Contra Hanania and Alexander On Partisanship

Well, sort of contra.

The discussion of Conquest’s second law, that every organization that is not explicitly right wing will eventually become left wing, has seen two interesting posts in the last few months or so from Richard Hanania with Scott Alexander responding. Both try to explain the shift through two different mechanisms, but I think they are both a bit wrong.

Hanania argues that everything is so liberal (by which he means leftist, not liberal the way the non-US part of the world tends to use the term) because the American left just cares more about politics than the American right.¹** He provides data that Democrats donate more money individually and as groups than Republicans, find it harder to have friends that don’t agree with them politically, and chase after jobs that are less highly paid but offer more idealism or political influence type payouts. Republicans just have other interests than politics, so politics (whether national or within an organization) will be dominated by Democrats.

Alexander does not necessarily disagree with Hanania’s point about caring, but thinks the real underlying issue is that the US has moved from the elite/masses axis of interest to a more educated/wealthy axis over time. Essentially, in the past the elites ganged up against the masses, but now some elites gang up with some masses against other elites and their allied masses. The educated elites tend to be those selected for institutions, and so, being leftist as it turns out, tend to run those institutions. Why are the more educated more leftist? Well… he doesn’t say. In Alexander’s defense, he is leaning heavily on Thomas Piketty’s new book for data and analysis, so he is leaning on a lot of hand waving and vaugaries if Piketty’s previous book is anything to go by. Maybe I shouldn’t bring that up as a defense… Scott, don’t take Piketty seriously, please, he is a hack.

Scott does make a very good point that a lot of coalition in the US comes from sort of a shifting alliance of “The X want a, so we Y’s must want b!” As Bryan Caplan put it, the American left is anti-markets, and the right is anti-left. If you principles boil down to “don’t be like those guys”, you are going to see a lot of swirl in your national political alignments.

All in all, I don’t think either Hanania or Alexander are exactly wrong, but both miss two important points that tie their views together to explain both. Firstly, both ignore the content of the ideologies of the political left and right in the US, treating both as equally likely to encourage the pursuit of power by the average voter. Secondly, Scott in particular doesn’t ask why more educated people lean left so hard, or why people on the left seek out more education, or even question the dynamic there.

Ideology: What is good and right?

Looking at ideology, I am going to make the claim that the American left (here distinct from Democrats, although highly overlapping), perhaps best described as progressives whether from 1920 or 2020, see the use of political power or coercion to change people’s behavior as acceptable and even desirable, whereas the American right (distinct from Republicans in the same way) see is as much less acceptable or desirable. I am not talking here about the political elites, who pretty much always seem to want to use power more rather than less, but rather the voters, the normal people who register with a D or R on their cards but don’t run for office, whether they are rich or poor.

The left, a very large group containing Democrats, Communists, Socialists, Greens, what have you, tends toward the following organizing principle: we should find experts in every realm and put them in charge instead of letting people do whatever random thing seems like a good idea at the time, and these experts will make things go better. This has been the defining theme of the left for the last 100 years or so, and probably at least 400 (see Thomas Leonard’s “Illiberal Reformers”), more so than labor unions, race issues, anti-war or anything else. Experts need to be in charge to make sure people don’t do stupid things.

The right, a very large group containing Republicans, Libertarians, and… well those two at least… tends towards the following organizing principle: lets not do what the left wants. Often this takes the shape of “Let’s not have someone in charge here at all” for those of more libertarian bent, or “Let’s have our experts in charge, or none if we can’t swing that” for some Republicans.

This tension is underplayed in the US, but is very important. While there have been small government Republicans and big government Republicans, when was the last small government Democrat? 1912? Woodrow Wilson definitely killed off that part of the party. Since the rise of the administrative state in the early 20th century, the left has been in favor of increasing governmental power and regulation, while the right has been torn between supporting and opposing government power.

Note that what the power is used for, or what those experts propound, is very much secondary here. Modern Democrats seem unaware of what the early 20th century progressives were up to, yet continue to use the moniker. They are correct to do so. Modern wokism’s beef with early 20th century progressivism’s forced sterilization of minority women is not whether government should be allowed to do such a thing, merely the choice of target. The principle that humanity is perfectable by experts with sufficient power is fully embraced by both. That early 20th century progressivism was quite literally the child of preachers’ kids should also come as no surprise.

The content of the left’s ideology, that power can and should be used to force humans to be better and create some sort of expert ruled utopia, is exactly what makes the left more interested in politics. Politics is exactly the avenue for gaining the power to force your views and beliefs on others in America (for their own good, of course). If our times gave warlords the desired power you would see the American left joining militias instead of political clubs, but here we are. If the only thing preventing us from achieving Heaven on Earth is grasping political power and using it, we are obligated and exalted for doing so, no matter how little power it is.

