Insights Into Apparent Callousness Among Conservatives

I suspect a lot of Conservatives reacted to news reports and infographics that more than 46 million Americans now live in poverty about the same way some of their ultra-conservative-faction Tea Party members did during the recent debate by cheering pulling the plug on anyone who is dying but that doesn’t have health insurance.

Even if a subsequent attempt to balance perception of that event is accurate, flippancy and conservatism go back a long way including Lord Tommy Dewar’s famous early 20th century quip that “if we are here to help others, I often wonder what the others are here for.”

While it would be much too easy, even as a politically moderate Independent, I have too many friends of that persuasion, who are compassionate, to brush all Conservatives off as heartless.

My friends may not go as far as one Conservative commentator did while referring to some as having “no sense of moral decency” but even they would agree there is some truth to the perception that many Conservatives seem callous and recently I’ve come across several possible explanations.

One possible insight into those who are truly callous is that a pivotal “switch” may not have been flipped in childhood as described by Dr. Jim Taylor’s excellent new book for parents when he wrote that:

“…even if children are predisposed to compassion, what begins as an egocentric stage can turn into an entrenched attribute if that genetic switch isn’t turned on. And the way parents ensure that the switch is flipped is by sending children messages that discourage selfishness and encourage compassion.”

Another insight may be that Conservatives seem to be far more likely to be “declinists” by nature or more likely to fall under the spell of others who are. According to journalist Alan W. Dowd, who documents that America has been viewed as in “decline” a good portion of the last 300 years.

I’ve primarily been moderate and Independent politically since coming of age, but growing up in an ultra-conservative Republican household, by age 15 the first political books I read were John Birch Society-inspired paranoid-declinest-readers such as A Texan Looks At Lyndon, subtitled “a study of illegitimate power” and A Choice Not An Echo. Books like these probably pushed many of us toward becoming Independent and/or Liberal.

But judging from a recent infographic documenting the economic prosperity from ‘47-‘79, during my first 30 years of age and the economic regression from ‘80 until the present, the past 30 years, a period dominated by conservative politicians including the “Great Communicator” President Ronald Reagan, it seems stagnation, if not relative decline, may actually correlate closely with conservative viewpoints and policies.

It is important to note that correlation is not necessarily causation but after thirty years it is clear that the conservative inclination shows no sign of pay-off, no matter how many times it continues to be rebranded. In fact those who are so ready to preach the politics of “decline” in the Republican presidential primaries may find that their approach has actually led to the stagnation of the past thirty years.

Another insight into why so many Conservatives seem callous can be found in the research findings reviewed in the book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us when authors Drs. David Campbell and Robert Putnam write:

“Experiencing a loving God is associated with high trust in one’s fellow mortals, whereas experiencing a judgmental God is associated with low trust in other people….Religious liberals…are among the most socially trusting of Americans, whereas religious conservatives more often experience a judgmental God, and they are among the least trusting of Americans, especially if they are not observant.”

Contrasting those believing in a Judgmental God vs. a Loving God may in part also explain why conservative Republicans felt comfortable taking two-thirds of the budget cuts in its recently House-passed “Pathway to Prosperity” budget out of “programs that serve people of limited means” according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities while including the notation below appearing on page 25 that the budget will:

“ensure that America’s safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency.”

To me that sentence reflects what many would call a lack of “social trust” including Conservative author and columnist David Brooks in his book The Social Animal where he writes:

“Without social trust, the political system devolves into a brutal shoving match…The social fabric is based on the idea that effort leads to reward. But very often, government rewards people who have not put in the effort. It does this with good intentions…[e.g. welfare entitlement] and it does it with venal intentions [e.g. lobbyist-secured earmarks, tax breaks, subsides and corporate welfare]…

These programs weaken social trust and public confidence. By separating effort from reward, they pollute the atmosphere. They send the message that the system is rigged and society is corrupt.”

But from their research, the authors of American Grace further note that ultra-conservative, highly religious Republicans are especially vulnerable when it comes to social trust when they write:

“Fundamentalist religious views are negatively associated with social trust…Social trust increases with religious attendance but decreases with fundamentalism…Religious liberals more often experience a loving God, and they are among the most socially trusting of Americans, whereas religious conservatives more often experience a judgmental God, and they are among the least trusting of Americans, especially if they are not observant.

For highly observant fundamentalist Americans, their theology inclines them toward skepticism about human nature but their frequent attendance somehow move them to a more optimistic view.”

“Social trust” which is defined as a belief in the honesty, integrity and reliability of others - a "faith in people" is regularly benchmarked by the Pew Center and the General Social Survey. Studies also show that “social trust” correlates with quality of life and economic health.

