Dissecting the Roots of Political Tribalism: Bridging Divides with Mike Anderson

Discover what happens when political allegiances turn into tribal warfare in our society, with insights from historian and political analyst Mike Anderson. As we navigate through the murky waters of political tribalism, Mike, with his IT acumen and passion for history, helps us understand the corrosive effects it has on our democracy and social fabric. Together, we examine the importance of bridging divides and engaging in critical thinking, rather than blind loyalty to political factions.

We tackle the tough conversations around our political differences and how they can lead to social progress. Language plays a pivotal role in debates such as gun safety, with the potential to unite or divide us. We consider how our political leanings shape our relationships and delve into the psychology and genetics that mold our political orientations. Understanding this delicate balance between change and stability is key, and we explore how education and collaboration can guide us toward solutions that transcend our current political impasse. Join us as we encourage a deeper intellectual engagement in politics for the betterment of our nation.

If you like reading about history, debating politics, delving into what makes people "tick," or just want to understand how civilization has gotten to this point, you'll enjoy these books by Michael Anderson.

The Progressive Gene, How Genetics Influences the Morality of the Left
Tribalism: The Curse of 21st Century America
The Conservative Gene, How Genetics Shape the Complex Morality of Conservatives

For conflict resolution, read: Holding the Calm by Hesha Abrams

Mentioned in this episode: The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukainoff and Jonathan

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You know, regardless of political affiliation. I think we all would agree or at least I hope that we all would agree that some political identification and engagement is normal in a democratic society. But excessive tribalism, that's not normal and it can have several negative consequences. I had the opportunity to speak with Mike Anderson, who is a historian and a political analyst. He focuses on contemporary American politics and its problems. Among those problems is the issue of political tribalism individuals to align themselves with a particular political group or ideology and then engage in behaviors that prioritize the interests of their group over the common good. Now why is this a problem? Why would this be a problem? We all have our team right. Well, the problem is it does lead to increased polarization within our society. When individuals become overly attached to their political tribe, they tend to view those outside of their group as adversaries rather than fellow citizens, enemies rather than colleagues, enforces confirmation bias, and it encourages individuals to seek out information and opinions that align with their pre-existing beliefs, while dismissing contradictory evidence. Tribalism also fosters hostility and incivility in public discourse, and if you have known me for some time, or if you've followed me for some time, you know that I absolutely abhor that. Incivility in public discourse is not something that I take lightly, and I don't care if you disagree with what someone else is saying. I don't care if you're offended by their speech. Reacting by trying to prevent an alternate viewpoint from being expressed, by shouting them down or even sometimes through violent means, that wholeheartedly undermines the fabric of civil society. Tribalism erodes trust. It erodes trust in institutions like our government, our schools, the media, our judicial system and when we have an eroded trust in those institutions, it weakens the foundation of our democracy and the rule of law. And ultimately, when individuals prioritize loyalty to their tribe over objective analysis, critical thinking, evidence-based decision-making and policy-making, our society suffers the consequences. We can and we should engage in constructive dialogue with those who hold different political views from ourselves. This is the basis for my discussion with Mike in this week's episode and I hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Welcome to the Communication 24-7 podcast, where we communicate about how we communicate. I'm your host, jennifer Furlong, so y'all know season four. I've decided I want to narrow the focus. Of course, we always talk about communication topics, but we're in an election year and it's a big election year. Super Tuesday was just a couple of days ago and I don't know if we'll get into that in this conversation, but it is one of the most important topics of the day. We have all kinds of things that we can talk about that related to elections and politics and government and all of those things the division that exists within our society and the connection between that and media. We have a whole host of things that we are talking about this season.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Today. I am so incredibly excited to be able to introduce my next guest, because this is going to be a topic I think all of us will have plenty of opinions. Let's see who are we talking to today on the show. Well, mike, he has been writing about politics since 2005, so he does have a historical perspective to this, which I'm really excited to be able to pick his brain about that as well. His focus is political morality, which, on his bio, is described as the beliefs people have about how government should be run and yeah, I know we have a lot of opinions about how we think government should be run. Specifically, I want to talk to him about the idea of America being in a tribalist state. So how is tribalism having a negative impact on our democracy? So, mike, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show agreeing to let me pick your brain. And yeah, I'm just excited for this conversation we're going to have.

Speaker 2: 5:33

Thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Before we dive into the several different topics that we're going to get into today, would you mind just taking a few moments to introduce yourself to the listeners? What's your background? How did you get to where you are today with writing about politics?

