E-Pluribus | November 13, 2023

The polarization gap is wide; we must fight wokeness Constitutional weapons; why Ayaan Hirsi Ali converted to Christianity.

A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Julian Adorney: The Perils of Affective Polarization

"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," famed football coach Vince Lombardi said (although coach Red Saunders apparently said it first.) Applying this adage to politics, too many people today seem to think winning partisan battles is all that matters. At Quillette, Julian Adorney says this worsening polarization is bad for America, bad for our political parties, and bad for us as individuals.

Affective polarization is defined as "the gap between individuals’ positive feelings toward their own political party and negative feelings toward the opposing party"—or in other words, our fear and anger towards the opposite political party. We often think of it as a societal problem. As I have argued elsewhere, it endangers our democracy, it puts us at each other’s throats, and stops politicians from working together with representatives from across the aisle; it is even, argues Martin Kariuki, a national security threat.

We therefore often think that affective polarization requires societal solutions. Here in the United States, we need to change how primaries are conducted, so that the most bombastic voices no longer get elected to Congress. We need to have more debates and townhalls, so that Democrats and Republicans (and members of other parties) can meet each other. We need to crack down on Russian propaganda that attempts to inflame our partisan divides.

Those things are all true, but this focus on societal solutions overlooks a crucial factor: affective polarization is ultimately about individuals. Groups might hate and fear other groups, but those groups are made up of individuals. When we refuse to date across party lines or to make friends with people with whom we disagree, it is we as individuals who are hurt by the consequences. When we are affectively polarized, it's as though we're trapped in a marriage with a spouse we hate or fear. No one wants to live that way. Reducing affective polarization is not just in society's best interest, it is in our own best interest as individuals.

[. . .]

An additional danger of affective polarization is that the fear we feel can leave us feeling powerless—with obvious consequences for our mental health. Conservatives mocked progressives whose mental health cratered following the 2016 presidential election as suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome," but underneath the partisan one-upmanship was a real phenomenon. More and more of us are tying our happiness to the outcome of elections that we cannot control. In a 2016 Pew poll, 62 percent of highly engaged Republicans and 70 percent of highly engaged Democrats said that the other party made them feel "afraid." When our internal landscape is dictated by events happening in Washington, we are opening ourselves up to a world of suffering.

Affective polarization also cuts us off from human connection with vast swathes of our fellow Americans. The US is in the midst of what Surgeon General Dr. Vivek A. Murphy has called a "loneliness epidemic." An Advisory by the Surgeon General notes that "In recent years, about one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness." According to a 2018 study on loneliness by the Kaiser Family Foundation, over 20 percent of Americans say they "often or always feel lonely, feel that they lack companionship, feel left out, or feel isolated from others."

Read the whole thing.

Bradley A. Smith: Hawley Aims at Wokeness and Misses

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision is usually hailed by Republicans as a landmark victory for free speech. But Senator Josh Hawley, in the name of reining in “woke” corporations, is aiming to undermine Citizens United with fellow senator (and strange bedfellow) Bernie Sanders. Bradley Smith in the Wall Street Journal argues that Hawley and Sanders are all wet.

Conservatives celebrated when the Supreme Court ruled, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), that corporations have a right to free speech. Now Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) has joined Bernie Sanders to propose legislation that defies Citizens United.

Mr. Hawley is up front about wanting to silence publicly traded corporations because he doesn’t like what some have to say. “Corporate America has funneled billions of dollars into elections in favor of politicians who favor their woke, social agendas,” he says in a press release. He wants to “hold mega-corporations’ feet to the fire and stop their dollars from buying our elections.” He exhorts: “To my conservative friends, listen, there is no reason we should want to empower these mega-corporations.”

Its blatant unconstitutionality isn’t the only objection to his Ending Corporate Influence on Elections Act. Even if it could be enforced, it wouldn’t weaken the influence of “woke” corporations.

[. . .]

Mr. Hawley’s concerns about corporate wokeism influencing the culture are unrelated to Citizens United. Publicly traded corporations spend almost nothing on the type of campaign speech that Citizens United allowed. For-profit corporations account for roughly 2% of total political spending.

The true beneficiaries of Citizens United are nonprofits such as the National Rifle Association, Patriotic Veterans and the Humane Society, and trade associations like the National Association of Realtors and the American Academy of Ophthalmology—though even these groups account for well under 10% of campaign expenditures. Citizens United has helped these voices be heard, promoting more-competitive elections and a better-informed electorate.

Read it all.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Why I am now a Christian

While Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s spiritual journey from Islam to atheism and now to Christianity has undeniable cultural elements, she says there’s an equally important personal aspect as well. Ali (via UnHerd) tells her story in the context of a broad, civilizational struggle. But in the end, it comes down to the simple yet profound question each individual faces: “what is the meaning and purpose of life?”

Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

We endeavour to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools: military, economic, diplomatic and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease or surveil. And yet, with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground. We are either running out of money, with our national debt in the tens of trillions of dollars, or we are losing our lead in the technological race with China.

But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

That legacy consists of an elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity — from the nation state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning. As Tom Holland has shown in his marvellous book Dominion, all sorts of apparently secular freedoms — of the market, of conscience and of the press — find their roots in Christianity.

[. . .]

To me, this freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities. It was these debates that advanced science and reason, diminished cruelty, suppressed superstitions, and built institutions to order and protect life, while guaranteeing freedom to as many people as possible. Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage. It became increasingly clear that Christ’s teaching implied not only a circumscribed role for religion as something separate from politics. It also implied compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer.

Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?

Russell and other activist atheists believed that with the rejection of God we would enter an age of reason and intelligent humanism. But the “God hole” — the void left by the retreat of the church — has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma. The result is a world where modern cults prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being and action — mostly by engaging in virtue-signalling theatre on behalf of a victimised minority or our supposedly doomed planet. The line often attributed to G.K. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilisational. We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.

The lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, embedded in the foundational texts of Islam, to attract, engage and mobilise the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilisation will continue. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.

Read it all here.

Around Twitter (X)

Introduced by Charles C. W. Cooke, here’s part of a thread from the UK’s Fair Cop organization regarding an incident last Friday.

A few thoughts from Peter Boghossian on “diversity.” (Click for videos.)

And finally, California Governor Gavin Newsom with an unexpected moment of transparency. Honesty from politicians can be shocking.