Episode 19: Frank Lechner, Symmetric Polarization or Republican Radicalism?

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Show Notes is a professor of sociology at Emory University. He did his undergraduate work in sociology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and then moved to the U.S. for his PhD. He’s the author of four books and two edited volumes—his most recent book is The American Exception, a book about American exceptionalism that covers several aspects of American life including religion, law, sports, and media. I invited him to the show in part to have a dialogue about a piece I published about asymmetric polarization. We also discussed a first-year seminar on conservatism that Frank taught in 2016. To my knowledge, that’s the first seminar of its kind at Emory. Selected Quote I appreciate your comment about my “nonpartisan” teaching because in my day to day life, I try to depoliticize the work that I do. I don’t put my own views forward in a very strong manner. I prefer to create a space in which students can analyze arguments and evidence as honestly and as seriously as possible and to provide them with the tools and if necessary play the Devil’s advocate for whatever side needs my support and my articulation. And I think in my actual teaching I don’t take a strong political posture. More generally, I occasionally I speak up on political issues, issues on campus so people are aware I have perhaps a slightly deviant point of view, a point of view that deviates from the orthodoxy that reigns on most college campuses. But at the same time, I don’t fight any Quixotic battles against the dominant culture. Transcript This is a professional transcript but it contains some errors. Please do not quote it without verification. Chris Martin: I’m Chris Martin and this is Half Hour of Heterodoxy. This show is produced by Heterodox Academy. You can find out more about us at heterodoxacademy.org. You can also find us on Facebook under Heterodox Academy and on Twitter @hdxacademy. My guest today is Frank Lechner. Frank is a professor of sociology at Emory University, which is where I recently finished my PhD. I took a theory course with Frank during my second year and I was very impressed with his mastery of classical, sociological theories. And Frank is known more broadly within the sociology community for his work on globalization. He’s the author of four books and two edited volumes. His most recent book is The American Exception. It’s a book about American exceptionalism that covers several aspects of American life including politics, religion, law, sports and the media. I invited Frank to the show in part to have a dialogue about a piece I published about asymmetric polarization in America. We also discussed the first year seminar on conservatism that Frank taught in 2016. To my knowledge that’s the first seminar of its kind at Emory. The essay about asymmetric polarization that we discuss is one that I published in late 2016. Frank disagreed with many points in the essay, which is why I invited him to the show. The essay is entitled To My Undergraduate Class on the 2016 Election. I was teaching a class on the sociology of happiness at the time and I wrote this essay to expand on what I said to my class. I published this essay on Medium and Lee Jussim published a copy of it on his blog so you may have read it on one of those places. If you haven’t read it, you can find it online by searching for “To My Undergraduate Class on the 2016 Election.” Now, the essay doesn’t exactly represent what I said to my class. What I actually said to my class was quite brief. I wrote this essay afterwards and then sent it to my class to read if they wanted to. And the essay primarily makes two points that I made in class. The first is about ideology quite broadly. The first point is that Liberals, Libertarians and Conservatives appear to have different moral foundations and this is one reason they misunderstand one another. I drew on Jonathan Haidt’s research here and I included a link in his TED Talk, “The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives.” The second point is that political polarization is happening across a number of countries, which is leading to tribalism in some countries. I argued that polarization itself isn’t a problem because polarized parties can still reach compromises but that refusal to compromise is a problem. And drawing on a research by Norman Ornstein and other political scientists argue that the Republican Party in the US, unlike conservative parties in many other countries, has become radical party that doesn’t respect the legitimacy of the democratic party. And moreover, that the Republican Party has violated many norms that were previously respected by both parties. I also pointed out the problem of false equivalence or both siderism, which is the problem of treating both parties as equally responsible for government dysfunction. Since some of you have not read the essay, what I’m going to do is read the entire essay here. If you want to skip the essay, jump to 12 minutes and 40 seconds into this podcast. [The essay can be read online so it is excluded from the transcript.] Chris Martin: I’m Chris Martin and this is Half Hour of Heterodoxy. This show is produced by Heterodox Academy. You can find out more about us at heterodoxacademy.org. You can also find us on Facebook under Heterodox Academy and on Twitter @hdxacademy. My guest today is Frank Lechner. Frank is a professor of sociology at Emory University, which is where I recently finished my PhD. I took a theory course with Frank during my second year and I was very impressed with his mastery of classical, sociological theories. And Frank is known more broadly within the sociology community for his work on globalization. He’s the author of four books and two edited volumes. His most recent book is The American Exception. It’s a book about American