Speaker 2: 5:54

I am a career IT guy. I mean I have an undergraduate degree in engineering and a PhD in computer science, so I've spent a long career in IT. But I've always been very interested in history. I've read a lot of history and so that it's intrigued me, because I've always felt like if you look at history you can learn about the present. And I have a blog, actually, and the subtitle on the blog is history has already happened. The present has already happened, because if you look back at history, you can see the same things happening over and over again. So I started writing again.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Having the time in my life to transition, to get some space to do some writing was in, you know, 2003 or 4, and I started writing about history.

Speaker 2: 6:47

And then I actually wrote a novel about the Roman Republic. I got very interested in ancient history because I was intrigued with the connection between it and the present day, because I think the average citizen thinks well, the Romans and the Greeks were barbarians and their society was unsophisticated and crude and all that which is not true. I mean it's basically, if the Romans would have had mass production, their society would have been a pretty good facsimile to ours today. In fact, mass production started here probably in 1820 or something. So you could say that the Roman Republic was equal to, maybe, the United States up to that point. But the sort of epiphany for me was I always had this question about why are the left and right so different? Why is there no agreement on the direction of politics? And it came together when I read Jonathan Haidt's book I don't know if you ever heard of it the Righteous Mind yes, published in 2012.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Excellent book.

Speaker 2: 7:59

And it was a tremendous experience for me because Haidt was the first one to define the behavioral differences between the left and right in a way that makes sense, so that stimulated me to start my books. Took a couple of years to get that going, but I published the first book, the Progressive Gene, in 2017. And basically what that's about is a genetic basis for left behavior and why the left behaves the way it does. And, of course, I plan to write a companion book called the Conservative Gene after that. But in the middle of the Trump administration, I got into this tribalism thing, so I threw a book on tribalism in between, published that in 2019, tribalism the Curse of 21st Century America. Then I went back to the conservative gene, published that in 21. Basically, the psychology of conservatives and why they behave the way they do.

Speaker 2: 8:58

The fourth book came out last September September 28th. It's called Twilight of the American Experiment. Without Moral Balance, our Republic Will Fall, and it's really about the imbalance in the communication systems here the fact that the left really controls higher education, traditional media and social media and how that gives a one-sided impression to the public about facts in our lives and the news, and I'm arguing for a better balance. There needs to be more of an even balance in information transfer to the public so the public can make more objective decisions about what's right and wrong. So and let me also, I think it's appropriate to talk about my own personal political beliefs, because I don't want people trying to guess where I stand and, depending on where I stand, shutting the podcast off.

Speaker 1: 9:58

You know they will.

Speaker 2: 10:01

Well, I'm a conservative genetically, which is different from being a Republican. So I mean we can't talk about, if you want, the genetic basis for these behaviors, but I'm a conservative genetically, so I tend to embrace the status quo, or at least a slower move into the future than others do. Politically I'm a moderate. I do not. I'm sort of anti-ideology, because I think ideologies are traps.

Speaker 2: 10:35

And with the tribalism we're stuck in ideological traps now where we have one group on the extreme left, one group on the extreme right. That are the ideologues and it's shocking to understand that in each of those groups it's about 8 million people. So there are 16 million people completely controlling the government and the narrative of the operation of our country, which is wrong. And part of the reason they control that is because they are more vocal than non-ideologues, for example, independents, who don't really there's no ideological focus that they get excited about. They believe things on both sides, so they're neutral. So they're neutral. But unfortunately the media trumpets the extreme views because it really prefocused and scripted to create an impression on us.

Speaker 1: 12:01

It's not just reading the news. It's coloring the news, which is a negative. So much to get into with what you have just described over the past couple of minutes, and I do appreciate that you took the time to explain the differences between how you view yourself genetically as a conservative, versus what does that mean? Versus being a Republican. I am also conservative. I've been a registered Republican since I can remember and I've always felt more just describing the division that is happening.

Speaker 1: 13:00

I very much think it's so important to surround yourself with people who do not necessarily share the exact same beliefs that you have, because you don't know where your own blind spots are. And I think that's what kinds of names online. Of course, the premier nickname that some people have called me is Rhino. Because of that whole, like you were talking about, the very loud small percentage who gets all of the attention, and it seems to be augmented on social media as well as through even just legacy media to an extent, because it's getting the clicks, it's getting the advertising, it's getting the attention. How do you make sure that, when you're doing your research, that you are mitigating your own bias in that way? Because I think that's a challenge for all of us, especially when we're very clear about you know, I know what my beliefs are all of us, especially when we're very clear about you know.

Speaker 1: 14:06

I know what my beliefs are. How do you mitigate?

