I wonder if we'll see changes in the level of partisanship in California now that we have the new "top 2" combined primaries. I think one big reason for the partisanship in Washington is because you have representatives from "locked up" districts where the voting is over after the primary because the party majority is so large in the district. They don't answer to their whole district, only to the base that votes in the party primary.

Since human time began, there has been a dichotomy. There is US. And there are THEM. Over centuries and for myriad reasons, the US/THEM separation took many forms. Inasmuch as religion is probably older than politics, we might (if we were so inclined), blame it for political partisanship. Someone said on an earlier post that if there is a cause for everything, then what is the cause of the cause---which leads back
to the origin of the universe---but, this post is not about that. Not directly, anyway.
I accept that there is a certain psychology of partisan politics: it is the old US v.THEM mentality, played long and hard, over more than two centuries in U.S. time. As the country grew and outgrew original goals and ideologies, US v. THEM became an strongly economic divide: one political party represented those who held wealth; the other, those who did not.
And so it remains. And so remains another fact: Those who were once among the less-wealthy change their party affiliation when fortunes reverse. I need not name names because we all know the principal players.
It is not psychology---or, philosophy. Just economics. We be US, They be THEM. Yep.

I agree with KT that liberals are focused on equality. That seems to be the central theme in what they believe. They identify with the downtrodden. Where they get this underdog mindset from, I don't know. With radicals I think the common element is pacifism - they think money is the root of all evil, and that's why they don't trust the corporations. This doesn't explain why so many of them are just a little rough around the edges. I spent four years in Berkeley, you see plenty of it there.
Conservatives, I spend a lot of time trying to figure them out. Maybe it really is taxes that bother them so much. To them, taxes are just the poor stealing money from the rich. There's more than one kind of conservative. The Wall Street crowd, they work hard for the millions they get, and they don't want to have to give any of it up. That's straightforward enough, but it doesn't explain where their drive comes from. The religious conservatives base their ideas on the Ten Commandments. They don't care too much about cleverness or inventiveness, your moral standards are what they judge you on. The libertarians just want Washington to go away, a lot of them are Johnny Rebs. And parenthetically, when Martin Luther King said that people should be judged by the content of their character, that sounds more like KT's definition of conservatism than liberalism.
But I think that both the left and the right need to open up their eyes. Neither of them seems particularly scientific to me.

Globalization has undermined the two primary shapers of personal identity: work and local community -- fundamental realities to which most of us can trace our very surnames. They're also the fundamental factors of civitas -- the basis of civilization. When people had strong attachments to their local communities and worked beside and served their neighbors through their daily labor they had very different relationships to each other. We were materially engaged in each other's lives, providing for each other; we had common concerns and interests; we had common wealth; we were responsible to each other. None of us were against progress and none of us were against conserving. That is to say, we were adults.
But now, debased from the civilizing influence of meaningful productive labor and stable, strong local communities, we instead depend for our identities on communities of abstraction and ideology .
John Adams had grave doubts that a nation the size of the thirteen colonies could be civilized. He was right to worry.
We need to restore civitas, to re-civilize the world -- re-localize our politics and our work and become meaningfully engaged with our neighbors in all those ways that subordinate and discourage debased ideology and abstract nonsensical pieties. Then we'll have reason to expect civility -- and practical meaning -- in our public discussion.

The discussion touched on the importance of material engagement to civil discourse, but didn't go nearly far enough. Globalization has undermined the two primary shapers of personal identity: work and local community -- fundamental realities to which most of us can trace our very surnames. They're also the fundamental factors of civitas -- the basis of civilization. When people had strong, long-standing attachments to their local communities and worked beside and served their neighbors through their daily labor they had very different relationships to each other. We were materially engaged in each other's lives, providing for each other; we had common concerns and interests; we had -- and made -- common wealth; we were responsible to each other. None of us were against progress and none of us were against conserving. That is to say, we were adults.
But now, debased from the civilizing influence of meaningful productive labor and stable, strong local communities -- practical and meaningful commonality -- we instead depend for our identities on communities of abstraction and ideology.
John Adams had grave doubts that a nation the size of the thirteen colonies could be civilized. He was right to worry.
We need to restore civitas, to re-civilize the world -- re-localize our politics and our work and become meaningfully engaged with our neighbors in all those ways that subordinate and discourage debased ideology and abstract nonsensical pieties. Then we'll have reason to expect civility -- and practical meaning -- in our public discussion.