exceptionalism that covers several aspects of American life including politics, religion, law, sports and the media. I invited Frank to the show in part to have a dialogue about a piece I published about asymmetric polarization in America. We also discussed the first year seminar on conservatism that Frank taught in 2016. To my knowledge that’s the first seminar of its kind at Emory. The essay about asymmetric polarization that we discuss is one that I published in late 2016. Frank disagreed with many points in the essay, which is why I invited him to the show. The essay is entitled To My Undergraduate Class on the 2016 Election. I was teaching a class on the sociology of happiness at the time and I wrote this essay to expand on what I said to my class. I published this essay on Medium and Lee Jussim published a copy of it on his blog so you may have read it on one of those places. If you haven’t read it, you can find it online by searching for “To My Undergraduate Class on the 2016 Election.” Now, the essay doesn’t exactly represent what I said to my class. What I actually said to my class was quite brief. I wrote this essay afterwards and then sent it to my class to read if they wanted to. And the essay primarily makes two points that I made in class. The first is about ideology quite broadly. The first point is that Liberals, Libertarians and Conservatives appear to have different moral foundations and this is one reason they misunderstand one another. I drew on Jonathan Haidt’s research here and I included a link in his TED Talk, The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives. The second point is that political polarization is happening across a number of countries, which is leading to tribalism in some countries. I argued that polarization itself isn’t a problem because polarized parties can still reach compromises but that refusal to compromise is a problem. And drawing on a research by Norman Ornstein and other political scientists argue that the Republican Party in the US, unlike conservative parties in many other countries, has become radical party that doesn’t respect the legitimacy of the democratic party. And moreover, that the Republican Party has violated many norms that were previously respected by both parties. I also pointed out the problem of false equivalence or both siderism, which is the problem of treating both parties as equally responsible for government dysfunction. Since some of you have not read the essay, what I’m going to do is read the entire essay here. If you want to skip the essay, jump to 12 minutes and 40 seconds into this podcast. The preface. Although I was initially reluctant to talk about election results, the election of Donald Trump was unusual enough that I felt obligated to explain its significance to my class. This essay expands upon what I said to my class. I have published it here because it may be useful to others in the academic community, particularly those who teach students of a variety of nationalities, a fairly common situation at private universities in the US, and those who teach students who uniformly adhere to one political ideology. The essay. I’ve been mulling over whether to talk about the election in class. Because we have so much material to cover already, I decided not to do that, but given many responses to last week’s assignment on negative cognitive distortions, I also realized that there is the also the selection matter to your happiness. Here are a few points that may help you make sense of the election, especially if you’ve traveled internationally or plan to live outside the US. My first goal is to explain the ways in which America resembles other countries in terms of its political diversity and why such diversity arises. My second goal is to explain why the current American political scene is unique, which may help you make sense of the election of an extremist candidate like Donald Trump. Liberals, Conservatives and Libertarians. Political ideologies are driven by different fears and different stories. Liberals are afraid that people at the bottom of society or the margins of society will be oppressed. Conservatives are afraid that people will detach themselves from nationalistic and religious obligations that prevent society from descending into chaos. They would prefer to have a society that is aligned with traditional and divine edicts. Libertarians are afraid that people who are vested with authority will abuse it, inhibiting the efficiency and economic growth that arise when individuals have freedom. Many researchers have attempted to explain this diversity, and one cogent theory posits six moral foundations – harm, fairness, national loyalty, sanctity, hierarchy, and liberty. Everyone cares about these foundations, but for conservatives, concerns about sanctity, hierarchy and loyalty are just as important as concerns about fairness and harm whereas for liberals, fairness and harm are most important. Libertarians primarily value personal liberty. These distinctions matter because they can be partially traced to heritable difference between people. Other factors matter too of course and cultures vary; conservatives in India and China are not interchangeable. But heritability indicates that globally, most people will be somewhere in the ideological middle, but some will be markedly liberal conservative or libertarian. If you fail to appreciate the foundations of these differences, people will seem crazy, stupid, ignorant or immoral. This talk by Jonathan Haidt explains more of variability further. This is the point in the essay in which I insert the link to Jonathan Haidt’s TED talk. Appreciating political variation may also help you understand politics in whichever country you spend your adult life. If you live in a two-party country, you will likely find a split between the liberal party and a conservative party. In the US, libertarians tend toward conservativism, because