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Arnold Kling thinks there’s more to talking about politics than the angry yelling shows on TV and the radio.
Why is political rhetoric so harsh?
Arnold Kling joins us for a discussion on his book, The Three Languages of Politics . Kling says that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians all use different languages to justify their beliefs, and that this results in political polarization.
Why is political rhetoric so harsh? Is there too much over-simplification in political rhetoric? Are libertarians guilty of this as much as anyone?
Show Notes and Further Reading
Arnold Kling, The Three Languages of Politics (e-book)
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (book)
George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (book)
Paul Krugman, Conservatives Are (Mostly) Not Libertarians (column)
Arnold Kling received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1980. He is the author of several books, including Crisis of Abundance: Re-thinking How We Pay for Health Care, published by the Cato Institute. He writes a monthly column for the Library of Economics and Liberty. Find him online at www.arnoldkling.com.
Aaron Powell founded Libertarianism.org. He is now the host of (Re)Imagining Liberty, a podcast about the case for radical freedom.
Trevor Burrus was a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy.
He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017). Burrus holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.