Speaker 2: 14:10

that when you're doing the research for all of these books that you've written? Great question. First of all, I'm an academic because I have a PhD, so I'm academically trained to do research that is fact-based. That's number one and I owe my responsibility to my readers and people that hear my views to present both sides. You know I talk about sometimes as an engineer. You know I have the personality of an engineer because I'm left brain driven to practical solutions. What engineers do is design things that work, and we don't like designing things that don't work. So I don't care which political side dumb ideas come from, they're still dumb ideas. I believe in the government has to function for the good of the American people and if there are obstacles to its function, those are not good. Those obstacles need to try to overcome that genetic basis. Clearly there's a problem?

Speaker 1: 15:29

Clearly we have a problem and everybody is just kind of digging in. It feels like, okay, we've dug this hole and instead of trying to get ourself out of it, we're just going to dig in even further. How do we overcome the tendencies that we have to go toward the left or the right?

Speaker 2: 15:49

Great question. That's kind of the last chapter of my tribalism book talking about that. Are you familiar with organizations, grassroots organizations, that are springing up now to deal with tribalism, for example Braver Angels? Are you?

Speaker 1: 16:06

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 16:06

Yeah, okay. In the last chapter of my tribalism book I talked about three ways to end tribalism. The first way I don't want to see happen, which is something like 9-11, because if there's any event that threatens all Americans, we would come together in a minute, you know, like Pearl Harbor, for example, because it's us against them, and at that point tribalism would seem inconsequential compared to whatever might happen. Now. I thought COVID was going to be the answer, because when COVID started this is perfect because we'll come together as a nation to treat this disease and eradicate it and we'll be fine Didn't happen because tribalism was already running and the COVID pandemic became tribal, it became political. And so that's what really started the red state, blue state thing, because blue states were more aggressive on shutdowns than red states. And part of that is the personalities involved, because conservatives tend to be. They adhere to freedom more than people on the left. Freedom is a big thing, yeah, so conservatives will not allow themselves to be controlled by others to the extent that they think their lives are stifled. So you know, that's why the red states came out more quickly than the blue states did. But again, it was still political and unfortunately the government was weaponized. Both the CBC and the HHS departments were politically weaponized and a lot of unfortunate results came from that. But putting that aside for a minute. So my other two ideas about the end of tribalism are one everybody quits doing it because of fatigue, and that is a possibility.

Speaker 2: 18:20

I use the example in all the podcasts I'm on about how tribalism has divided families. I can't tell you how the podcasts I'm on about how tribalism has divided families. I can't tell you how many people I've talked about. Uncle Fred doesn't come at Thanksgiving anymore because he's a Trump supporter. That is appalling to me because I've studied enough psychology and in my writings about moral capital, that's one of my main themes in writing. The important groups in human society that keep humans together family, local community, your neighbors, your moral community, like your religion and patriotism those are all tightening effects on human behavior. Family is the tightest. Nothing is as important as your family, your siblings, your children, whoever.

Speaker 2: 19:14

And to imagine that families break up because one or more members have a political difference in point of view astounds me. I mean I don't know what that says. Whether the psychology of the echo chamber is more attractive than the family I, you know it's hard to explain. So whether the fatigue thing sets in or not. But zeitgeist is kind of the change over time in the belief system of a culture, and it tends to run every 10 or 20 years and then peters out and then something, either internally or externally, changes the culture. Don't know if that will happen.

Speaker 2: 20:04

The most likely thing I think that may happen is a grassroots effort to stop it. I don't think the politicians want to stop it because they use it to their advantage. So we can't expect and politicians only represent what the people believe anyway. They don't have independent thoughts. They do whatever they have to do to be elected. So we're going to have to do it ourselves.

Speaker 2: 20:32

And the way and you asked about advice, the way I think of it is you have to get people on the left and people on the right together, ones who are willing to get together, because some aren't willing to even do that. I think they resist that because they really don't know why they're in the tribe. They're in Because if you know why, then it would seem like you want to talk about it and validate it. Right, so you know their validation is lacking. But we need to get people together, like in the case of Braver Angels to accomplish two things. Number one, you have to understand that the people on the other side are still good people. They're evil or Nazis or fascists or whatever they are, and you have to talk to people to understand they're not. And the second thing is an exchange of points of view about politics, because both sides have good points in their political beliefs. They're not entirely irrational.

Speaker 2: 21:40

So if you sit down and talk about gun control, for example, use me as a case. I believe that some of the things that the left wants implemented are sound. I mean, there's no reason in my mind why a mentally ill person should be able to buy a gun. That's laid out. Now. I argue that all the things the left wants to do, if implemented, I'd love it if we could wave a magic wand, implement them, because we would see that they don't fix the problem. The problem is much deeper than some laws and of course the NRA argues that if you put all these laws in, you're really hamstringing legitimate gun owners who are honest and law-abiding. So anyway, but if you can get people together to talk about their points of view, I think each side would find out there are some valid points on the other side and maybe bring the temperature of the discussion down as a result.

