Why Good People Disagree on Politics and Religion?

People can't even agree on the facts and are seemingly super divided.  Every time politics comes up, people generally become further entrenched in their own views.  It's important to note both liberals and conservatives are generally good people (or at least mostly not evil) and not Hitler.  Most people are not crazy.  Unfortunately, the political class on both sides on the national and state levels fully realize that playing polarizing "us versus them" politics is very profitable.  Therefore, there is very little incentive to change the current way of doing business (aka good v. evil, let's take every opportunity to demonize and humiliate the other side).  Since people can usually be herded like sheep by the higher ups, the behavior of the political class is very influential on the masses.

One way of thinking about how good people can disagree on Politics and Religion is to note that there are 2 competing narratives that good, reasonable people can generally believe in.


The conservative narrative (pro-Social Order) is one that prizes social order over other worries.  America has had generally a good deal of social order through the Second World War and into the 1950s.  Conservatives realize that social order is important and in fact is tremendously difficult to achieve.  If you worry about victims and questioning authority all the time, it destroys social order.

Right wingers tend to go crazy when they think that there is an attack on social order like kids using condoms, marijuana, the erosion of the traditional family, the ACLU, a black president, women working outside of the home, terrorists getting trial rights, religion (nothing says building social order better than religion), health care reform when the current system is working fine for most people, inter-racial marriage, criminals getting more rights, and gay marriage (some of these examples are dated...I've included them to show examples).  Conservatives are generally very attracted to narratives involving order and duty.  Notice how all conservative arguments are based upon social order (i.e. gay marriage will harm traditional marriage, there will be death panels in Obamacare, the liberals are trying to teach our kids about sex, the liberals are soft on crime, they are socialists).


The liberal narrative (anti-Oppression) is one that demonizes the past as one of oppression and wants present change to bring about a utopian future.  The past is racist, sexist, full of permanent social castes, corruptions,...other bad stuff.  You can see this play out in the following political positions: pro-Social Security and Medicare (old), pro-choice (women), anti-discrimination (all oppressed), gay marriage (gays), Medicaid (poor), and the environment.  Liberals are generally attracted to narratives involving justice and equality.

Liberals also care about social order, but they usually assume social order has already been taken care of...so they don't pay that much attention to it.  Have you noticed that liberals tend to be among the most taken care of in society?  Over 50% of the liberals have at least a bachelor's degree (compared with the national average of 28%).  Almost all of the self-identified liberals I know are at least upper-middle class.  Liberal causes are the strongest on college campuses where the most privileged of America's youth are.  Given that social order is mostly taken care of in the lives of many liberals, I suppose they tend to focus on eliminating oppression.

I'm sure that most people can agree that social order is generally good and that oppression is generally bad.  One can easily see how these goals can be inopposite of each other like controlling inflation and full employment (it's an economic joke).  How can we reconcile both narratives?  Well, liberals should try to convince conservatives that worrying too much about social order at the expense of oppression will eventually lead to social disorder.  There are numerous examples of how the oppressed have been oppressed so long that they've had enough and need a good ole' revolt such as the Boleshevik Revolution, the numerous Chinese Civil Wars in the early half of the 20th century, the French Revolution, and all sorts of riots and protests.  In each of those examples, oppression was used as a vehicle for social order, which eventually collapsed when the oppressed had enough.  Conservatives should try to convince liberals that social order is the single most important element of a civil society.  Social order gives us physical safety, confidence in institutions, and economic freedoms and protections.  It is the single most important thing that a society needs to prosper and without social order, we can't worry about injustice.  As stated earlier, if you worry about victims all the time and questioning authority all the time, it destroys social order.

Here's an example of this theory:  The military is generally fairly conservative relative to the rest of the country.  The military is tasked with protecting social order (the military favors the theory that places more value on their activity).  Conservatives spend every opportunity to praise and idolize these heroes.  Liberals are more likely to cut defense spending because they think that social order has generally been taken care of and one fewer aircraft carrier can't hurt things. Maybe this entire theory can be summed up by the assumption of how much social order people think we have in society: conservatives think we don't have enough and liberals think we have enough.

Here's a positive example how the 2 narratives can be reconciled:
During the Great Depression, we had unemployment at over 25% and a lot of other people who were underemployed.  This type of situation could have sparked the American Boleshevik Revolution which would have destroyed social order.  Instead, FDR enacted a bunch of "socialist" policies in his New Deal to help the oppressed (at this time, the economically oppressed).  New Deal opponents decried Social Security and the National Labor Relations Board as the beginning of communism in America.  What these short-sighted idiots didn't realize is that these acts during the Great Depression saved Capitalism in America and paved the way for our prosperity later in this century.

So how do we fix this nonsense?  Rich people and the mainstream media, along with some attractive, principled politicians need to mount a full scale offensive preaching a message of understanding and compromise.  This effort will likely fail as people interpret "understanding" as a veiled attack by the other side and "compromise" not being the two sides coming together but rather the other side completely caving in, which will not happen.  The end.

The Curious Capitalist answer is that we will come together if we have a big threat to our collective existence like a big war or a massive energy crisis.  Then, men and women (Jon Huntsman types) with bold, good ideas will step up, the predictable partisans will be too scared (your Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich types), and hopefully something good will happen.

Here are the takeaways:
1. Most people aren't evil.
2. Conservatives like pro-social order narratives.
3. Liberals like anti-oppression narratives.
4. Social order is hard to get and is pretty much essential for anything functional in civil society.
5. Oppression can lead to social disorder.