libertarians believe that people should be rewarded in proportion to their economic contributions, and conservatives in proportion to virtue, hence both tolerant in equality. In your [00:06:30] [indiscernible] nations, you may find liberals and libertarians clustering together because they both reject authoritarianism and religious orthodoxy. If you live in a multiparty nation, you’ll find more segmentation, a conservative party maybe nationalistic or religious and it may be very conservative or just slightly conservative. Nevertheless, parties will fit into a similar ideological map. Global polarization and American polarization. Despite these general trends, there are two unique things about the current era. First, many nations have undergone polarization. One consequence is that people have sorted into ideological tribes based on which political party they support and these tribes have mutual distain. Nevertheless, polarization does not itself cause problems when politicians are willing to compromise. Ultimately, parties need to be responsive to voters and politicians are inclined to compromise as a result. Yet compromises require mutual respect. And the US along with a couple of other nations, has a unique problem. And the US political science research shows a symmetric polarization. The Republican Party has become a radical party that has discarded the idea of respecting the opposition. Politicians have never been saints, but they’ve historically respected traditional norms of how to govern. Even though these norms are absent from the constitution, they’ve enabled cross party compromises. Conservatives have usually been more respectful of these norms. At the national level, the Republican Party, thanks in partner Georgia congressman, [00:07:53] [indiscernible] began to discard these norms about two decades ago which is around the time you were born. Some of this has trickled down to the state level and lower, but it’s more difficult to generalize at that level. Describing this change, two veteran political scientists, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, have written this frequently quoted summation, “The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. Ideologically extreme, contentious of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unmoved by a conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science and dismissive of the legitimacy if its political opposition. Here’s a summary of Ornstein and Mann’s book and here’s a lecture by Ornstein on this topic. At this point in the essay, I link to a summary of Ornstein and Mann’s book and Norman Ornstein is 2014 Lambeth lecturer at UNC Chapel Hill. Some people disagree with this assessment and you can find Orenstein debating an opponent here. At this point, I link to an AEI debate entitled, “Is there Republican Party too extreme?” I agree with Ornstein’s assessment. The Democratic Party has done some problematic things but it hasn’t discarded norms to the same degree, and it has respected the legitimacy of the Republican Party. Evident in the greater willingness of democrats to compromise with George W. Bush than of republicans to compromise with Barrack Obama. Because of this radicalization, democrats cannot be responsive to voters when they’re elected to govern. According to the new logic of the Republican Party, democratic politician should be voted out if they accomplished nothing. So for electoral victories, it pays to ensure that democratic politicians accomplished nothing. Voters then become angered about the lack of governmental responsiveness and elect republicans instead. This politics of rage has produced more radical, presidential candidates among republicans, culminating in Donald Trump. Washington post commentator, EJ Dionne, traces that trajectory in a recent book summarized in this short video. At this point, I link to a summary of why the right went wrong by EJ Dionne Jr. False equivalence is the term for the common practice of blaming republicans and democrats equally for political dysfunction. You may recall that equality and proportionality are two different modes of interaction. The false equivalence narrative is based on equally. According to this narrative blame must always be distributed evenly. Republicans and democrats must therefore share responsibility for government dysfunction. This narrative provides media reports and a whole slate of many knowledgeable people. Most of these people have decided in advance that equality is the correct “unbiased” framework. So facts do not dissuade them. Incidentally, a similar allegiance to equality can be found when people discuss rewards punishment across ethnicities or genders. Some people decide in advance that the quality rather than proportionality is the correct framework, so they are rarely persuaded by proportionality-based arguments about why gender or why one ethnic group is so overrepresented in some outcome. Equality is not a sensible baseline and a proportional system. The issue of false equivalence may seem tangential but I mention that because the pool of that narrative is strong and democratic retaliation can be misrepresented. Also, some people will persistently accuse you bias if you don’t fall in line with that narrative. Note that I am not making a binding judgment against voting for republican candidates at a national level. I would recommend against it because they have broken a system in which Congress can function. Nevertheless, if you believe that republican extremism will solve the challenges that Americans face, you should vote republican. But keep in mind that the republican party in the US is not like the conservative party in the UK, the conservative party in Canada, the national party in New Zealand or the LNP of Australia. Those parties respect the norms of government. In many nations there’s an anti-establishment swing which has led to the election of extreme