America Ascendant
Page 22
The new immigrants and racial minorities embrace a college education like a lifeline, and thus 70 percent of Hispanics, 61 percent of Asians, and 55 percent of blacks say a four-year college degree is necessary to be successful. More than 70 percent of college-educated minorities agree with that, and strikingly, 85 percent of college-educated minorities say they were encouraged by their parents to work hard toward a degree.49
Republicans seem to stand apart from the rest of Americans on education. Just 40 percent of Republicans say that a four-year college degree is essential, while remarkably, a pretty big majority of 55 percent believe it is not necessary for an individual to succeed in America. That response must be rooted in values, because a cascade of evidence would lead you to a different conclusion. The Republican response reflects in part what people in the vast rural expanses of the country believe. There, people are more doubtful that a degree is a key to success, though a plurality thinks increasing the proportion with degrees is good for the economy. The white working class is divided right down the middle on these questions.50
The metropolitan centers can hardly comprehend that parts of the country continue to contest the importance of education, civil rights, and equal rights for women, immigrants, and gays. The cities put out a welcome mat for the foreign-born, the creative classes, new types of households, and the LGBT community that becomes self-reinforcing. Multiculturalism, racial diversity, single and unmarried households, secularism, academic institutions, technicians, professionals, the most educated, and the most ambitious of all classes are meant to flourish there.
The metropolitan cauldron is also nurturing a new set of expectations about quality of life. People there express a preference for density, accessibility, active commercial and street life, engagement in public spaces, appreciation for the arts, myriad kinds of culture, and research institutions. Cities self-consciously brand themselves as places that welcome the revolutionary economic and cultural changes and ascendant values that attract new populations, industries, and investment.
Some of the new trappings of this cosmopolitan culture have caught the attention of conservatives. Bike sharing, bike lanes, and car-sharing services have produced a surprising derision among conservative commentators who seem to prefer the world of gas-guzzling SUVs a whole lot more. Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz singled out New York’s bike sharing program and warned “this means something much more”—it is an example of “the totalitarians running this government.” She warned that cyclists are “empowered by the city administration with the idea that they are privileged because they are helping, they are part of all the good forward looking things.”51
RED AND BLUE: DUCK DYNASTY
Previous generations honored “charity, chastity, duty, Godliness, honesty, honor, industriousness, respect for authority, work ethic, and self-reliance,” columnist John Hawkins recalled for us. Conservatives like him are determined to expose the new values and their consequences. They fight back by reminding people of what used to be considered the basics: moral behavior comes from self-discipline and humbleness and purity before God. Government used to confine itself to the basics, too. Instead it is creating a culture of demands where people just want to know what society will do for them.52
The contrast in ways of life and values is there for all to see on Duck Dynasty, the A&E cable network show that draws fourteen million viewers, considerably larger than the audience for the final episode of Breaking Bad. With the feel of reality television, the show captures the lives of the Robertsons, who live in northern Louisiana—where the family is the center of life and the wilderness of the backwoods is near at hand if you want to hunt for your next meal or cut your own Christmas tree. The men, led by patriarch Phil Robertson, own and operate a successful business that sells duck calls to hunters, and are the central characters on the show. The beloved Robertson women also play key roles in the family, with Phil’s wife, Miss Kay, running the show at home, where she hosts the large family gatherings.
Beyond the quippy one-liners and amusing antics of the Robertson men, the attraction of the show is the centrality of family, faith, guns, and traditional values—which puts it in stark contrast to other tokens of pop culture that seem to disrespect marriage and the family and draw attention to growing secularism, urbanism, and “immorality.” The teachings of Jesus Christ and prayer are routine in the Robertson home, with each show closing with prayer and reflection at the supper table. The church is where the kids are educated, where you celebrate holidays, and where you worship every Sunday.
The Bible is the center point in red America because faith in God allows us to know what is true and to be assured that the right choices will be rewarded and the wrong ones punished. Marriage and the traditional family are the bedrocks of a virtuous, happy, and healthy life and the touchstones for values and well-being. This faith reviles a pop culture that disrespects marriage and celebrates promiscuity and all forms of sordid behavior, such as abortion and homosexuality, which are considered perversions.
There are now credible academic studies that show these values and related attitudes at the heart of these economic and cultural revolutions and the counterrevolution do matter. The values are highly correlated with an increasingly coherent liberal-conservative ideology, and they are highly predictive of the presidential vote in both red and blue states. These values also greatly impact the type of community people want to live in—and that is integrally related to America’s emerging polarized politics.
The academics who conducted the research at distinguished universities in the metropolitan centers, unfortunately, sound like the victors in the culture war. They are barely conscious of how condescending they sound. They rightly highlight the importance of values, but it is pretty clear why conservatives bristle when they hear some social science professor pontificate on social trends.
