The Three Languages of Politics

by Arnold Kling

Learning to speak other political languages can enable you to look at political debate from a point of view that is detached from your preferred heuristic. I am not saying that you should give up your preferred heuristic. However, you will find it useful to detach from it on occasion. Detachment can help you to understand those who use different heuristics. It also might enable you to employ your reasoning in a manner that is more constructive and less motivated. Detachment can help us to see the merit in others' points of view and avoid taking our own views to erroneous extremes. Detachment can lead us to take a charitable view of others' disagreement, rather than retreating into demonization. Learning the other political languages might help us to have conversations instead of shouting matches.

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes two ways that humans process information. There is a fast process that is intuitive and instinctive, and there is a slow process that is more deliberate and careful. He calls the former System One and the latter System Two. We may use System Two to make a more thoughtful decision. However, Kahneman emphasizes that often we engage System Two not to make a decision but instead to rationalize a conclusion reached by System One.

I doubt that language evolved in order to be universally understood. Instead, I believe that language evolved to be understood by some people and not understood by others. While political speech is not as consciously coded as a football “audible,” it often serves a similar purpose. It serves to align one tribe while mystifying another.

If you find merits in the other group's point of view, you risk losing status to those who are more unambiguously loyal. If you go too far, you may be branded a traitor and shunned by your tribe.

This characterization of progressives and conservatives would not pass an ideological Turing test. If you say that you advocate an American police state, conservatives will not embrace you. If you say that you advocate an American nanny state, then progressives will not embrace you. Libertarians are certainly welcome to argue that conservative policies, if fully implemented, would amount to a police state, or that progressive policies, if fully implemented would amount to a nanny state. However, to say that those dystopias are what conservatives and progressives advocate is to put up straw men. These straw men are equivalent to a straw man that says “Libertarians want to see people starve.” You are welcome to argue that libertarian policies would cause people to starve. However, if you say that you advocate having people starve, libertarians will not embrace you as one of their own. You will not pass an ideological Turing test.

that the government's lending quotas were a factor. However, other

For libertarians, people are experts at making their own choices and bumbling fools when making choices for others.