How Can We Break Our Addiction to Contempt? (Ep. 478)
Arthur Brooks is an economist who for 10 years ran the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the world. He has come to believe there is only one weapon that can defeat our extreme political polarization: love. Is Brooks a fool for thinking this — and are you perhaps his kind of fool? Listen and follow our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. * * *
The person I’m speaking with today is named Arthur Brooks.
The latent-demand strategy that Brooks mentioned — that’s the kind of thinking employed by entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs.
And what are we addicted to? Contempt. That’s his argument, at least. Now, who is Arthur Brooks, and why should we be listening to him? We’ll get into his full bio later but, briefly: before teaching leadership at Harvard, he ran the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most prominent conservative think tanks in the country. Before that, he was an economics professor. And, before that, a professional French horn player. So he’s already had several careers — and an unusual trajectory, which has led him to an unusual belief. Arthur Brooks believes that the best way to detoxify American politics — maybe the only way — is with love.
And how is this love offensive working so far?
Today on Freakonomics Radio: can love really conquer all? Is Arthur Brooks a fool for believing it can? And are you maybe his kind of fool? * * * Let’s say you are a bright, ambitious, civic-minded kid, in middle school maybe. And you’re considering a career in government, perhaps in Congress. So you tune in one day to see what’s happening on the House floor.
You find two representatives: Cedric Richmond of Louisiana --
— and Matt Gaetz of Florida --
— having the sort of high-minded debate our Founding Fathers must have envisioned.
Arthur Brooks again.
But surveys suggest that most of us hate this noise.
Brooks is referring to a 2018 survey run by an international group called More in Common, which tries to build stronger communities and fight polarization. Now, we shouldn’t pretend that political polarization is new; it’s more of a feature than a bug in many political systems. You can find incredible nastiness if you go back a century in American politics or a couple millennia in Roman politics. The current American polarization has been building for a while now. Here’s an example: in the 1960’s, only 42 percent of votes in the U.S. Senate were party-unity votes — that is, votes in which the majority of Republicans opposed the majority of Democrats, or vice versa. By the 2010’s, that number had risen to 63 percent. Here’s some more data to consider: in 1935, the Social Security Act was passed with 90 percent Democratic support and 75 percent Republican support. So — not unanimous, but united. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed with just 60 percent Democratic support but, again, 75 percent Republican. If you look at the major legislation passed in recent years, however, it’s a different story. ObamaCare made it through Congress with zero Republican votes. President Trump’s 2018 tax-reform bill made it through with zero Democratic votes. This political partisanship is clearly echoed in the public. Consider how people think about the media. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 83 percent of Democrats trusted information from national news organizations, along with 70 percent of Republicans. Today, 78 percent of Democrats still trust the major media but Republican trust in just a few years dropped from 70 percent to 35 percent. So, how did we get here? What’s been driving this intense spike in division and partisanship?
We should say: the number of people who actually binge on M.S.N.B.C., or the other cable-news networks, is relatively small. M.S.N.B.C. averages about 1.3 million viewers during primetime — not so many in a country of around 330 million. Fox News, the biggest cable news network, averages just over 2 million; C.N.N. is under a million. This one episode of Freakonomics Radio will be heard by more people than that. But the noise from the cable-news networks — the nearly constant volley of contempt — that noise reverberates, like someone shouting into a canyon. It disrupts any chance of peace you might have hoped for. So, how does Arthur Brooks propose to restore the peace?
And what does this all mean — if anything — for the future of politics?
* * * If I told you there was a public intellectual, a conservative, who wanted to fight political polarization and contempt with love — and that this person was trained in economics — you might not believe me. Economists are about supply and demand, costs and benefits — not love. But Arthur Brooks is not a typical economist.
Brooks grew up just outside Seattle. His mother was an artist, his father a math professor. Arthur started playing violin when he was four, and piano at five.
He spent the next 10 years playing French horn professionally, the last several with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra.
It worked. That woman, Ester Munt, now Ester Munt-Brooks, is still his wife. But his musical career didn’t last as long.
After his Ph.D., Brooks became a college professor, first at Georgia State and then Syracuse. He would spend 10 years in academia. He focused his research on philanthropy, primarily the motives that lead people to donate money. Out of this research came his first book, in 2006. It was called Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.
That’s Arthur Brooks. What do you think: does the love and warm-heartedness he prescribes stand a chance against the contempt machine that seems to be running our country? * * * Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Ryan Kelley. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Joel Meyer, Tricia Bobeda, Zack Lapinski, Mary Diduch, Emma Tyrrell, Lyric Bowditch, Jasmin Klinger, Eleanor Osborne, and Jacob Clemente. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; the rest of the music this week was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode: SOURCE
RESOURCES
EXTRA
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