left wing and right wing parties, but in these cases to the victorious parties for the most part respect traditions when it comes to keeping government functioning responsive. Some of them may become radical over time but that has yet to happen. Conclusion, superficially, the two houses, as I say, seem to swing in opposite directions. The first half encourages you to respect your political opponents, whereas the second half is a condemnation of one type of political party. The primary difference is that the first half concerns the public and the second half concerns politicians. The public is usually split based on tendencies towards conservatism, liberalism and liberalitarianism. Sometimes these tendencies take destructive paths, communism or fascism are obvious examples. But for the most part, you can respect opposing beliefs instead of interpreting them as evil. However, politicians are different, in recent years, for instance, the republican party has disenfranchised voters to win elections, which unequivocally immoral. I cannot resolve this contradiction but I can point out that you may have to live with it. Wherever you decide to live, try to understand the difference between the public and the political class. If you are fortunate, you will reside in a country where each political party acts in good faith. But if not, you may find good people voting for a bad candidate. Welcome to the show. Frank Lechner: Thanks, Chris. Thank you for having me and thanks for all the great work you are doing for Heterodox Academy. Chris Martin: Well, thank you. I want to talk to you today. Start by talking about my piece on the 2016 election, which you read and commented on and sent me an email. My piece, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, was primarily and argument that within the US, and this was very US specific, the conservative party is more extreme than the liberal party. So part of my argument was – this defers in other countries, but in the US. I was primarily drawing on research by Norm Ornstein. I made a claim that the republican party, in terms of its tactics, is more extreme than the democratic party, and you felt that you weren’t very convinced by my argument. So tell me about what you thought. Frank Lechner: That’s correct. I was not convinced by your argument and I was not persuaded by your framing of issues. One of the reasons I responded to your article is that I thought it lacked perspective and balance. And also as an intervention on the course, I think initially, you wrote this piece for students. I thought it was somewhat counterproductive in the sense that you described Trump as an extreme candidates and defaulted to republicans, so all kinds of political sense in a way that I think inhibited or would inhibit frank discussion if the purpose was to stimulates such a discussion. But I thought your piece lacks perspective in a sense that you wrote at the end of 2016, I believe, after presidential election, at the time when the republican party had achieved incredible success across the board and across the country. And here you go citing Norm Ornstein, of all people, describing – who describe the republican party as an insurgent outlier, which I thought was not exactly an appropriate way to describe the situation in which the republican party had achieved greater political dominance that it ever had since the 1920’s. So I think in that sense, I think, you piece lacked the whole perspective, you know, republicans didn’t just succeed in grabbing the White House but were successful in Congress, in the states, and governorships and so on. Chris Martin: [0:14:54] [These two] being an outlier. I do think he meant more in historical terms that they were an outlier, not so much an outlier in terms of popularity. Frank Lechner: Well again I question that standard. So if you describe the dominant political party as an outlier at a point when it has been more successful, I thought it was a misleading way to describe the actual results of the actual election. Also, I thought your piece, like [0:15:19] [Donald’s] in a sense that it’s attributed polarization and dysfunction, especially in Congress, almost exclusively to the republicans. And I certainly agree that the republicans contributed to some of that dysfunction. But, I think after a period in which various democratic politicians contributed to that dysfunction, I thought was once again, it was a little bit one-sided. One person I had in mind, for example, in the Democratic side is Harry Reid, who, I think, led the Senate in a very cynical and partisan manner and was just as contemptuous or traditional norms as you claim Newt Gingrich and his colleagues were. Chris Martin: I think that criticism of Harry Reid might be justified but I don’t think he’s comparable to Newt Gingrich in terms of some of Newt Gingrich’s – most of Newt Gingrich’s tactics. I’d say that for one thing, Gingrich actively discouraged members of the parties from socializing with one another, which was part of the culture of Washington up to that point. And that definitely led to some polarization. He instituted the tactic, and he was very clear about this, this tactic of constantly attacking the democratic party and if there was a democratic president, constantly attacking that president regardless of whether there was substantial evidence of any wrong doing. So, if you look at the Clinton administration for example, from the outset, there were these investigations based on very slim evidence that Clinton was engaged in a wrong doing, I’m talking about the Whitewater investigation, when the first round of the investigation showed that Clinton was not guilty, Gingrich just started the second round and demanded a new trial. So in the first trial incidentally, was a republican judge. So I think this attitude of permanently attacking the other party, which you can trace to Gingrich, and which I still not feel like you