I watched the bloggingheads.tv diavlog between Ann Althouse and Robert Wright last night. Ann is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a registered Democrat who has voted for Democrats all her life, and still votes for Democrats more often than not, but she voted for Bush in his second term. Her blog, which I read regularly, is not primarily political, but she does sometimes post about politics. Her political posts take liberal positions as often as they do conservative ones. She has noticed that conservative blogs link to her when she takes conservative positions and ignore her when she takes liberal ones, but the lefty blogs never link to her, no matter what she says.
On the left any deviation from the party line on any issue is grounds for excommunication, especially if it involves support for the evil Bush, but on the right there is vigorous debate on every issue from stem cells to Iraq. Thus Joe Lieberman becomes Rape-Gurney Joe, whereas Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination. Tolerance for divergent points of view is much more prevalent on the right than it is on the left. Intelligent critical analysis of the war in Iraq is much more likely to come from the right than from the left. The effect of this liberal intolerance and rigidity is to drive any liberal who has second thoughts about any aspect of the liberal laundry list into the arms of the right.
Her experience is very much like my own in my interactions with people of different political points of view, and also my observations of the changes in my own psychology in the process of moving from the left to the right. If one is a member in good standing of the left, it’s not necessarily noticeable, until that is, you change your mind about one of the liberal required ideas. I’m sure there are enclaves that exist of conservatives who only associate with other conservatives and live in a bubble where the rightness of their politics is never questioned, but I’m not aware of any, and I think it is much less common on the right than it is on the left.
As one steps out of liberal orthodoxy and is confronted with the suspicion and anger and rejection that ensues, it is a revelation. You lose a lot of friends, but there is an exhilarating feeling of mental freedom as you realize that now you can think whatever you like. This is not conjecture. This is the truth of my own personal experience, and it is the reported experience of a great many other people who have gone through a similar process. Once you deviate from the party line on any single seminal liberal issue, the war, abortion, the environment, gay marriage, affirmative action, school vouchers, corporate perfidy, campaign finance reform, gun control, the capital gains or inheritance tax, military recruitment on campus — the look of horror and mistrust on the faces of your associates triggers the beginning of the slow, painful process of leaving the cult.
It is a shocking and enlightening experience. And then you discover that most people who call themselves conservatives are not the demons you thought they were. There is a willingness to debate and disagree and think about important issues. It is very liberating. My theory about why this is so is that the difference between the left and the right is the difference between a semi-religious belief in utopianism and a mature understanding that, as my father was fond of saying, people are no damn good. And they will always be no damn good. It is the obsession with a futureperfect world that closes the fevered, liberal mind, and it is an acknowledgment of the imperfection of all things that humbles the conservative mind.
I realize these are gross (imperfect) generalizations, and that there are many apposite examples on both sides, but I do believe that this is the fuzzy line that divides the polity. The reason the Democratic Party seems so bereft of new ideas about Iraq or social security or taxation or educational reform, etc. is because the psychology and rigid, politically correct peer pressure of the left cripples the mind. I know many don’t agree, and I am aware that I am an imperfect vessel, but I think I am pretty much right about this.