Speaker 1: 22:50

Let's take a time out for some recommended reading. Check out the book Tribalism the Curse of 21st Century America by my guest, mike Anderson, where he analyzes the current tribal state in the United States. Mike explores several factors that have contributed to the issue of tribalism, including the left's search for a new ideology after the failure of socialism, the emergence of postmodernism as a philosophical system, the erosion of moral traditions and the polarization of politics. In this book, he argues that these forces, acting together, create instability and uncertainty in our political system. Tribalism the curse of 21st century America will not only teach you about tribalism, what it is, where it came from and where it's going, but also explores possible ways to defeat tribalism and why getting the American public to talk again is vital. Get your copy today at communication247.com slash podcast. That's wwwcommunication247.com forward slash podcast. Those are some excellent points and a couple of things I wanted to add to that.

Speaker 1: 24:03

I was a media analyst for a number of years, analyst for a number of years, and the division that has been occurring for some time that's being driven by a lot of the narratives that exist within the media, both on the hyper-partisan left as well as the hyper-partisan right. When people ask how can they believe that when you were talking about COVID and how COVID ended up being politicized despite the fact that everybody needed to be concerned about what was happening, the way it was playing out through the different types of media hardcore far left-leaning person or a hardcore far right-leaning person you were reading two completely different narratives of what was going on during COVID. If you were to really focus on the hyper-partisan left-leaning media, there was a high probability that you were going to read an article that was focusing on raw numbers, the millions of people that have died or the millions of people who have gotten sick, and this is why we need to be concerned about this. And then in the hyper-partisan right-leaning media, it was that the probability of you reading those raw numbers, that the whole numbers, it was going to be minimal. It was all about yeah, and there's a 90 something percent survival rate, and within this age group, there is a 98 percent survival rate among children. And so when the question is, how can you even look at it that way? How can you believe it? Why are you thinking that way? Well, look at what you're reading. If you're not expanding what you're looking at and then having those conversations, like you were just saying with others who are reading things that come across. You know, the narrative is different from what you're reading. Of course, you're going to look at it from two completely different points of view and you're going to have two completely different understandings of what is actually going on, and somewhere in the middle of all, that is what the actual truth is. What are the facts? And it is possible both are correct. Yeah, millions of people were dying and, yes, it had a very high survival rate. That was a case where it is possible, two things can be true at the same time. What are we ignoring, though, at our own peril? You know, that was just something that I realized as a media analyst. It was really interesting to see how the data would be used in order to continue that narrative on the both sides, and you mentioned gun control.

Speaker 1: 26:51

I agree, I think the vast majority of conservatives like myself. You know, I'm a gun owner and I believe in responsible gun ownership and I'm a huge proponent of gun safety. And I'm willing to bet if the language, if the language was changed just slightly and instead of saying gun control, which the conservatives, you know, the hackles get up because now you're talking about control. But if you were to reframe it, okay, let's focus on gun safety. This is really at the core of the issue. I think a lot more conservatives would be open to having that conversation, because responsible gun owners know why gun safety is so important.

Speaker 1: 27:36

Those are just a couple of observations that I've had, you know, just with the language and then the data, that would be the focus of these different articles that I would read.

Speaker 1: 27:47

You know, throughout the course of several months, whenever these topics, you know, they get kind of brought up again and it's a hot flash and then it kind of goes underground again every few months. It's just interesting from that perspective how language, and then how the language focuses what you're going to pay attention to, has a profound impact on on your perception and how you go about talking about these things and who you agree to talk about them with Right. A third thing that you made me think of when you were talking about you know, families are now unwilling to speak to one another just because of their political beliefs. It's actually starting before the family now. I mean even within dating circles. I've seen so many people out there that are like liberal need not apply, right, conservative need not apply. I'm not even interested in going out on a date with you because I already know that we're not going to get along.

Speaker 2: 28:54

I heard a poll or read a poll on that recently, and there's certainly the extreme ideologues when they see the political party of the person who pops up, cancel. But then a large majority say that their political orientation is maybe priority number five or six for me, because if you can't prioritize nice person, friendly, affectionate, good family above that, then you've got problems.