really see on the democratic side when you’re talking about democratic elites, you definitely see it in terms of voters. But when it comes to democratic elites, you – I think you still don’t see that permanent attack mode. I think democratic politicians and elites tend to be more willing to compromise. And I think you also see this difference in the states and state-level governments. Often, you don’t have a person who’s analogous to Newt Gingrich and you don’t find that the republican democratic parties are constantly attacking one another. Frank Lechner: Well, I find your comments somewhat ironic after a year – more than a year of constant attacks on the new republican administration, calls for impeachment, calls for resistance, continual investigation into so-called collusion that I think outweighs anything that was ever done under the Clinton administration. Chris Martin: I think those investigations have actually been fact-based if you look at the people who were actually conducting some of the investigations. Well, if you look at James Comey, a republican appointee, he was fired by the Trump administration. I think it’s justifiable to think of that as rather suspicious. If you look back at the George W. Bush administration on the other hand, I think you can see that he was able to get some of his initiatives pass through Congress by reaching certain compromises with democrats in the House of the Senate, if you think of Medicare Part D, for example, and other things. So I think if you look at the George W. Bush era, you see many cases of democrats being willing to compromise and there was definitely, at the voter level, an intense opposition to George W. Bush. But within Congress itself there was criticism but there was no permanent attack mode, there was no attempt from the outside to have something like the Whitewater Investigation. Frank Lechner: I’m sorry, Chris, but that is outrageously wrong. Democrats across the board vilified George Bush after those compromises on Medicare and also on education. And of course, those compromises were in areas where George Bush expanded the role of government and expanded government benefits in a way that many democrats, including Ted Kennedy, agreed with. And I quite agree with you that that is – those were – that’s evidence of compromise between republicans and democrats. But when democrats held the majority, as they did in the first Obama administration, they discarded any interest in bipartisanship and used the majority to push through the Affordable Care Act in a rather unconventional manner. So my point is not to excuse the republicans but to simply make the point that polarization has happened in many ways across the decades and that I think it is very one-sided to blame the republicans for undue polarization. Chris Martin: The issue of the Affordable Care Act, I think, people wanted to look at the final votes and the fact that no republicans voted for it, and also the use of the reconciliation method as examples of the lack of partisanship. And I think if you look at it procedurally, you see that in the Senate, there was a gang of six – a so-called gang of six with three republicans and three democrats who worked on the text of the bill. Ultimately, there likely would have been republicans voting for a depart from intense pressure by the then republican senate leader, Mitch McConnell, who said that they would be severely punished if they did. He kind of explicitly said that he wanted the Affordable Care Act not to be bipartisan. But you can definitely see negotiations happening during the Senate where republicans gave their input into the Affordable Care Act. And I think the use of reconciliation was partly because republicans routinized the use of the filibuster which then required 60 votes, which was very hard to get. And until – I mean, if you look at the trend of the filibuster overtime, you do see republicans despite every time the republicans are in a majority in the senate, and then immediately, democrats do retaliate, but because of this routinized use of the filibuster, I think it’s the only option they have. Frank Lechner: Well see, I think you’re whole framing of the issue as republicans doing something and democrats retaliating is, itself, a partisan presentation of the actual process. Of course, the reason why democrats used the unusual procedure to pass the Affordable Care Act is that they – is not simply the use of the filibuster but also the fact that Massachusetts elected a republican senator to replace Ted Kennedy partly out of discontent over the Affordable Care Act. And I don’t blame democrats for using their partisan advantage at that time to do what they wanted to do and to achieve their goals. I’m simply pointing out that that framing, the various disputes in Congress and the various debates over various issues, are simply a matter of republican intransigence and democratic desire for compromise is a very partisan presentation of the facts. Chris Martin: So if you were to talk to your class about the 2016 election or the changes in the democratic party and republican party over the last 30 years, that’s since the Gingrich era, how would you describe them to your class? Frank Lechner: Well, we actually did discuss the results of the 2016 elections in my class on the sociologic conservatism, but in a very different way than you present in your piece. First of all, I, myself, prefer to teach the debate. I prefer to have students make up their own minds and to consider arguments and evidence from many different sides. And so we focus more on the way in which Donald Trump, as a candidate, departed from traditional conservatism. We try to evaluate the way in which he might or might not be able to achieve his actual policy goals and so far as he had coherent policy goals. And we try to assess the political landscape in view of his somewhat unconventional candidacy. And so we focus not