THE BELL CURVE OF POLITICS

My politics are pretty moderate for the most part; the half-joking way I describe myself politically is “excessively centrist”.  My friends and others who are liberal, left-leaning are convinced I’m a heartless right-winger, while conservative, right-leaning friends and enemies alike are certain that I’m a bleeding-heart communist.  Taken together, that tells me that I’m about in the right spot – somewhere in the center of all the extreme right/left madness.

But if you think about it, there’s an implicit thesis here:  The best position on most social and political issues lies somewhere in the middle, between what the far right and the far left believe.  Furthermore, the closer one’s position is to dead center, the more likely it is to be correct or wise or whatever.  Folks on the right and the left alike surely don’t believe that is the case, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.  Here’s why.

An important “given” in evaluating any issue is to consider all sides before deciding where you stand on it.  Be it evolution vs. creationism, raising taxes vs. cutting government spending, loosening vs. tightening restrictions on illegal immigrants, or just about anything else – one cannot come up with an intelligent opinion without considering the arguments on each side.  If you believe otherwise, then read no further, because this is a bedrock assumption that underlies logical decision making, as well as the rest of this essay.

Let’s use the idea of stronger gun control as an example for this discussion.  If one says that much harsher gun laws are a necessity and that there is no room for compromise, then that implies that the gun rights crowd is either ignorant or illogical.  And vice-verse: the Second Amendment fanatics who won’t even consider more restrictions on gun ownership must implicitly see the other side as being misinformed and/or just plain stupid.  Now of course, either side could be right, but what are the chances? 

To figure that out, let’s expand this issue just a bit to talk about Democrats and Republicans in the U.S.  Since most Democrats favor stricter gun control while most Republicans do not, this isn’t much of a stretch; nevertheless, I am tweaking the conversation a bit here.  But at any rate, the question now is:  How smart and how educated are Democrats compared to Republicans?  Because if one group or the other really is uninformed and/or .... a bit slow, then that would justify ignoring their views and sticking with the opposite, extreme view.  But if they’re not, well, that suggests something entirely different. 

As someone in academia, the consensus view I get is that Democrats are, as a whole, more intelligent and also better educated than Republicans.  I suspect there’s something to that, but probably not as much as academicians, who tend to be Democrats themselves, believe.  A quick scan of Internet websites and articles on the topic seems to suggest that the average intelligence levels of Democrats and Republicans are about equal (such as http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/politics-and-iq-conservative-democrats.html ).  Similarly, Democrats and Republicans have about the same overall levels of education, except in the category of post-graduate university study, where Democrats have a pretty big edge: 58% of voters vs. only 40% for the Republicans (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1)

To be honest, though, I have mixed feelings about folks with graduate degrees and those who operate in academia (teachers and professors).  On the one hand, they are more likely to be knowledgeable about a variety of topics than someone without an advanced education.  But on the other hand, high schools and universities are notoriously skewed towards liberal views in most parts of the country.  So the knowledge one gains in school is likely to have been presented in a biased (liberal) manner.  I haven’t confirmed this claim through research and data, but suspect that there's sparse evidence otherwise.    

An example of this liberal bias in schools is Howard Zinn’s popular A People’s History of the United States, which several of my colleagues use in their history classes.  This book is widely acknowledged for its  extreme leftist bias, and George Mason University's History News Network recently named it the second least credible American history book .  It missed getting first place by just a small margin to Jefferson's Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson, by the way, as biased on the right as Zinn’s book is on the left.  (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/lies-the-debunkers-told-me-how-bad-history-books-win-us-over/260251/)  While A People's History is noteworthy for its groundbreaking work in social history and willingness to look at the darker side of our nation's history, few objective historians believe A People’s History should be taken as a realistic view of our history; it's too deeply flawed by its non-stop bias.  Yet I don’t think my esteemed colleagues and most of the thousands of other teachers/professors who assign the book present Zinn as an example of a biased, far-left author (he was, in fact, an ardent Marxist), but instead give students the idea that his book is really telling it like it is. 

This connects to the other concern about those in academia:  Most teachers/professors have little “real world” experience, having gone directly from high school to university to teaching, without the benefit of a career outside of academia.  As such, their views tend towards the ivory tower, theoretical variety, not tempered by the realities that often conflict with knowledge found in books and from professors.   

As a result (of liberal bias and often the disconnect from the real world found in schools) many students leave high school and college with a distorted view of American history, among other topics. Overall then, I think that being better educated is a good thing, but may also carry with it some negative baggage. 

But back to the greater point.  Whether liberals are smarter or better educated as a whole than conservatives, the fact remains that there are a great many intelligent and well-educated people in both of our two main political parties.  According to the Gallup group in 2011, 31% of Americans were Democrats and 29% were Republicans (the rest were independents).  Other estimates show much the same picture: there are about as many Democrats as there are Republicans in the U.S.  That means there are millions of each, and out of those millions, surely there are many thousands of Democrats and many thousands of Republicans who are more intelligent and better educated than either you or me. 

Certainly some of those Republicans are only out to "protect the rich and keep minorities down", while some of the Democrats are "communists who want to destroy the America we love", as members of those parties are quick to characterize their adversaries.  But apart from being rude stereotypes, those kinds of characterizations have the added disadvantage of being largely inaccurate, as most Democrats and most Republicans are decent people who only want the best for all Americans.  And if those things are true, i.e. both parties have highly-educated, intelligent people who want what's best for the country, then we are led to conclude that there must be valid, well-thought out reasons for supporting both liberal (Democratic) views and conservative (Republican) views.  This, in turn, suggests that extreme leftist or extreme rightist views fail to acknowledge (or are perhaps unaware of) the merits of other points of view, and are therefore unlikely to be correct or wise – to give the best answer, as it were. 

That reality reminds me of the Bell Curve often used in assigning test grades.  In curving grades, a few people are going to get A’s and F’s, more people are going to get B’s and D’s, and the biggest chunk will get C’s.  Probability wise, then, the further we are from the center (a middle C), then the less likely one is to get that particular grade. 

I think it’s the same with political opinions.  It’s certainly possible that a very far-right or far-left view is correct on a particular issue, but the odds are against it.  That would require that all of those intelligent, educated people on the other side are totally wrong, or do not have the country's best interests at heart.  Again – that is possible, but not likely. 

On the other hand, as we move more to the center from the extremes, we can accept the validity of what each side sees.  Liberals may be looking at different facts than conservatives, or simply interpreting them differently.  The centrist view basically says: “Look, you make some good points and so do the other guys, and the best answer is likely to be one that recognizes this fact."  Then it just comes down to how much each of us values the merits of the various points.  You see more merit in the conservative views, so you’re a conservative-centrist, while I see more merit in the liberal views, so I’m a liberal-centrist.  But we’re not so far apart, and we can function effectively and civilly this way.

That’s what is so sorely lacking in the U.S. these days – effective functioning and civility in politics, based on the ability to see all sides and find common ground.  Accordingly, that’s what I’m going to continue teaching in my classes: The most sensible understanding or opinion is likely to be somewhere in the middle, the one that acknowledges valid points from various perspectives.  Students who insist that their far-right or far-left views are the only possible answer have the right to do so, but they are going to be continually challenged in my classroom to show how that can be.  And to whatever degree that strategy mitigates the liberal bias they find in their other classes, well - that is as it should be.