In a column a couple of weeks ago entitled The Vigorous Virtues Brooks further comments on the importance of social trust but chastises the current Conservative and ergo Republican positions as inadequate:

“Finally, there is the problem of the social fabric. Segmented societies do not thrive, nor do ones, like ours, with diminishing social trust…government may have helped undermine personal responsibility and the social fabric, but that doesn’t mean the older habits and arrangements will magically regrow simply by reducing government’s role.”

It does appear that Brooks, as a compassionate Conservative, is in the minority both in his ideology and in the Republican Party. It is not at all clear from everything I’ve read that compassion as a value can be learned by an adult if “the switch wasn’t flipped” in childhood or that there is room for compassion in a worldview based on a Judgmental God.

Nor is there any evidence that empathy and compassion can come from reading first-hand accounts of poverty like Joe Queenan’s article this month entitled The Inconvenient Truths About Poverty.

As you’ll note in one of the first reader comments at the bottom of the article

At 12:05PM on 6 September 2011, jr wrote:

“this article is 100% bunk. the tv producer was correct. do you expect to live in a world that there is no differentiation between rich and poor? if so you are living in fantasy land. why would anyone strive to be successful if laziness would suffice? this is just more of the distribution of wealth bs as touted by the liberal democrats in power. it results in buying elections by paying the poor to stay unemployed and receive govt. assistance.”

As for me, I’m far more persuaded by a comment posted by Jay Zenner, a friend who blogs at Springtree Territory, when I first blogged about Queenan’s article:

“I guess there's more than one type of poverty. Besides financial poverty there's intellectual poverty and spiritual poverty. None of them are ennobling and all major religions and Rotary preach providing help to break the ‘vicious circle’ Queenan mentions...for all types of poverty”.

The Infrastructure of Poverty

While poverty is a deep concern to me, I may often fit Joe Queenan’s description below whenever I try to blog about it:

“This is compassion by anecdote, as if warm feelings or righteous indignation ever helped anybody. The professionally compassionate, the industriously empathetic, never, ever get things right; the textures of poverty forever elude them.”

But Queenan, a humorist and critic, actually did grow up in poverty.  It is part of the most recent book of his that I’ve read entitled Closing Time, a memoir published last year.

The article he published this month in The Rotarian magazine, entitled The Inconvenient Truths About Poverty, is truly a must-read for everyone along the entire ideological spectrum.

Queenan is an equal opportunity critic and his brief article isn’t really just about the “industriously empathetic” such as myself.  His article is also about those who have hardened their hearts, to use a religious reference,” to those in poverty.

I haven’t been able to get the following description of poverty out of my head (don’t be tempted to skim it, please read the entire quote, then go back up, open the link and read his entire article):

“The philosophical infrastructure of poverty is rooted in an interlocking series of self-fulfilling prophecies. Poor people eat bad food, drink bad beverages, and ceaselessly make bad decisions, and these counterproductive activities are then used as an indictment of their moral character. Thus, the poor become the architects of their own destruction. Poverty is a dunce school where the old teach the young how to make bad decisions. Adults who have bad eating habits, adults who smoke, adults who have substance abuse problems teach young people how to acquire these bad habits. They lead by example. The acquired bad habits are then used as an indictment of the poor children when they themselves come of age.”

It’s primary campaign season and we can all identify with Queenan’s comment that “every time you think you have heard the dumbest thing you are ever going to hear in your lifetime, somebody steps right up to the plate and hits the next pitch 400 feet farther than you’ve ever seen anyone hit it before. A lot of these people work in television.”

Conservative, moderate or liberal, you’ll be well-served to open the link to this article and read it.  For the most part, it seems that the vast majority of elected decision-makers and policy-makers have little or no first-hand experience with poverty.

Many on the right seem blind and insensitive and even idiotic when it comes to solutions to poverty.  Many on the left, ironically, seem much too conservative and wedded to solutions that no longer seem to be working.

As an Independent, I listen carefully to thoughtful voices on the left and many on the right such as David Brooks who wrote last week that solutions “cannot be done by government alone, but they can’t be done without leadership from government.”  He further noted that the “current Republican policy of negativism, cut, cut, cut is not enough.”

To me, the American way is to once again embrace, with vigor, F.D.R.’s vow of “bold, persistent experimentation…to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another but above all, try something.”

Everyone concerned about poverty would be well served to seek out the perspective of people such as Joe Queenan who have actually been poor even if the truths are inconvenient and run counter to many commonly-held beliefs.

The Moral From Two True Stories Of Need

I heard two accounts last week that could be an advertisement for a relatively new book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks which I’m already re-reading for the third time.

Recently a friend of mind struck up a conversation with a newcomer she met in Durham’s new, award-winning Durham Station Transportation Center only to learn that this community had the dubious honor of being chosen from among several on the East Coast by this newcomer only because it afforded better subsidized housing and welfare benefits.

That’s, of course, not the intent of safety nets and examples such as this person not only fuel insensitivity to and stereotypes of the poor that are held by far more than just Tea Partiers but they can inure those of more fortunate means to the incredible stress currently felt by low income households as benchmarked in a poll released last week by the Pew Center.

