Looking for the Political Philosophy to End Tribalist Culture Wars

We need to rediscover our common ground in the classical liberal and conservative traditions

The combined effects of the postmodern left and the culture-war right means that Western society is now divided between two kinds of people: those who want to fight a tribalist culture war to 'own' the other side, and those who still believe in finding common ground and working towards practical solutions for our problems. The first group, the culture warriors on both sides, are a lost cause at this point, and I think we must separate ourselves from them going forward. We, people on both sides of the political spectrum who are still dedicated to finding common ground and finding good solutions, need to be able to have constructive dialogue with each other, rooted in a commitment to objective reality and a wish to find practical solutions. We would also need to put our ideological differences aside to achieve this. To do all this, we need a clear vision of the society we want, and how to get there.

Using the Classical Liberal Tradition to Rebuild our Shared Objective Reality

Right now, many people are concerned about the rise of fake news, and biased reporting that might not be fake but is deliberately biased so as to provoke an emotional reaction, often to support certain policies. A new, worrying trend is that there seems to be an increasing alignment between the 'postliberal' right and this kind of biased reporting, with certain media outlets (including both traditional and online outlets) reliably acting as a bloc to deliver the emotionally charged moral panics that justify highly illiberal policies and actions. The recent moral panic around certain LGBT issues, and the resulting illiberal policies in many red states across America, as well as the movements to boycott Bud Light and Target, is a good example of this. (The Target boycott is particularly notable here because it was partly fueled by fake news.) As classical liberals, we just can't let this continue unchecked, because it would represent the total destruction of important classical liberal norms, from the commitment to objective truth, to the need for the state to respect individual liberty, to the freedom of private businesses to do business as they see fit.

Many social media platforms have resorted to varying levels of censorship, which has generally been disastrous in practice. Not only does this not stamp out fake news, it is totally useless against biased reporting that does not cross into fake news, but nevertheless represents a distortion of reality. Moreover, such action has led to criticisms of disrespect of free speech rights, which inevitably lead to even more conspiracy theories. Furthermore, there are always platforms where censored ideas can still be spread. Particularly now that Twitter is owned by Elon Musk and has an anti-censorship ethos, there is certainly no way censorship can be part of the solution to combat fake news. Censorship was misguided in the first place, and now it has become worse than useless.

I think the only way to combat fake news and biased reporting is to recommit to the classical liberal tradition. Specifically, we must value free speech, the marketplace of ideas, and finding common ground in being dedicated to the objective truth. To put it bluntly, I think we are in the situation we are in now partly because of the influence of a certain strain of postmodern and critical theory thinking, that originated from far-left sections of academia. That strain of thinking values subjectivity over objectivity, and paints all social norms and objective truth as oppressive constructs in the service of privileged groups. This is the way which leads to a loss of shared reality, a society where there are competing 'truths' that are all 'relative' to one's social affiliations, and ultimately fertile ground for fake news and biased reporting to take hold. All this is not to discount the role of 20th century 'fusionist' political conservatism either. Fusionism was essentially a counterfeit version of conservatism that masked radical economic policies with reactionary culture wars. The reactionary culture wars became a norm for Republican and conservative politics, and the use of biased reporting and tribal 'truths' became normalized within such culture wars.

As I said earlier, we, people on both sides of the political spectrum who are still dedicated to finding common ground and finding good solutions, need to be able to have constructive dialogue with each other, rooted in a commitment to objective reality and a wish to find practical solutions. We would also need to put our ideological differences, and our political affiliations aside, to achieve this. If we can build a movement of rational and constructive dialogue that cuts across ideological factions, then I think we would have something that can outcompete the fake news and biased reporting model. If that happens, we wouldn't have to fear fake news anymore, because it would just die out from being unpopular.

Building a Practical Progressive Conservatism

One of the major reasons the culture wars have gotten so heated and unhealthy is because the left is no longer liberal, and the right is no longer conservative. Since the 1970s, the Western Left has been gradually transformed by abstract philosophical theories produced in academia, and the progress being advocated for is often grounded in theory but ignorant of the nuances of reality. Such change tends to hurt innocent bystanders in some way, and therefore generate backlash. The mainstreaming of postmodern critical theories in the 2010s, which also challenged traditional liberal values like free speech, made things even worse. Also, since the 1980s, the 'fusionist' right has been whipping up reactionary culture wars to hide their radical economic agenda. This is not what the Burkean conservative tradition is about, and the proper understanding of conservatism, where change that is rooted in practical need and consistent with a given nation's traditions is accepted, needs to be restored.

The combination of a return to old-school liberal values on the left, and a return to a genuine understanding of conservatism on the right, leads to the possibility of a practical progressivism that is rooted in both the classical liberal tradition and the Burkean conservative tradition. Conservatism demands that change rooted in abstract theory and alien to a nation's traditions be rejected. Liberalism, with its free speech and marketplace of ideas, allows the people to reject such change. On the other hand, conservatism would accept change that arises from practical need, and done in a way that is consistent with a nation's traditions. Again, liberalism's marketplace of ideas is the place where the solution for such change can be developed, with the rational and conscious input of stakeholders from all walks of life.

With this ideal in mind, we are on firm ground to reject the culture warrior approach from both the theoretical, cultural systemist left, as well as the reactionary, now borderline-fascistic right. We know that we can have something better, and we should work hard to make it a reality.