Dave, I don't think you can lump together Plato and Marx. Doing so suggests you'd dismiss anyone who questions laissez-faire as the basic organizing principle of societies. One of the beauties of getting back to thinking about society on the local community level -- civitas -- is that we can once again imagine the great ideal of civilization: all for one and one for all. That "and" is all-important. Organized at a scale that allows meaningful participation in our political and economic decision-making and activity, we can reconcile the interests of individuals with the needs of the community as a whole. It transforms the meaning of self-interest (actually re-aligning it with Adam Smith's understanding).

It's not as if you run this blog, Dave. But I'll try to address the question of why Washington is so polarized nowadays. I see this more in practical than philosophical terms. Jonathan Haidt on the show gave a pretty good reason, that Gingrich fixed the rules in Congress so that people could spend more time in their home districts, leaving town on Thursday and getting back on Tuesday. Another reason is fundraising, they spend so much time on that now they don't have time for socializing. And Foxnews whipping everyone up into a tax cut frenzy is another reason.

Dave --
In human history -- and pre-history, as far as we can tell -- the modern western emphasis on the individual, or more precisely, willingness to consider the individual separate from the community, is the exception, not the rule.

POLITICALS
Carpenter, I always find your comments both provocative and helpful. What I like most about the blog is that while there is much room for disagreement and disagreement is welcomed, the two unproductive arguments ?ridicule? and ?dismissal? seldom appear.
Liberalism says: We can have a better society. We know what the goals are, but we have to commit to new processes to try to reach the goals. If one process doesn?t work, try another, but keep the goals the same.
Conservatism says: We like the way things are. Let?s keep on doing whatever got us to this point.
All people seek confirmation of what they think is right and good: it is part of the human instinct, and a central impulse for social organization. Both the group and the spiritual provide reference outside one?s consciousness ? and to ?another consciousness? ? to give this confirmation (and to provide an object for the gift we each feel, of our love).
Social and spiritual (and political) self-defining always depends on differentiating one?s group from ?the others.? Demonization is the result. (Foreign policy, American and Old Testament and others, adds ?fear of irrational destroying and killing power? to demonization.)
It is my contention that American ideas of democracy and the wording of our Constitution will not get us into the 21st Century successfully. Just look at the paralysis of our institutions when we need them most.

Apparently we need to embrace and effect change. But, if our political partisans can never agree upon how much and what kind of change is desirable, we have the continuing enigma of ages beyond measure. Ken Wilber is a scholar of some renown, and I too have read much of his work. He has a system: well-expressed and articulate. But in writing so much, he has often repeats himself. So, I moved on to other philosophical realms, ultimately discovering the bastions of evolutionary biology and natural history. As Pope Francis said on the evening of his selection: Good night,---and good luck. Looks like we shall need it.

As a footnote to Tim's last post, Joseph Campbell said that there are four mythologies in the world that emphasize the individual, and they're all in Europe: Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Germanic. Someone said on this blog a while back that freedom is the most important thing, and gave the example of how his cat reacts when he tries to cage it. I agree that it's important, but it's not the only important thing. Anyone who's ever seen a bunch of piglets at feeding time knows that freedom is not what they're interested in. Food is what they want.

The claim of decreasing violence is wrong (undermining the thesis). Pinker manipulated data to fit his theory, and when you remove that manipulation his theory falls apart. See:
"John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war" at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wro...
"Steve Pinker?s bogus statistics: A critique of The Better Angels of Our Nature" at http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/steve-pinkers-bogus-st...