Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

by Arthur C. Brooks

Worse than being just unfair, such a belief is too often based in rank ignorance. How many times have you heard a conservative pundit say that Democrats want to keep poor people dependent on the government to keep them voting Democratic? Or a liberal pundit say that Republican tax policies are all about helping Republicans’ wealthy friends? The truth is that highly partisan conservatives and liberals are shockingly clueless about the other side—about their motives and everything else. One 2018 study from the Journal of Politics has revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year, when in fact just 2.2 percent do.13 And Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are gay or lesbian, when just over 6 percent are.