Speaker 1: 29:26

That's right yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Let me take a minute, if you don't mind, and talk about the differences between left and right, because there's the genetic basis for it. You know, as I told you, I've written about I don't know how much psychology you've had, but there's a the standard method of evaluating the differences in personalities is called the big five. Have you heard of the big five? Okay so, and those are behavioral traits that are that you can catalog for an individual and, you know, put them in a box based on their ratings and it kind of shows, you know, extrovert versus introvert. And those are the generally accepted personality traits that describe an individual. But there's also the political morality side, which Jonathan Haidt brought out, and basically the differences between left and right have existed for 100,000 years. This isn't a new thing. In fact their brains are different and what happened was it's a behavioral spectrum that appeared to help man adapt to heterogeneous environments. And basically people on the left are more open to change and they like things that are new, and so in an environment where there was a food shortage, they had a particular motivation and skill to go out and find food, whereas the people on the right are more circumspect. Rather than openness, their primary personality trait is conscientiousness, and so they prefer to well, they're better at, in a large food supply and ecosystem, managing the food supply that was there versus finding new. So you can imagine how food supply that was there versus finding new. So you can imagine how people could work together. Now, obviously, the extremes are at the ends and there are people in the middle that share both points of view. But the fact that there are extremes provide motivation in one case or another to how the tribe should operate. So and I mentioned this brain thing parts of the brain that you would expect to highlight conservatism are more advanced in conservatives than they are in liberals, and I'm talking about the amygdala, and I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but that's the part of the brain that controls fight versus flight, and conservatives are more cautious, which is part of the reason why they prefer status quo. They're more circumspect. People on the left are part of their brain that enjoys complex decision-making. They like having different decisions to make or different options, and they enjoy that. They like traveling more than conservatives do. They like things that are new. So these are things that are genetic. You know they're not 100% genetic, obviously, maybe half genetic and part behavioral, but there are real differences between them.

Speaker 2: 32:47

So, in order to stop tribalism, each side has to understand what's different about the other side, and so what we see most obviously across our society is the left wanting to move too fast and the right wanting to slow down the pace. Because Biden got elected as a moderate and, to many people's surprise, he turned into a progressive. Yeah, and I don't know whether it's a deal he made or just his inclination, his age, but he's pushed the left narrative way to the left, which is alarming to the right because it's moving too fast. For example, the world's going to end in 2035 unless we're off fossil fuels. I mean, let's get some logical thinking behind that instead of you know, the sky is falling attitude.

Speaker 2: 33:44

So there's this constant thing. It's always been there with the and conservatives don't mind change. I think that's definitely true. They just they want to understand the reasons behind the pace for change, right? So and that's part and conservatives should understand the right. I mean, if I use the example of my book, if the ancient tribe would have been all progressives, they probably all would have been killed because they took too many risks, whereas if they were all conservative, they would never go hunting and starve to death. Right, that's the point of having a spectrum of I call it political morality because it's your belief about how a government should operate as you said.

Speaker 2: 34:30

You know, progressives and liberals believe in equality. That's their number one driver out of Height's research. So they're driven to create a environment or a political system of equality as part of their. That's their political morality. People on the right accept the fact that human society can be hierarchical. They don't believe in equality per se because they believe that individuals have different capabilities and humans fall into a hierarchical organization. You know, once it gets above 10 or 20 people, because people have different skills and different aptitudes and those are complementary.

Speaker 1: 35:21

Yeah, I think that's such an important point, you know, and again it goes back to the language. You know, as a conservative, I know I very much believe in equality of opportunity, right, everybody should have the opportunity. If that's what you want to do, you go do it. That's what you want to study, that's what you want to create, that's what, whatever it is, you should have those opportunities. The equality of opportunity. I think where we start getting into those disagreements is when the left is talking about equality of outcomes and I think, as a conservative, we're very much like.

Speaker 1: 35:55

But that's impossible Because, like you said, we all have different strengths, different abilities, different desires. You know, I know I tend to be more of a workaholic compared to some other people that I know, and so that's going to naturally have an impact on the outcomes. You know we're going to have different outcomes for that reason, and so I think if we were able to have conversations like this across the board, a lot of light bulbs would be able to go off and then recognize you know, we we do need to have these differences. I mean, you're right, we we do need to be able to be creative and have new ideas, and we need to expand. We need, we need progress. That's exactly how we've been able to move forward throughout history. At the same time, we also need someone who's able to pump the brakes a little bit and say okay, hold on, wait a minute. Let's think about this for a second. Is that a good idea? Is that really a good idea? Let's think about this the pros and cons and weigh this out a little bit.

Speaker 2: 37:01

I'm going to tell you something I think is very profound and it didn't come from me, but I'm working on my fifth book now, which is going to come out this fall, and the title of the book is America's Counterfeit Democracy, basically, where I'm going to take the position or do take the position that the country is actually controlled by a power elite alliance between wealthy families and corporations, basically and you can, you know I'm arguing back and forth in the book, but part of the book is talking about the definition of a democracy, the history of democracies, do we really have a democracy? Et cetera. But there's an academic named Robert Dahl who wrote the definitive book on the history of democracy. He's a very well-respected professor. I think this book came out in 1987.

