What People Who Don't Want to Pay for Government Services Are Like.

People who don't want to pay for government services that they do not use are like family members who don't want to buy the baby a crib because they don't sleep in one.

Nature, Structure, Culture: The Logical Order and the Experiential Order

I am working on a model for how to teach sociology based on a balance of nature, structure, and culture.

In reality, all three go together -- they are mutually producing.

In experience, though, we do not come to grasp them all at once.

The logical order is nature - structure - culture.

The experiential order, though, is the reverse.  That is, we come to understand that we do things differently from other groups, which makes us aware of culture.  When we investigate why, we discover that we occupy different positions in the social structure.  When we investigate where those structures come from, we discover the logic of nature.

This forward-and-backwards quality is like what George Herbert Mead says in Mind, Self, Society. Logically, society comes before us, and we develop social selves from learning different social roles.  Only then is it possible for us to step back from each of these roles and develop a reflective, personal mind.  Experientially, though, mind comes first, then self, then we begin to understand society.

Why Would Centrists Be OK with Authoritarianism?

A disturbing new study by David Adler found that centrists show weak support for democracy.

Even after removing people who said they were centrists because they were politically apathetic, the remainder in the middle position were not sold on democracy as a method of political order in any notable way.

As a centrist, I find this particularly challenging.

I think the commitment to democracy depends on an informed study of the alternatives. Most people have enjoyed the benefits of democracy long enough to have forgotten what it cost, and what we had to beat to get here.  The dark lining of the silver cloud of the worldwide democratic norm is that we have forgotten how bad authoritarianism has proven to be, again and again.

I can think of another factor that might account for the rising appeal of authoritarianism, even among political centrists: growing up with family disorder. Family dysfunction is one of the few bad social indicators that is increasing.  To people who live in chaos, tyranny seems like a step up toward order.  Perhaps people living in societies of political order, but who grew up in families of personal disorder, end up centrists who are OK with authoritarianism.

Liberal Arts Colleges Are Grossly Short of Republicans

A new study compares registered Republicans and registered Democrats in the full-time faculty of the top liberal arts colleges.  They found a gross imbalance, swung way toward Democrats. 

Chemistry, economics, and mathematics had a Democrat-to-Republican ratio of more than five to one.  That was the lowest ratio of any liberal arts discipline.

My discipline, sociology, showed a ratio of 44 Democrats for every Republican.  Our sister discipline, anthropology, showed no Republicans at all.

We know that Republicans in higher education gravitate to business and engineering, so are much less likely to end up in liberal arts colleges.

And I can believe that smart college students of a conservative persuasion head toward business rather than higher education for a career.

Still, if we have almost no Republican faculty for the many Republican students to talk to, we leave them to develop their political understanding in the gutter -- from talk radio, blogs, and Russian bots.

Ideological diversity is as important as any other kind of diversity in a liberal arts faculty.  Not more important, but not less, either.

Why Older Cohorts Vote More

I saw this meme on Facebook.  I have not checked its accuracy, but it seems likely:

In 2016
70% of 18 - 29 year olds did not vote
60% of 30 - 44 year olds did not vote
Only 38% of 45 - 64 year olds did not vote, and
Just 15% of 65+ citizens did not vote.

To which I would add, people who vote live longer. 

This is not snark; people who vote tend to be involved in many aspects of their community, and belong to organizations that serve causes larger than themselves. 

People who do those things tend to live longer. 

So the older the cohort, the more it tends to boil down to the involved people, including voters.

The Scariest Hate: From the Low-Achieving Privileged Against the High-Achieving Un-Privileged.

The scariest kind of hate in America comes from people who have not much going for them besides their privileges, against people who are rising despite not having those privileges.

Thus, white racists don't hate black (and other non-white) people as such, but when they are ambitious, smart, hard-working, and rising. Hence, the insane opposition to Barack Obama from low-achieving white people.  They have little going for them but white privilege, and if that is visibly overcome, they feel it as a betrayal.  (This is the premise of White Rage, a book I am teaching this year).

Likewise, misogynists don't hate women as such, just ambitious, smart, hard-working, and rising women, like Hillary Clinton.  This comes mostly from low-achieving men seeing male privilege visibly overcome.

And, I believe, much of the opposition to immigrants comes from people who rely on their citizenship privileges -- even more than whiteness or sharing the majority religion -- to secure their place in American society.  If immigrants, legal and otherwise, come in and achieve without that privilege, that, too, feels like a betrayal.

Today's "Useful Idiots"

When Russia had a left-wing government, they found gullible liberals to be "useful idiots."

Now that Russia has a right-wing government, it is finding gullible conservatives to be very "useful idiots."

I Think Jeff Bezos May Be Planning to Run for President

Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, the richest man in the world, might be considering a run for president.

He bought The Washington Post.

He bought a house in Washington, DC.

The most likely place for the highly sought-after second Amazon headquarters is the DC area.

I have little idea what his politics are.

I have no doubt that he would be better than the incumbent billionaire.

That could be an amazing race.

Are Conservatives More Nostalgic Because They Weren't Paying Attention to Others the First Time?

