Rating
The Pequod Review:
Arnold Kling’s short book argues that conservatives, progressives and libertarians each have their own languages and frameworks for thinking about the world, and because of these fundamental differences they wind up frequently talking past one another. (More specifically, liberals see the world as a battle between victims and oppressors. Conservatives see the world as a battle between civilization and barbarism. Libertarians see the world as a battle between freedom and coercion.)
The key lesson is that we all need to be more aware of our own languages, so that we are less susceptible to our biases and less quick to dismiss those who speak in other languages. This is not exactly an original point — Alfred Korzybski and the General Semantics movement made many of these same points all the way back in the 1930s — but there is nonetheless a lot of wisdom throughout the book:
Consider three goals that a political pundit might have. One goal is to open the minds of people on the other side. Another goal might be to open the minds of people on your own side. A third goal might be to close the minds of people on your own side. Nearly all of the punditry that appears in the various media today serves only the third goal.
[...]
One of my prescriptions for constructive reasoning is to try to avoid telling yourself, “I’m reasonable, they’re not.” Instead, I would suggest the following rule of thumb. The only person you are qualified to pronounce unreasonable is yourself.
[...]
It is very unlikely that I am the one who is objective and that those who disagree with me are unreasonable. And yet my sense of my self is that I am objective. It is very difficult to reconcile logic and intuition in this regard… I think that one’s goal for others should be that they have open minds. And if that is my goal for others, then that should also be the goal that I set for myself.
Here is the full book in PDF.