The Republican Brain (26 page)

So we now can see where the “American culture war of fact,” as it has been called, comes from, and why it has had such pernicious effects.

At the same time, we can also see how the modern conservative movement was, simultaneously, a contingent and uniquely American outgrowth, and yet also classically
conservative
on a psychological level. It was a powerful and emotional reaction against change. It was driven by leaders who were often Manichean in worldview (or at least adopted this style). It took on a religious character, defending hierarchy, when provoked by demands for more egalitarianism.

Most of all, because of the sharpness of the divide that this created—a true battle of deep seated and irreconcilable worldviews—it left the country completely polarized. Not only were Americans strongly divided politically, but they were highly emotional about that divide: inclined to demonize the other side, to clash vigorously and angrily with little or no understanding.

I needn't do much to document the nature of our present polarization; it has been done extensively. But it includes explicitly tribal behavior based on party affiliation: people straining everything they perceive through a lens of partisanship. It also includes demographic trends, in which conservatives and liberals—those more and less Open to Experience—are changing where they live based on politics, and self-selecting into “blue” and “red” states.

Another crucial example of this polarization, and one with perhaps the greatest consequences for triggering biased reasoning and divergent views of the facts, involves media choices and how we consume information. For nowadays, people have the ability to opt into streams of political information that reinforce their points of view. This phenomenon has grown so dramatic, and is so psychologically important, that it is the subject of my next chapter.

In a sense, you might think of my analysis of media change as an extension of this argument about conservative think tanks and elites, and how they facilitated the creation of an alternative reality on the right. Simply put, the think tanks made motivated reasoning a heck of a lot easier, because they provided evidence, arguments, and “expertise” in support of conservative positions.

But these were largely for other experts, wonks, policymakers, and journalists to consume, not average citizens. Not the conservative base.

Hence the need for conservative media outlets: radio shows, television stations, and ideological web sites. What this means is that changes in communications technology—and economic changes in the media industry—represent another central “oven” factor that helps to explain the current split over reality.

This factor—which allows people to select themselves into ideologically-reinforcing streams of information, and ultimately to construct their own realities—is so powerful that many have argued that it is
the
cause of the problem we're tackling. “People don't believe whatever they want to believe, they believe whatever they can get away with believing,” says University of California-Irvine motivated reasoning researcher Peter Ditto. In a previous era, Ditto remarks, “you might have wanted to believe something, but you turned on Walter Cronkite that night, and he gave you some facts that were different. And now these guys can develop these ideas that are emotionally satisfying and turn to a television station that tells them that that's true.”

There's no downplaying the importance of today's media in polarizing us over the nature of reality. But in the next chapter, I'll show that there are also psychological factors which interact with our media choices and drive our desire to be selective about them. Once again, it's nature and nurture, cake and oven, combined.

And once again, I will present evidence suggesting that overall, conservatives will react differently in this wild new media context than liberals.

Notes

129
In March of 2011
The opening of this chapter is based on an article I wrote for
The American Prospect
magazine entitled “Reality Bites: The science-based community was once split between Democrats and Republicans—but not anymore,” June 6, 2011.

129
“global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement”
This testimony was from J. Scott Armstrong of the University of Pennsylvania. Testimony to Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science, Space and Technology, “Research to date on Forecasting for the Manmade Global Warming Alarm,” March 31, 2011.

129
in his written testimony
Kerry Emanuel, testimony before the House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, March 31, 2011. Available online at
http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/Emanuel%20testimony.pdf
.

130
“I don't like it when ideology trumps reason”
Interview with Kerry Emanuel, April 26, 2011.

130
“I was so horrified”
Interview with Kerry Emanuel, April 26, 2011.

130
“by silliness and injustice of utterance”
Quoted in Donald T. Critchlow,
Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade
, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 98.

131
“There weren't nutcases”
Interview with Kerry Emanuel, April 26, 2011.

132
a helpful analogy . . . put forward by James Fowler
KPBS, “These Days with Maureen Cavanaugh,” “Exploring the ‘Liberal Gene,'” November 1, 2010. Transcript available online at
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/nov/01/exploring-liberal-gene/
.

133
Schlafly's story
Donald T. Critchlow,
Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade
, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

134
“a formidable political outlook”
Critchlow, p. 27.

134
Manichean worldview
As Donald Critchlow writes, “Christian doctrine, as it was interpreted by grassroots anticommunist writers and speakers, magnified the fight against communism into a historic battle between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, Christianity and paganism. Driven by this apocalyptic vision of a world at war, grassroots anticommunist Protestants and Catholics joined forces in an uneasy alliance to battle their common enemy—communism” (p. 66–67).

134
“fire and brimstone”
Quoted in Critchlow, p. 62.

134
“Total War”
Quoted in Critchlow, p. 63.

135
the Equal Rights Amendment
My account of Schlafly's successful battle against the ERA is based on Critchlow, Chapter 9, “The ERA Battle Revives the Right,” p. 212–242, and Chapter 10, “The Triumph of the Right,” p. 243–269.

136
“basic unit of society”
Quoted in Critchlow, p. 217.

136
“it makes the libs so mad!”
Quoted in Critchlow, p. 247.