Those whose ideology does not hold that power can or should be used to perfect humans and create utopia are not going to be so interested in politics. If the operational form of your philosophy is “Leave people alone to live their lives as they see fit” you are not going to be willing to trade much for power. Unfortunately, you are also going to tend to be ruled by those who are so willing.

Why are leftists so educated?

There are two aspects here that I think are important: why do people who already lean left get so much more education, and why does education seem to correlate so highly with being leftist.

The simple answer to the first question is this: Experts should rule. If you believe that someone must rule, and that someone should be an expert, and you want power to make the world a better place, well, you had better do what it takes to be considered an expert. If experts are defined by having lots of educational credentials, then that’s what will be desired and pursued.

Note the following graph from Statistica on the number of PhDs by field in the US, 2018/2019

The first two are Health and Legal professions, but the third… education? In fact, the squishy fields of education, psychology, and social sciences and history represent about as many PhDs as engineering, biomed, and physical sciences. If you think those getting PhDs in the squishy fields are in it for the money and not the “expert” status, well, consider this chart from Michigan State University. Note that PhDs often see a drop in median income compared to a professional degree in the same field.²

So, if people who already lean left because of their beliefs about power and human nature are going to want to become experts and thus get more education that explains part of the issue. Seemingly in Hananian’s favor, sort of, since it cleaves to the “leftists care more about politics” explanation. Alexander is not wrong that there are plenty of educated people who are also wealthy, and so didn’t obviously give up a high paying job for political clout, however. And it isn’t as though those engineers, biomed and physical sciences people are all sporting “Charlton Heston is My President” t-shirts. Lots of people who are educated, both nominally and in fact, seem to lean left even if they don’t do so just to become the experts who get to rule. So why does being more educated correlate so highly with leftism?

Because in the United States, being educated means leaning to the left. The American left has been explicit in its goal to control the K-12 education system and has largely succeeded. Lenin was taken seriously when he said “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Now give Lenin 13+ years and imagine how many seeds the modern school system sows. Those seeds apparently don’t include much math or reading…

Looking at it another way, being smart or good at school is defined as knowing what the teacher tells you you need to know. If what the teachers tell you for years on end is the standard leftist indoctrination of CRT, wokeism, environmentalism, the 1619 Project or whatever, that is going to form the baseline of what is “true” and thus what smart people think. Sure, many kids are going to get information from home pushing in the opposite direction, but a lot of that stuff is going to stick. Parents can’t go over ever sentence the teachers’ spout to correct for their biases, and honestly most parents probably can’t present, or their children fully grasp, a cogent and definitive argument against the unending indoctrination at school. Besides, you are going to be able to past a test on that indoctrination, indoctrination the teachers themselves are likely entirely unaware of because they think it is right and true themselves!

So yes, people who spend more time in indoctrination camps will tend to be more indoctrinated than those who don’t. Especially since those who are inclined against the grain of the indoctrination are likely to find the first exit they can.

Thus, contra Scott (and Piketty just to be sure), more educated people control institutions because they are more leftist, and they are more leftist partially because they spent more time being educated.

The key point here is to separate what we call education from any idea of “learning true things”; at best years of education in the data translates to years of butt in a seat regurgitating things. If nothing else, the American school system holds as a point of faith that if you know enough you can fix anything wrong with the world. If only those evil mouth breathers would get out of your way and let you create utopia, already.

In Conclusion… I am not really disagreeing with either Hanania or Alexander, but violently reconciling them by pointing out that they are both wrong about the underlying causes. It isn’t just merely happenstance that the American left cares more about politics; desiring to have and exercise power is practically the defining feature of the left. And it isn’t just that the educated elites tend to be leftists, but rather that leftists want to be educated elites (experts) and that American education tends to indoctrinate people to be more leftist.

If you find yourself wondering why the hell everything seems to have gone hard left in the past 10 years, the answer is that our schools have been teaching kids to be hard left for the past 100. The seeds Lenin has sown are fully grown.

1. I am going to use Democrats and Republicans here as a stand in for “leftists” and “rightists.” Partially because “rightists” seems really awkward, and also because for most purposes left and right is basically code for “Democrat” or “Republican” in the USA.

2. In the squishy fields the incomes are generally lower overall. Psychology might not be a squishy field in some sense, but does seem to pay well. It is worth noting, however, that every year about as many psychology students are graduated than there are psychology jobs in total. Apparently more become K-12 school teachers than work in the field.