so much on the 30 years prior but on the actual situation that had been created by the 2016 elections. And, of course, we had the advantage that, in my class, we had been talking about conservatives, conservative policies and so on and so forth, and so, the rise of a, let’s say, populist candidate within the republican party raised all kinds of interesting questions that were worth discussing in that class. We had a very good and I thought very productive discussion. But the basis for the discussion was that I, myself, did not put forth a particular partisan interpretation of the outcome of the election. Chris Martin: So in the class, did you have some students, who, by examining the evidence, reached the conclusion that one party was more extreme, either other party? Frank Lechner: Well, I don’t – I did not and they did not frame the discussion in terms of whether a party is extreme or not. I think that is a somewhat useless epithet that is usually useful for partisan purposes, but that was not the goal of the discussion in my class. So we did not use that kind of language and that is really not – it was really not the purpose of the analysis that we engage in the class. As I said, our focus was more on the way in which Trump departed from traditional conservatism and the kinds of complications that would follow from that, and also the difficulty that he would face in carrying out his policy goals, and so far, as he had clear policy goals. It was a more dispassionate, you might say, analysis and discussion with people of various political persuasions of the actual political situation that existed. And frankly, this whole notion of one party being more extreme than another obviously depends very much on the particular yardstick that you choose, and the choice of those yardsticks is always somewhat arbitrary. I think adjectives like extreme and so on are very useful in partisan discourse, but that really was not the purpose of the discussion in my class. Chris Martin: I think that’s a fair criticism. I think extreme is an epithet. Maybe a better way of phrasing is, I believe, one party has discarded many norms that have previously helped Congress function. So the norm of, for example, of treating 51 votes in the Senate as a sufficient majority to pass bills, the norm of one of supreme court, they can see arises on the middle on a president’s term due to a death allowing the president’s nominee to be considered. Frank Lechner: Okay. Chris, I hear you. But democrats have had many opportunities to restore those norms to demonstrate their commitment to those, “traditional norms”, but they did not do that. And the shenanigans of Harry Reid in the Senate in recent years can show that, including the way in which he changed the procedures for head and judicial appointments. And as just one anecdote of his regards for traditional norms, I recall the way in which Harry Reid on the floor of the senate, the accused Mitt Romney, presidential candidate, of tax evasion based on no evidence what so ever, and in great respect, was proud of that lie because it helped to prevent Mitt Romney from succeeding. So forgive me but I don’t have a very high regard for the superior commitment of democrats to the traditional norms of Congress in particular. Chris Martin: Okay. So let’s take this into a future oriented sense. What evidence would convince you in the future that the republican party has adopted more disruptive tactics or more partisan tactics or that the democratic party has? Frank Lechner: I think all parties use partisan tactics. I think that is true and I think there’s nothing more with that. And whether a particular tactic is quite disruptive, of course, again, it depends on the particular standpoint at a particular yard stick that you use that, to some extent, the choice of yard stick is just so much as the partisan choice. There’s no objective analysis of that, as I’m far as I’m concerned. And so all these kinds of adjectives, I think, are a little bit misleading and perhaps don’t quite get the actual dynamics of real politics. But I guess one of the main points that I would make is that, in terms of the actual distribution of power in the United States and the actual distribution of people holding office in the United States at the end of 2016, it was particularly striking, missing in your piece, that the republicans helped majorities in Congress, in most state legislatures, helped most governorships, as well as the White House. And so I still don’t think that that majority, that dominance is going to last, but I think in terms of that actual distribution, it is the democratic left that I think was more out of sync, you might say, was the center, the actual center of actual American politics at that time. So if a [0:27:50] [blue wave] happens in the next few years and democrats become dominant in the same that republicans were dominant at the end of 2016, then I would be more inclined to say that the republican party is extreme in the sense that – or an outlier in the sense that at least the right wing of the republican party is far removed of what would be the left or center, center of gravity in American politics. But as of 2016, I thought that the center of gravity in American politics was right or center, well within the republican party. And by that standard, the standard or the actual distribution of power, I felt the democratic left was, at least for the time being, out of sync with the situation at that time. Chris Martin: So you would say a representation would be your key. To get back to my article just briefly, I did include a parenthetical statement about how state-level politics are different. So I don’t want to get into that in to too much detail. And I think at the state-level, you can – you know, republican in California is probably more liberal than a democrat in Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama. So state-level, getting into