Speaker 2: 37:55

But he talks about very profoundly the issue of what kind of laws can you put in a democracy as far as equality goes? And the point of that is, if you can't define something, you can't put it in a democracy. And so if you're going to say things like every person deserves to have the same goods or the same funds, or the same goods or the same funds or the same not opportunity but outcome, you have to be able to define what that is. Problem is, you can't do it, because who's going to decide what equality is for you, jennifer? Is it some bureaucrat, is it a politician, is it you or is it somebody else? Is it you or is it somebody else? And the fact that there is no way for an individual group of individuals to define happiness for a large group, because the needs of the group vary. You can't enshrine that in politics or law.

Speaker 1: 39:05

I want to follow that up with a question. This is something that we hear a lot. You hear the term democracy and then within conservative circles you'll hear well, we're not a democracy, we're a republic. Would you mind taking a moment and just talking about even that differentiation, right there within conservative, the conservative circle, of our beliefs, of what it means to have a democracy versus what does it mean to have a republic? And I don't know if you have lot Particular differentiation very deeply, but where is that coming from?

Speaker 2: 39:49

Okay. So the history is that the Greeks invented democracy. We all know that Democracy is a Greek word, demo is a Greek tribe, so democracy is an organization of tribes. Basically, the Greek democracy was profoundly public oriented. I mean the assembly, people's assembly. The people went and listened to the debate and voted themselves. They didn't have representatives. So the Greek democracy could not function in the modern world because the nation state is too large. You couldn't have people trekking all the way to Washington to vote. But so the Greek democracy was basically extending rights to the public that gives them control over the function of government, to the public that gives them control over the function of government.

Speaker 2: 40:53

The Roman Republic then was the later, you know, started a couple hundred years later. Republic is Latin for res public means thing of the people, meaning the government can be. The public has input to the government. And the Roman experience is interesting because when Rome started out it was basically patrician tribes controlling everything. The Senate and the entire government was patricians. There were three tribes and if you weren't a patrician in one of those three tribes, you were a plebeian. So there was this line of demarcation between the citizenship.

Speaker 2: 41:31

So the Roman Republic started in 509, when they expelled their last king because they had kings before that. And pretty early in the process the plebeians started to agitate against the patricians for rights and over a 200-year period, to their credit, the Senate and the patricians seceded rights to the people. They gave them the right to assemble, so they controlled the assembly and gradually gave them the right to be elected to important public offices all of them so they became relative equals. So but the difference between a republic and a democracy is kind of complicated and nuanced. Basically, both allow the people some rights, whereas a republic means basically a government without a king, if you want to be technical.

Speaker 1: 42:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:37

But with people's rights, so there isn't that much difference between them. I mean, you can define, as I've said, the difference between Rome and Greece, but they're basically governments that people can control through their rights, and the Enlightenment was the middle of the Enlightenment period where this started to begin. So classic liberalism basically is the people have rights and the people can vote and hold elective office, basically. But it's sort of like based on capitalism and they viewed government as applying or providing key services but staying out of the people's way. And you see that in our Constitution, because all the rights in the Constitution are negative rights. Thou shalt not infringe on the people, Right? Okay, so the Constitution does not mention democracy, nor does the Declaration of Independence, because in the founders' view we were not a democracy. They felt that way because they rejected the Greek system as impossible to implement and so they admired the Roman system as the example from antiquity. During the constitutional debates there were Romans used as an example. I mean, the Roman councils was the supreme magistrate executive, there were two and they had veto rights over each other, so they had two presidents, basically, and the founders debated whether we should have two presidents, like the Romans did, and they rejected that. But the point is that they started from the idea of the Roman model, not the Greek model, in designing the Constitution.

Speaker 2: 45:05

So when America started it was very Republican versus Democratic. To vote you had to own property, which is what the Roman Republic was like. You served in the army and could vote if you owned property. It was like you served in the army and could vote if you owned property. So it wasn't until 1850 that the suffrage was expanded to non-property owners. Then it took all the way till 1920 till women were admitted to the vote. So the modern democracy definition has come to mean people's ability to hold office and near your universal suffrage, Because you couldn't really call America in the beginning a democracy. I hope I answered your question. The definitions of both are nuanced.

Speaker 2: 45:56

It was the founder's intent to create a republic and not a democracy.

Speaker 1: 46:00

The founders intent to create a republic and not a democracy, and we were very Republican in the beginning and have become more like a democracy, since, you know, it takes a thousand people to build a building and just one malcontent with a stick of dynamite to ruin it all.

