All the blogosphere is talking about voters exercising a kind tribal loyalty in the voting booth and the rural v. urban divide demonstrates that.  I think it is time to maybe drop the “tribal” term and look more deeply at what motivates conservative personalities and liberal ones.  Here is a post I wrote earlier:

The David Brooks column last Friday  (The Internal Invasion) explored a broad view of the major divisions in the Trump election.  He used  gemeinschaft and gesellschaft ideals, a view of society where gemeinschaft (community based, reason based) competes with gesellschaft (society based, social cohesion based).  These terms were prominent in the work of Tonnies and Weber and I think Durkheim had a similar broad division.  This framing fits well with my most recent read:   Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind  which sees liberals as motivated by care and equality while conservatives are motivated only moderately by care and fairness and more by loyalty, sanctity, and authority.  Fairness is important for the right, but it means parity for their group while fairness for the left means equality.  Importantly, the right, or gesellschaft people are motivated by a group loyalty and care of their own, a parochial altruism.  The left is less groupish or loyal to a network and more universally altruistic.  Problem is, there are always more voters on the right who are highly motivated  and highly devoted to an emotional attachment to their social group, whether a religion or ethnicity or national identity.  Cold reason, facts, cosmopolitan care just has a hard time competing with flag waving loyalty or devotion to religion.

Keith Quincy, the former chair of government at Eastern Washington University, wrote a somewhat abridged translation of Plato’s Dialogues that is a favorite of mine. When I studied a course on Plato at Berea College (Fall, 2016), we used the more authoritative translation edited by John M. Cooper and  D. S. Hutchinson (Plato: Complete Works, 1997, Hatchett).  Nonetheless, Quincy’s book is a delight especially his readable and engaging introductions to each dialogue.  I wonder if in the academic world it is admitted that some of Plato’s passages are just plain confusing and frequently a confusing diversion.  Quincy takes some liberties in translation and omits the less important parts.  I also think he is correct in writing that Xenophon’s style is more clear than Plato’s.  Most commentators I have read thing Plato’s writing style is captivating, but I think not.  I know that Bertrand Russell has little respect for Xenophon, but not Quincy.  This book is kept by my night reading chair and I just think of it as a true friend:  Plato Unmasked: Dialogues Made New, Plato translated by Keith Quincy, Eastern Washington University Press, 2003.

Nancy Isenberg, a sociologist and historian at Louisiana State University, wrote this somewhat overwrought history of the great working class or poorer class in America.  I think it does fill an important gap in political thinking:  we assume that bigotry and oppression is characteristic of black Americans, but that same hatred and exploitation certainly extends to the white lowest classes.  Ab ovo, this class has been used, cheated, and dismissed as ignorant proles who, nonetheless, managed to build America and create the wealth enjoyed be the more educated and wealthier whites.  Unfortunately, she displays enormous disrespect for Benjamin Franklin as well as scant understanding of his enlightened attitude and incredible contributions to this nation.  I learned from Isenberg that there is a robust lexicon for terms of little endearment for the lower classes, the white trash throughout history, such as lubbers and crackers, rednecks and clay-eaters (a puzzle over this one), and my favorite: mudsills.  Interesting in that a mudsill has a truly nasty ring to it, but in truth, a mudsill is a type of foundation holding up the rest of the edifice.  White Trash: the 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, Viking, 2016.

The major philosophers of the Enlightenment are presented by Anthony Gottlieb in this survey of the lives and contributions of such thinkers as Voltaire, Descartes, Liebniz, and others.  I am always interested particularly with Spinoza and Gottlieb does a creditable job with this.  The book is necessarily introductory but the author’s concentration on the biography and political conditions of each of the philosophers adds a great deal to understanding how philosophers such as Locke and Hume and Hobbes continue to contribute to contemporary thought and politics. The Dream of Enlightenment: the Rise of Modern Philosophy,  Anthony Gottlieb, 2016, W. W. Norton.

The David Brooks column last Friday  (The Internal Invasion) explored a broad view of the major divisions in the Trump election.  He used  gemeinschaft and gesellschaft ideals, a view of society where gemeinschaft (community based, reason based) competes with gesellschaft (society based, social cohesion based).  These terms were prominent in the work of Tonnies and Weber and I think Durkheim had a similar broad division.  This framing fits well with my most recent read:   Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind  which sees liberals as motivated by care and equality while conservatives are motivated only moderately by care and fairness and more by loyalty, sanctity, and authority.  Fairness is important for the right, but it means parity for their group while fairness for the left means equality.  Importantly, the right, or gesellschaft people are motivated by a group loyalty and care of their own, a parochial altruism.  The left is less groupish or loyal to a network and more universally altruistic.  Problem is, there is always more voters on the right who are highly motivated  and highly devoted to an emotional attachment to their social group, whether a religion or ethnicity or national identity.  Cold reason, facts, cosmopolitan care just has a hard time competing with flag waving loyalty or devotion to religion.