Academics struggle to understand why conservatives hold these attitudes and values, which, to my mind, is not such a mystery. They seem a very plausible response to the revolutionary changes that genuinely threaten their worldview and political and social standing. Academics take it as a given that the white working class is failing to prioritize its growing economic marginality, and even worse, is erroneously rallying to a party most aligned with business interests. That motivates the academics’ search for “system justifying” nodes in the brain to explain their conservative political response. Some of the academics have rehabilitated the concept of an “authoritarian personality,” which leads them to conclude that “conservatives are, on average, more rigid and closed-minded than liberals.”53
However, when the academic research focuses on the distinctive attitudes and values in red and blue states, their findings seem right and also predictive of what happens in elections.
Peter Rentfrow, John Jost, Samuel Gosling, and Jeffrey Potter conducted a major new survey of personality traits in all fifty states and developed models to explain the presidential vote in each state in three presidential election years: 1996, 2000, and 2004. As we know, the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections polarized the country, and in the latter, Karl Rove purposefully enflamed the culture war to get to this very end.
Looking at what values or traits were most politicized, the authors found the voters in blue states are “more curious, creative, imaginative, intellectual, and tolerant of differences.” Residents in red states tend to be “more traditional, reliable, organized, efficient, and self-disciplined.” Though a third dimension, extroversion, is not a predictor of state votes, it does show blue states to be “characterized as more talkative, enthusiastic, energetic, and sociable and less inhibited, quiet, and reserved.”54
One article in an impressive collection of essays, Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification, concludes that people living in the urban and industrial Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast regions are “significantly higher in ‘creative productivity’ (defined in terms of creativity, imagination, int
elligence, tolerance, and unconventionality),” compared to those living in the rural Great Plains and southern regions. Those in the Northeast are “higher in extroversion (defined by traits such as urgency and energy)” compared to individuals in the Mountain West. Those in the Midwest are higher in traits associated with being “hardworking.”55
Authors Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham are more respectful of conservative sociological traditions and the moral concerns of political conservatives. They get to a fuller set of dimensions with relevance for ideology and politics. They find that liberals give high relevance to dimensions such as harm to the vulnerable and fairness and not much to other values and moral dimensions. That narrower set of relevant dimensions produce what the authors call a “moral color-blindness” among liberals. They are not able to grant that conservatives have moral reasons to oppose gay marriage and stem cell research.56
What the authors call a “moral color-blindness” is better described as a secularism that devalues faith-based conclusions and blocks them from lending much importance to sacredness and authority. The strongly conservative, on the other hand, rate all dimensions fairly highly, though they give their highest scores to authority and purity.57
These results underscore how deep the value differences are emerging out of America’s revolutions and counterrevolution.
RED AND BLUE: THE POLARIZATION OF AMERICA
America’s red-blue polarization grows because the economic and cultural revolutions seem ever more certain to prevail, though that only means the counterrevolutionaries must raise the stakes ever more to put off the unacceptable. Conservatives have done just that since 2004, as the odds of success grow inexorably longer. That only raises the stakes even more and the urgency to defend these values and translate them into politics.
This is graphically illustrated in a major survey by the Pew Research Center on “The Political Polarization in the American Public.” Instead of using voters’ self-placement on a liberal-moderate-conservative scale, they measured ideology according to people’s responses to a range of defining political choices on a variety of values issues, including government wastefulness and regulation, corporate profits, helping the poor, addressing racial discrimination, immigration, use of the military, environmental regulation, and homosexuality. The Pew study views ideologies as an expression of political value choices, though those choices are clearly expressions of deeper attitudes about morality, community, and way of life.
The context created by the current economic and cultural transformations is important. Across all these values measures, the country is becoming more liberal and less conservative. When Bill Clinton was elected and Newt Gingrich led his revolution, the percent of the population with reliably conservative views far outnumbered those with reliably liberal views nationally by 30 to 21 percent, though now those with liberal views outnumber conservatives, 34 to 27 percent. The Gallup Poll annual poll on values and beliefs also shows that the conservative advantage on economic and social issues has dropped to its lowest point in years, and on social issues it is now gone.58
For the Gallup Poll, midyear 2015 was a kind of tipping point when 60 to 70 percent of the country said gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and divorce are all “morally acceptable.” Acceptance had jumped 15 to 23 points depending on the issue since 2001, just before conservatives launched the culture war. 2015 was the year a majority of Americans said gays and lesbians are born, not made, and that nearly ends the moral question.
With the values differences so real, the battle over values is translating into real-life choices about where to live, what kind of neighborhood with what kind of people, and openness to the country’s new diversity and multiculturalism.