Speaker 1: 46:23

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Speaker 2: 47:34

Like yes, yeah, yeah, I mean another example of is liberalism. So I described classic liberalism, which is the start of democracies during the Enlightenment. Then we have New Deal liberalism, which is the modern welfare state of the Democratic Party. That's New Deal liberalism, or modern liberalism. And then we have libertarianism, which is another variation, which basically harks back to classic liberalism and desires a minimal government. So if you talk to a libertarian, they'll say I want government to do as little as possible and stay out of my life.

Speaker 2: 48:08

Then there's neoliberalism. I mean, these words get very confused if you aren't familiar with using them. Aren't familiar with using them, and neoliberals are, and this came out of the 1960s. Neoliberals favor turning the whole society into a capitalist state, that everything should be driven by capitalism and every organization and institution in society should be built on a capitalist model. So like colleges should run like a corporation Right, and I think that's overdone and excessive because that, well, that has led to globalism, which is a natural thing to happen because corporations go global. But then there's this whole like the globalists will control the world thing and destroy the nation state, which is not a good thing, because we don't vote for those people. That's right.

Speaker 2: 49:07

So we don't want people controlling us that we can't control.

Speaker 1: 49:11

Right, yeah, you know, bringing up neoliberalism and then the New Deal, you know side, then the New Deal, you know side, and one of the things that I think has gotten progressively worse, I think especially over maybe the last 15, 20 years. We talk about liberalism and we talk about conservatism, but even within those groups, if you will, those larger groups it seems like there have been even more divisions within those groups. So it's almost like tribalism within the tribalism, if you will. Sure what are you seeing as the major divisions that are occurring within the two major sides left and right? There seems to be something you know. For example, we're in the middle of the primaries, right, super Tuesday was just a couple of days ago and even within conservative circles they're in conversations.

Speaker 1: 50:19

I know so many conservatives who were absolutely adamant about not voting for Donald Trump. They were hardcore Nikki Haley fans and you know they're like we're tired of the circus and all of this stuff. We're going to vote for Nikki Haley. And it seemed to be when you, when you listen to people that was, it was almost like OK, there's a possibility that there could, something is going to happen here. And then, when you watch the primaries unfold, overwhelmingly, that is not what happened. And then you have the Trump supporters and Trump himself saying look, if you support Nikki Haley, I'm going to kick you out of the GOP, right, you can't be a member of the GOP anymore. And now it's okay, it's Trump. Now you know. We all need to get together in this. We all need to be together in this. What have you been observing across the political spectrum in terms of what it means to be conservative? What does it mean to be liberal and how is that playing out? Like the internal tribalism that's occurring?

Speaker 2: 51:30

One of the famous Chinese philosophers said may we live in interesting times which you probably heard. I don't know if it gets more interesting than this. I don't know if it gets more interesting than this Because Trump changes the whole narrative. I mean, you've got people who are violently resistant to what the left's been doing, in other words, being more radical. So it doesn't matter who runs, as long as we beat them in their mind.

Speaker 1: 51:58

Yeah, we beat them in their mind.

Speaker 2: 52:00

Yeah, trump is a populist and he's a artifact of disinfit, unhappy Americans, middle class, lower middle-class men who have no representation. So you, you don't get somebody like Trump If you have people, if everyone is represented by some political side right so, and I you know I was saying in a recent podcast, I wish I had a time machine I could fast forward to 28, because all this would be done yeah.

Speaker 2: 52:35

Biden be gone, trump be gone, and we could like start over. But you don't know how much of the anger of the left is against Trump versus the Republicans. I mean, how do you call him a fascist when you know 76 million Americans are going to vote for him? Are they fascists too? I mean that's kind of illogical. But back to the constituencies.

Speaker 2: 53:01

The left has always been a big tent. I mean, the left starts basically with people have liberal views that don't vote, and then there are welfare state lefties, and then there are socialists, and then I'm moving farther to the left and you have communists and Marxists way on the left, communists and Marxists way on the left. So there are people on the left who strongly feel they want to overturn the democracy, they want to be a socialist state. So they're a minority of the left. But they're there. So there's always they're the extreme equality people, because they believe that a capitalist state is fundamentally unfair. But and as I mentioned before, the left is driven by equality. So that's kind of their ideology and they embrace socialism because it produces equality theoretically.

Speaker 2: 53:56

On the right, republicans don't have an ideology per se, because you can't say an ideology is the status quo and we value traditions. That's a behavior, not an ideology. But the Republicans now are stuck. They're factionalized in between basically flexible Republicans and inflexible Republicans. The Congressional Caucus, which has a lot of libertarians in it and I get their point they see what the national debt is and how bad it's getting and how the country is going to be bankrupted bad it's getting and how the country is going to be bankrupted and they will not compromise on the passage of laws that drive us toward bankruptcy. But unfortunately it's a small group that impacts how the whole Republican Party votes, so it contributes to the inability of government to function.