state-level politics is complicated. So I agree that the fact that there have been – there are currently 35 republican governors may indicate a conservative leaning in some sense or a sense that maybe we need less regulation, we need to be a little more business-friendly. But on the other hand, I feel like it’s – I feel like the state-level and federal level are so different. It’s hard to conflate both of them and say, clearly, republicans are ascendant because of the state-level phenomena. Frank Lechner: Well, I think the fact of the matter is that, as of late 2016, at least for a while, republicans had been ascendant, and that is a very striking fact. And the other that was missing from your piece – I don’t need to hark on the negatives because I agree with you in some ways. The most striking thing that was missing from your piece was the opposition that is the fact that Hillary Clinton lost the election. And there, again, I think your piece lack the perspective imbalance. That is the election was just as much a referendum on Hillary Clinton and the kind of campaign that she had conducted as it was an affirmation of Donald Trump. So I think in that regard too, I think there was more to be said about what happened in 2016. And mind you, I am not assuming that that is, in anyway, permanent, I expect the pendulum of American politics to swing at the other direction. And so I think that judgment of what happened to 2016 needs to be carefully circumscribed for that reason. Chris Martin: I think that’s a fair criticism. I think, you know, maybe three or four years down the road we can look at in in hindsight and have a clear picture. So moving on to the second topic I wanted to talk about, which is your class on conservatism, it’s the first class of its kind at Emory. It was a freshman seminar, if I’m correct, and you taught it in the fall of 2016. Could you tell me a bit about how you shaped a syllabus for that class, why you decided to offer it, how it worked out. Frank Lechner: Sure. I thought there was a need for a little bit more diversity in our course offerings pertaining to hot political topics. And I thought, in particular, there was a need for a course that actually dealt with the actual ideas of actual conservatives. And so I designed that course with that basic goal in mind, that there would be at least one place where small groups of students would be able to be exposed to conservative ideas, conservative policies, and so on, and be able to debate honestly and seriously. And so that was the – that was the overall goal. And we focused on, you might say, philosophical background, philosophical ideas that informed contemporary conservatism. We dealt with legal conservatism, conservatism as it pertains to the welfare state, the administrative states, foreign policy, things of that sort. And because we held that class in the fall of 2016, we obviously also addressed a little bit the conservative aspects of the Trump campaign or the lack thereof. Chris Martin: And how did you think the class went? Do you feel like you had a mix of liberal centrist and conservative students and everyone came away with a better understanding of conservatism? Frank Lechner: Yes. We had a very nice mix of quite conservative and quite liberal students who enjoyed arguing with each other, and the class, I think, was a great success in that regard. I think everyone, regardless of the political persuasions that they came in with, really learned a lot about what’s the varieties of contemporary American conservatism are like. And in that sense, they get to open their eyes to what is actually happening with the current state of conservatism, problematic as it is, actually is. And so I think it was very productive for the students. I enjoyed it, they enjoyed it. It opened their eyes, you know, regardless of their prior background. And I think simply the experience of really arguing about particular conservative ideas and policies was itself invigorating, I would say, for all the participants. Chris Martin: And do you think you had some students who were in the class because they were personally interested in careers in politics? Frank Lechner: Yes. There were a few students who were at least thinking about a career in politics. Chris Martin: How did they find the course? Frank Lechner: Oh, I think they enjoyed it as much as all the other students. And I can’t speak for them, you’ll have to interview them someday about their experiences and plans, but I think it at least gave them a firmer foundation for whoever future work they may end up doing. Chris Martin: Well, the reason I asked is I was wondering if it perhaps made them cynical. Not the topic of conservatism but just the topic of politics in general and how it actually plays out. Frank Lechner: No. I don’t – I don’t think so. I mean, first of all, I tried to avoid – I tried to avoid teaching in a way that makes students more cynical than they may already be. I tend to accentuate the policies perhaps a little bit in the sense that I won’t mind courses to be inspiring in some way. I don’t always succeed but at least I try. And I want students to have a good experience as part of their class as well. And so – and frankly, I think the level of debate and discussion and the real serious analysis that they did in the class itself I think mitigates any cynicism they may have about American politics. I sure as did not sugarcoat, for example, the difficulties that conservatism faces today and the fragmentation of conservatism and so on and so forth. The class is well aware of the – of the problems that conservatism as a movement, as an ideology, is grappling with – grappling with today. So – but I don’t – I don’t think that grappling resulted in any greater cynicism. But you’ll have to ask the students. Chris Martin: Do you think you’ll offer the course again? And if you offered it again, do you think you would assign different