic societies possible. I think on balance this willingness to “think it possible that you may be mistaken” makes Kling a more effective advocate for libertarianism than the many others who are more certain and more strident.

Gervase Markham - 2013-08-26 09:06

My hypothesis is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians view politics along three different axes. For progressives, the main axis has oppressors at one end and the oppressed at the other. For conservatives, the main axis has civilization at one end and barbarism at the other. For libertarians, the main axis has coercion at one end and free choice at the other.

Fascinating. Notice that one of these axes is not like the others. Coercion and free choice are on an axis because if you have more coercion, you have less free choice and vice versa. Civilization and barbarism are on an axis because if you have more civilization, you have less barbarism and vice versa. But oppressors and oppressed are not on an axis, because more oppressors doesn’t mean fewer oppressed, or vice versa. So I think that axis is mis-stated. I think a better statement of the progressive axis ends could be power hierarchies vs. egalitarianism, or oppression vs. freedom for all. The problem with the latter is that if you are working for “freedom for all”, then that leads to the question: “so why aren’t you libertarian or anarchist?”… So perhaps that’s not the right way of expressing their view, because progressivism tends to lead to (governmental) coercion rather than free choice.

hecker - 2013-08-27 01:19

Hey Gerv, thanks for stopping by! I agree that the oppressor/oppressed axis isn’t as well-expressed as the others. What Kling should have done IMO is to simply carry over Jonathan Haidt’s formulation of the moral foundation most characteristic of (American) liberals and progressives. Haidt referred to this foundation as “care/harm”, which makes more sense than “oppressors/oppressed” in two ways. First, per your point it would make more sense as an axis: more care, less harm. Second, it accounts for cases where liberals/progressives favor government action for predominantly paternalistic reasons, where there’s no clear “oppressor” per se but there’s a chance of people being harmed in some way. (One example of this is mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists.) It’s like the second half of the First law of Robotics: “… or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” (Which I guess means Isaac Asimov was a progressive.)