I often find as a teacher that adults who believe "things were simpler when I was young" forget to factor in that, when they were young, they were not responsible for the complexity of the world -- that is what adults did.

Moreover, as parents of teenagers (and teachers of young adults) need to remind themselves constantly, "they aren't selfish, they are just self-absorbed."  Adolescence is the time of caring deeply about how we look to our peers and how they look to us, without realizing all the other people and the great wide world that is also affected by our actions.  Maturity helps us get a proportionate sense of our place in the world.

The greatest privilege is not having to realize that you are privileged. If my world is good, then the world is good.  Caring for others who have been harmed, even when we ourselves have not been harmed, bursts that bubble.  "Caring for the harmed" is also what Jonathan Haidt says is the defining feature of liberals.

So if today we find people in privileged groups - white men, in particular -- finding that "political correctness" forces them to notice harms to others, they might feel a desire not to think about it.  And if they cast back on their youth, they may grow nostalgic for a time when they did not think about harm to others.  Restoring that time would make their America "great again."

Baby Boomers Will Be the Last Generation to Live Their Whole Lives in Majority-White America

I am on the cusp between the Baby Boom and Gen X.  I am unusually aware of the dynamic of change at that cusp.

Somewhere around 2040 nearly all of the Boomers will be extinct.  And somewhere around 2040 the U.S. is projected to have a "minority majority."

I do not think we will, in fact, think of our population in the same terms by then.  We will always have a majority majority.

BUT we will no longer take it for granted that that majority is what we now think of as "white."

Whites Are Now a Minority Among All U.S. Children

A few years ago, non-Hispanic whites were a (bare) minority among all babies born.

Because whites have a lower fertility rate than all minorities, and especially than immigrant minorities, this trend accelerates quickly.

William Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan and the Brookings Institution, estimated in his 2015 book Diversity Explosion that the year when we would have a 'minority majority" among all U.S. children under 18 is now - 2018.

The future has arrived.

Racists Hate the "Uppity"

Racists do not hate minorities as such.  This is why they do not think they are racists.

Racists hate rising minorities, who they fear will overtake and surpass them.

They hate and fear the "uppity."

For those who love E Pluribus Unum America, on the other hand, the ambition and hard work of minorities is our greatest hope for the future of the American experiment.

Fear of Scarcity is No More Natural Than Trust in Abundance. Both Are Learned

Economists and libertarians often believe that scarcity is natural, and therefore selfishness is rational.

However, the fear of scarcity is a premise, not a fact, nor a conclusion of dispassionate research.

Christian ethics helps us overcome the fear which leads to selfishness, through the hope we have in the inexhaustible and trustworthy source of abundance.

And the only proof we can offer that there will be enough is our own generous example.

Most Christians No Longer Support Trump

A year ago, most American Christians supported Donald Trump.

Now, most do not.

Best Social Movement of 2017: Sexual Predators are Pariahs

Of the many good things that happened in 2017, I have the most hope that the movement against sexual predators will have long-term effects.

In many fields, men known for years to have been gropers, sexual blackmailers, and even rapists were driven out and rendered pariahs.  Liberal organizations were more consistent than conservative ones in removing the offenders, but that is often what happens at the beginning of a social movement.

This movement was made by tipping public opinion, not by a change in law.  This suggests to me that it will have real staying power.

Permanent Life, Happy Wife

Brad Wilcox, one of the leading researchers on marriage, reports that husbands who are committed to marriage for life have happier wives.

What husbands believe about gender roles does not predict their wives' happiness.

Social Stability is as Important as Social Change; Not Thinking About Social Stability is a Mark of Privilege

Conservatives Think Race is Irrelevant to Identity, But Wealth Is Vital; Liberals Think the Reverse.

Who Will Win the Election? The Party That Governs Better

Allan Lichtman, the historian who has successfully predicted all the presidential elections since 1984, reminds us that that the main theme of such an election is a referendum on how well the party in power governed.

This is good news - the candidate horse race is really secondary to the years of achievement, or non-achievement, which lie before the race.  This is as it should be.

The Republican Party has had total control of government for a year.  They have done almost nothing with it.

On the basis of Lichtman's findings, I think they are building toward a disastrous 2020.

Conservatives Want a "Strict Father" To Make Everyone Personally Responsible - Except Corporations

George Lakoff has argued persuasively that an underlying cause of the deep conservative/liberal divide is that, while both tend to view government as like a family, they have different theories of what kind of parent is best to lead a family.  He calls these two views "strict father" and "nurturant parent," respectively.

This helps make sense of why conservative policy is so hard on welfare recipients.  They believe a strict father should make children become responsible and self-supporting.

This also explains why they want "fathers" of all kinds to have a free hand.  Theirs is a patriarchal theory in the most literal sense.

Which brings us to the mystery of "trickle-down economics."  As an economic theory it has failed repeatedly.  However, conservatives doggedly stick to it as the solution to all problems.  Give the rich more money and give corporations a free hand, and they will do what is best for their dependents.

Liberals regard corporations as economic institutions, which respond to incentives.  If you want them to create more jobs, then tie their tax breaks to actually producing more jobs.