Political Temperament - If You Could Engineer It, Would You Change It?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I like my political temperament. I think probably for the era of politics we're moving into, and for my job, it would almost be better to be of a more conflict oriented temperament than i am that. A lot of conservatives believe very strongly in conquest second law, and they see it more and more an they view it as a kind of curse. But i wouldn't really change that about myself. It's a shame that so much of politics happens on twitter now, but, you know, that's the way it is. Society as a whole is aging, sure. But i still think that part is true. We've not, like, we've not run out of people here

In his new book, Ezra Klein argues that polarization in America has become centered on partisan political identities, which has subsumed virtually every form of identity, be it where we live, what team we root for, the church we attend, or any other. This stacked form of polarization thus carries much more weight and is activated by a wider range of conflicts than before.

But is polarization really such a pressing concern? If it’s all merged into one form of identity politics then aren’t we just polarizing more efficiently? Over what percentage of GDP are we more polarized today versus in the past?

Tyler posed these questions to Ezra and more, including thoughts on Silicon Valley’s intellectual culture, his disagreement with Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory, the limits of telecommuting, how becoming a father made him less conservative, his post-kid production function, why Manhattan is overrated, the “cosmic embarrassment” of California’s governance, why he loved Marriage Story, the future of the BBC and PBS, what he learned in Pakistan, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded December 27th, 2019 Other ways to connect

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Follow Ezra on Twitter
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.