readings or do anything differently? Frank Lechner: Definitely. I plan to offer it again next year. And I haven’t quite decided about changes that I might make. I myself am not a social conservative in any – in any strong sense, but I do think I might include little bit more representation of social conservatism. I noticed that there was – there is a new book by Patrick Deneen about the failure of liberalism and I might – I might pay attention to that. We focused in 2016 on the Supreme Court’s same sex marriage case. I may revisit that, but again, may declare that to be a done deal, so to speak. So I’m not sure if I’ll – if I’ll continue debating that particular topic. We had a section on foreign policy. I may change that a little bit, but of course, one of the topics that we will have to address is the extent to which and the way in which the Trump administration is actually pursuing conservative policies, and how you might assess that from the point of view of traditional, conservative criteria. So we’ll get a little bit more into the nitty-gritty, so to speak, of the say, regulatory initiatives of the Trump administration, traditional appointments and things of that sort. Chris Martin: That sounds interesting. I wish I were an undergraduate again, I can take the course. Frank Lechner: Right. Chris Martin: Well, of course, there are many ways I’m glad I’m not an undergraduate anymore. Frank Lechner: I understand, I understand. Chris Martin: So I wanted to close by talking about your experience as a conservative in academia. I took a course with you about three years ago, I didn’t realize at the time you were a conservative. So I admire how you taught the course in a completely non-partisan way. But since you are a conservative, do you feel like you’re ideology has affected your success of not affected your success as an academic of effect of – the extent at which people take your idea seriously? Frank Lechner: I don’t mean to come across as a contrarian with regards to everything you say, but again, I will question the framing a little bit in a sense that I don’t think of myself as very conservative. I do sympathize with the views of many American conservatives, but I am more inspired by the European liberal tradition, I grew up in the Netherlands, and I’m in favor of significant progress and significant reform in a number of areas, and so I don’t think of myself as a conservative in a traditional sense, and I resist that label a little bit. But for the sake of argument, I’ll accept this. I appreciate your comments about my “non-partisan” teaching, because in my days, if I – try to, in a sense, politicize the work that I do, I don’t put my own views forward in a very strong manner, I prefer to create a stage in which students can analyze arguments and evidence as honestly and as seriously as possible, and to provide them the tools and if necessary, play the devil’s advocate for whatever side needs my support and needs my articulation. And so I think in my days in life, and my actual teaching, I don’t take a strong – generally, don’t take a strong political posture. More generally, I occasionally speak up political issues, issues on campus so people are aware that I have a slightly deviant point of view, point of view that deviates from orthodox so you got on most college campuses, but at the same time, I don’t fight any [00:38:16] [indiscernible] battles against the dominant culture. Chris Martin: That sounds like an assessment with which you feel like it has not, in any way, affected your career, which is encouraging. We do have other members of heterodoxy academy too, who have written about how their – past conservatives, they feel like their overall experience has been positive, and they’re happy they chose a career in academic life. Frank Lechner: Yes. I would say that my experience is positive, but a little bit mixed. It is positive in the sense that I certainly have gotten a lot of support, I enjoy the work that I do, I love teaching, and I’m surrounded my smart and dedicated colleagues, and I’m very much a part of my academic community, so I don’t have a sense of stigmatization or discrimination and in fact, as I said, I feel supported. I also think that I benefited in a way, because as having a minority voice, so to speak, on a number of issues, in a sense, that’s given me a particular role to play that I feel I actually I had to – the diversity of views on campus, in a way that perhaps some more progressively in colleagues, do not. So I do think I have a distinctive contribution to make and I think that’s valuable. At the same time of course, because my leanings are more to the right, I do get irritated as administrator rhetoric, but social justice or any other progressive issues that are touted by personally so much faculty as administrators, and like many colleagues, who are leaning to the right, I am also concerned about the homogeneity, the ideological homogeneity of many college campuses. I was intrigued by the article by Chris Smith in the Chronicle recently where the called BS on what he call the grossly lop-sided political ideology with faculty of many disciplines and so on and so forth, and I agree with that assessment. Chris Martin: I think that assessment that Jonathan Haidt and Lee Jetsam, and Jared Crawford, and several others would share, that was the – actually the basis for founding heterodoxy academy, that was one of the articles that started it all. Frank Lechner: Exactly. And I greatly appreciates his, and your initiatives to make heterodoxy academy possible. Chris Martin: Thank you. And now, I think this would be a good time to wrap up. Do you have any closing thoughts? Frank Lechner: No, I enjoyed the conversation. Chris Martin: Thank you for being on the show. Frank Lechner: Thank you, Chris.

Episode 19: Frank Lechner, Symmetric Polarization or Republican Radicalism?

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