Speaker 1: 55:01

Right, where do you see all of this heading? No-transcript, where do you think we're heading? I mean, like you, I would love to be able to fast forward and just let's just have this behind us. But it's really interesting. I have no idea what to expect. What's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 55:39

I can give you some guidance. I think if, if history will be our guide. Yeah, we've been tribal twice before. The first time was the Civil War. Obviously, what we're going through is nothing compared to that, because that costs six hundred thousand American lives, north versus South, and of course, the basic cause was the North's effort, in the South's mind, to destroy its economy because its economy was based on slavery and slavery was wrong. So that's the Civil War. Now, after the Civil War, during the reparations period not reparations, reconstruction period we became tribal again, and I just I wrote an article about this.

Speaker 2: 56:29

It was during the Gilded Age, and how we became tribal was everybody's excited about the Civil War ending and anxious to participate as voters, and so almost everybody voted. But quickly the voting process became corrupted because these machines developed, like you've heard about Tammany Hall in New York, for example but every large city had a machine for the Republicans and machine for the Democrats, who engage in corrupt voting practices. When you voted, you got handed a ballot by either Republican or Democrat supporter it didn't come from a third party and you were told how to vote and you might get beat up if you voted wrong, or you got free drinks at a bar if you voted the way of the individual who was buying the drinks. So voting was corrupt. Politics was corrupt because there was a spoil system in Washington. So people got elected and they had to give all their friends jobs there, all that. So it was totally corrupt. Basically murder, robbery or assault and battery on voters and all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 57:45

How that ended was two important things, and I give the progressive movement credit for this because they were the prime mover. We had to fix elections and we fixed elections number one by starting the secret ballot, which happened in 1883. And so if no one could see how you voted, no one could beat you up for voting wrong. But the process of voting was intellectualized. Groups and organizations started up that talked about politics and different issues and all that stuff politics and different issues and all that stuff. The parties become centralized, so they became controllable from above instead of being locally driven, and the corrupt spoil system in Washington was replaced by the civil service. So it took about 20 to 30 years to fix that whole thing and it was done by intellectualizing basically, which could be a factor here. It's going to take educated people to say that there are logical solutions to our problems. So let's get started at working together to accomplish that.

Speaker 1: 58:58

Hopefully we'll be able to get the logical people in place to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 59:04

Yep.

Speaker 1: 59:06

Yeah, it's definitely a challenge, Mike. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I know I have learned so much from you and I've gained so much from having this conversation. I know the listeners have as well. Is there anything that we did not have a chance for you to talk about, that has been on your mind and you just wanted to make sure? Hey, before we go, I have just this one thing I want to make sure that that I let the listeners know about.

Speaker 2: 59:37

Not, not really. I think we beat it up pretty good. I want you to direct them to my author site maybe you're going to post that or something mikeanderson'sbookscom. So my books are there. You can buy them from there. There are podcasts there, um, and eventually I'll have yours up there. Have this one there because I've enjoyed it. Um, and I have a blog too. So, and I'm on, I just started on Substack, so I'm writing, you know, newsletters there about politics. It's called American Politics from the Middle or from a neutral position. So I'm taking both views because, again, I mean, if I'm going to be an ideologue and write that way, that's not going to help our country move forward.

Speaker 1: 1:00:24

So yeah, that it definitely would contribute to the opposite we have. We have enough of that right. We absolutely have enough of that, mike. Thank you so much again for being on the show, for sharing your wisdom and some of that information. I think we're all going to be, we're all going to mull this over for a little while, because it is definitely something that's impacting all of us and it's an important conversation to have.

Speaker 2: 1:00:49

Maybe we should, maybe you should do this again in October.

Speaker 1: 1:00:52

I would love to do this again in October and then maybe even after the election we'll probably have to have a third one. So I definitely would love to plan for that October for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:01:05

We really didn't get into the campaigning and all that stuff, which is a whole. I mean you could spend a whole podcast on that.

Speaker 1: 1:01:10

So absolutely yeah. So much to talk about. All right, everyone. I hope you enjoyed listening to this conversation. I know I enjoyed having the conversation with Mike. One thing that I hope you got out of it is just be willing to have those conversations with people who may not necessarily agree with you politically. Maybe they don't align with everything that you believe in, and that's okay. With everything that you believe in, and that's okay. Have the conversations. If you believe in what you believe, then you should not be afraid to have those conversations. But how else are you gonna mitigate your own bias and how else are you going to be able to learn from others' perspectives? So let's keep the conversation going. All right, you all have a wonderful rest of your day and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social social media or leave a rating and a review.