A stunning two-thirds of the “mostly conservative” and three-quarters of the “consistently conservative” want to live in a community where the houses are larger and farther apart and schools, stores, and restaurants are several miles away. Less than a quarter of consistent conservatives say being near an art museum or theater is important to them. This response is flipped for the ideologically liberal, who are very much part of the growing preference for urbanism and metropolitan centers. More than three-quarters of the consistently liberal prefer to live in communities where houses are smaller and closer together, with schools and stores in walking distance. Nearly three-quarters of consistent liberals also say living near art museums or theaters is important to them.59
It is a relief that the country is united in wanting to live near their extended family, to have high-quality schools, and to having access to the outdoors for hiking, fishing, and camping, though they no doubt bring different values filters and priorities to those local institutions and activities.60
The most dramatic cultural difference brought out by this unique national survey is whether you prefer to live with people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds or to live with people who share your religious faith. Those factors are at the heart of American’s accelerating racial diversity and rising secularism, as well as the conservative reaction. Just a fifth of consistent conservatives say they are looking for that kind of diversity in the communities where they live; almost 60 percent, however, are looking for communities where many people share their faith. In stark contrast, three-quarters of consistent liberals are looking to live in racial and ethnically diverse communities, yet finding those who share their faith is not important to them at all.61
“Political Polarization in the American Public,” Pew Research Center, June 12, 2014. Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions found in Appendix A of the Pew report.
That alignment is taking place in a country that is increasingly diverse, immigrant, secular, young, and living in metropolitan centers, which is why conservatives are under siege. Half of consistent conservatives say “It’s important for me to live in a place where most people share my political views”—15 points higher than for consistent liberals. And even more, 63 percent of consistent conservatives say it is important that “most of my friends share my political views”—14 points higher than for consistent liberals. Conservatives unhappy with these trends are looking for solidity of friendship and community.
More aligned with developing trends, liberals are less intent on building like-minded communities, though it is still important. Half of consistent liberals live close to most of their friends and one-third want to live in a place where there is an affinity of political views, too. They too are furthering the sorting of the country culturally and ideologically, though with somewhat less zeal than conservatives.
Those numbers do not quite capture the swelling stakes for the supporters of each of the national parties. Increasingly, they think if the other party gets to advance its values agenda, the country is at risk, though it is Republican conservatives that are leading the country to the edge of this perceived national crisis. Now, 27 percent of Democrats say the Republicans “are a threat to the nation’s well-being”—but 36 percent of Republicans say that about the Democrats. Half of consistently liberal Democrats say Republicans are such a threat, but they are outdone by consistently conservative Republicans, two-thirds of whom say the Democrats’ pursuit of their values and agenda puts the country at risk.62
Supporters of both major political parties have become ever more hostile to the other party and fearful of where it would take the country, though Republicans and consistent conservatives are in a league of their own on the perceived threat. The Republican-led culture war has produced dramatic results. A stunning 72 percent of consistent conservatives have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, and that has jumped almost 20 points since 2004. A 53 percent majority of consistent liberals are none too fond of the Republicans, but the growth in hostility is half the rate that it is for consistent conservatives, and the level of negativity about the other party 19 points lower.63
While the personal response and stakes are higher for c
onservatives, the nearly complete ideological polarization of the two parties has accelerated since 2004 and is now nearly complete. Since 1994, an increasing number of Democratic voters identify as mostly liberal, reaching 56 percent in 2014. The number of Republicans identifying as mostly conservative surged after 2004. That reached 53 percent in 2014, virtually identical to the liberal profile of Democrats.64
“Political Polarization in the American Public: How Increasing Ideological Uniformity and Partisan Antipathy Affect Politics, Compromise and Everyday Life,” Pew Research Center, June 12, 2014, p. 6. Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions found in Appendix A of the Pew report. Republicans include Republican-leaning independents; Democrats include Democratic-leaning independents.
The launch of the culture war in 2004 brought the thoroughgoing ideological polarization of the two parties. A nearly complete 99 percent of Republicans are more conservative than the median Democrat, and that measure has reached 98 percent for Democrats with respect to the median Republican. That level of partisan ideological unanimity jumped over 10 points for the partisans of both parties since 2004, after remaining fairly steady in the prior decade.65
The revolutions and counterrevolution have produced political parties that are ideologically polarized expressions of the emerging values conflict, though the shifts in underlying attitudes and fears are hardly symmetrical. Republicans are more alienated from what they see as the ascendant values, living styles, and multiculturalism, and they want to live in communities where more people share their faith and political views. They are more hostile to the Democratic Party and much more likely to believe that the country is at risk if the Democratic Party wins elections.66
That asymmetry has allowed Republicans to overperform in off-year elections since the election of Barack Obama and to build their base in more rural states. It is the Democrats, however, who are aligned with the revolutionary changes that are changing the country and will get to govern nationally, if they take up the huge challenges facing the country.