136
the consummate culture war issue
See Critchlow, p. 221: “A remarkable 98 percent of anti-ERA supporters claimed church membership, while only 31 to 48 percent of pro-ERA supporters did. Studies done at the time consistently showed that anti-ERA activists were motivated by a strong belief in the tenets of traditional religion.”

136
“We taught ‘em politics”
Quoted in Critchlow, p. 300.

137
“Nobody who is a good American is against equality”
Quoted in Critchlow, p. 252.

137
“I just don't see why some people don't hit Phyllis Schlafly in the mouth”
Quotation from Critchlow, p. 253.

137
“I would knock her into the next time zone”
Quotation from Critchlow, p. 253.

137
Hundreds turned their backs
Kavita Kumar, “Hundreds turn back on Schlafly at ceremony,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, May 16, 2008.

137
“I'm not sure they're mature enough to graduate”
Quoted in Karin Agness, “One university rebels against political correctness,” May 20, 2008, available online at
http://townhall.com/columnists/karinagness/2008/05/20/one_university_rebels_against_political_correctness/page/full/
.

137
“Much of what is taught as evolution” The Phyllis Schlafly Report
, Vol. 34, No. 8, March 2001, available online at
http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2001/mar01/psrmar01.shtml
.

138
“how to be poised and smile when attacked”
Critchlow, p. 224.

138
“effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals”
Quoted in Rick Perlstein,
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 431.

138
“liberal establishment”
Sam Tanenhaus, “The Death of Conservatism,”
Slate.com
, October 1, 2009, available online at
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_book_club/features/2009/the_death_of_conservatism/the_right_has_always_insisted_its_driven_by_ideas.html
.

140
the most convincing explanation of this occurrence
Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler,
Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

141
Lewis Powell
Quoted in Neil Gross, Thomas Medvetz, and Rupert Russell, “The Contemporary American Conservative Movement,”
Annual Review of Sociology
, 2011, vol. 37, p. 325–354.

141
hit back against liberal expertise
Conservatives created think tanks, writes Donald Critchlow, “to erect countervailing sources of power to undermine the liberal establishment. The Left had the prestigious Brookings Institution and the liberal academy to influence policy makers and public opinion, and conservatives wanted to create their own sources for what Washington insiders called “policy innovation.” Donald T. Critchlow,
The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 105.

141
“counterintellectuals”
Mark Lilla, “Zionism and the Counter-Intellectuals,” in
Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left to Right,
Anita Shapira and Derek J. Penslar, eds., London: Frank Cass, 2003, p. 77–83.

141
fighting back against the “intellectuals”
Another historian who has studied the growth of think tanks, Jason Stahl, spent months in the Library of Congress with the papers of William J. Baroody Sr., the longtime head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Based on this research, Stahl finds a very similar theme—an intellectual counter-revolution against change, and against liberal expertise. Baroody presided over the dramatically successful growth of his institute, from a staff of 18 and an annual budget of just over $ 1 million in 1970 to a staff of 150 and a budget of $ 10 million by the early 1980s. He did so by inspiring conservative and corporate funders to “break [the] monopoly” on ideas held by the left, and ensure that “the views of other competent intellectuals are given the opportunity to contend effectively in the mainstream of our country's intellectual activity.” For a lecture in which Jason Stahl describes his research, see here:
http://onthinktanks.org/2011/02/17/the-rise-of-conservative-think-tanks-in-the-u-s-marketplace-of-ideas
.

141
Lionel Trilliing
Trilling L. 1950.
The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society.
New York: Viking. Quoted in Neil Gross, Thomas Medvetz, and Rupert Russell, “The Contemporary American Conservative Movement,”
Annual Review of Sociology
, 2011, vol. 37, p. 325–354.

141
helping conservatives to construct their own reality
For the role of think tanks in organizing and supporting the conservative denial of global warming, see Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap, and Mark Freeman, “The organization of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental skepticism,”
Environmental Politics
, 17:3, p. 349–385.

142
American professors have been drifting steadily to the left
Interview with Neil Gross, April 12, 2011.

142
“the highly educated comprise a key constituency for American liberalism”
Ethan Fosse, Jeremy Freese, and Neil Gross, “Political Liberalism and Graduate School Attendance: A Longitudinal Analysis,” Working Paper, February 25, 2011. Available online at:
https://www10.arts.ubc.ca/fileadmin/template/main/images/departments/soci/faculty/gross/fosse_freese_gross_2_25.pdf
. Findings at p. 40–41.

143
Project Steve
The Steve-o-Meter can be found online at
http://ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve
.

143
“you do feel yourself kind of beleaguered in an intellectual world that's not hospitable to you”
Chris Mooney interview with David Frum and Kenneth Silber, Point of Inquiry podcast, August 1, 2011. Available online at
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/david_frum_and_kenneth_silber_conservatives_and_science/
.

144
cut from his post
For Frum's own story, see David Frum, “When did the GOP lose touch with reality?”
New York Magazine
, November 20, 2011. Available online at
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011–11/
.

145
“American culture war of fact”
Dan M. Kahan et al, “The Second National Risk and Culture Study: Making Sense of—and Making Progress in—the American Culture War of Fact,” October 3, 2007. Available online at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1017189
.