Then later that same day, another friend told me the story of a young woman who just graduated from high school even though she has grown up in poverty far deeper and more pervasive than many of the 1 in 4 children who are now living in that condition.

Years ago she took the initiative to master technical skills so she could work her way through secondary school. At the time I heard her story she was living with another of my friends after being kicked out at the home of a sibling where she’d been since, for a variety of reasons, neither parent had ever been capable of fulfilling their legal obligations to this kid.

Still she fought through the adversity to graduate and earn a scholarship to college this fall only to discover she couldn’t make the deposit necessary for housing because the place where she worked had suddenly closed without warning or payment of her earned wages, leaving only a “For Rent” sign in the window. Now she has overcome that obstacle too, just as she has far too many others in a life so young.

Years ago, of her own volition, she reached out and built a long-distance relationship with a disabled grandparent in another part of the state who hadn’t been in her life previously. She has now chosen to go to a college in a school in that city so can go over and help her sightless grandmother out when needed.

While far too many young people her age and younger seem overindulged, bored and unable to weather simple setbacks or disappointments or homesickness or peer pressure, this kid has already shown incredible grit and determination and willpower and resolve while going without the most basic support system.

“Grit,” the perseverance and passion for long-term goals such as hers is proven a far greater predictor of success in life than IQ or prodigy-level gifts according to study published jointly by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan and The United States Military Academy, West Point.

While this young woman has benefited over the last few weeks from the voluntary kindness of a stranger, whom I’m sure is equally impressed by her character and drive, she never plays the victim or shows an attitude or exhibits a sense of entitlement.

As one of the 12,500 young people, on average, who turn old enough each day this year to vote, she has already mastered the Character Tool Kit and she is living testament to Dr. Shelby Steele’s twenty-year classic The Content Of Our Character, published before she was born. Before her first day of college, she is already qualified to teach at The Kenan Institute for Ethics, a “think and do” tank for leadership here in Durham at Duke University.

Her example illustrates why we need to be very careful to only trim fraud and waste away from programs designed to give a hand up to social mobility for people like her and as Brooks pleaded in a February column in the New York Times, “cut wisely not stupidly.”

What true believer in the “American Dream” would hesitate even a second to voluntarily raise the tax on their income to help this young lady"?

Recent polls show that the percentage of people with libertarian views is on the rise but what they don’t realize and Brooks, a Conservative, so ably notes is that the growth of government is a result of flawed “individualist agendas” by both the right and the left when he writes that:

“these two individualist revolutions [‘60s on the left and ‘80s on the right] did not create loose free societies. They produced atomized societies in which the state grows in an attempt to fill the gaps created by social disintegration…”

Given these two examples, I choose to focus on the young, privilege-less girl as the poster child for why government must continue to fulfill its essential duty to promote and foster social mobility. It is as imperative to America’s survival as resolving the credit crisis.

This is why it is imperative that Republican leaders re-engage with bipartisanship. As Brooks noted in a debate at the American Enterprise Institute in March:

“…my problem with the Republican Party right now…is that if you offered them 80-20, they’d say no. If you offered them 90-10 they’d say no. If you offered them 99-1 they’d say no. And that’s because we’ve [Republicans]substituted governance for brokerism, for rigidity that Ronald Reagan didn’t have.

…this rigidity comes from this polarizing world view that they’re a bunch of socialists over there…I’ve spent a lot of time with the president [President Obama]…a lot of time with the people around him. They’re liberals!…But they are not idiots.

And they’re not Europeans, and they don’t want to be a European welfare state…It’s American liberalism, and it’s not inflexible.”

A Proposal To Eliminate Poverty Without Spending One Dime More Than We Do Now

“Poverty is a consequence” was the opening statement at a luncheon presentation yesterday by Dr. Michael Munger, a former libertarian candidate for Governor of North Carolina and director of Duke University’s joint Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program with the University of North Carolina.

Munger’s speech was the perfect bookend to one by Gene Nichol last fall at the same weekly luncheon.

Americans ranked “Helping poor people” the second highest area where they believe we need more government spending and Dr. Munger presented some interesting information that may explain why, in the same opinion poll, Americans also want less spent on welfare:

• In constant 2007 dollars those with the lowest 20% in terms of income in this country today have double the income they had when I was born in 1948.

• The line currently below which people are considered poor is $11,200. What some term our “welfare state” current spends $16,480 per poor person. Of course a good chunk of that feeds the bureaucracy and never makes it to poor people.

• The $550 billion the US government spends on means-tested programs to reduce poverty (excluding Medicaid spending for nursing home residents) is enough, if distributed quarterly each year directly to poor people, to eliminate poverty altogether.

• Currently aid distribution through various programs collectively reduces the poverty rate less than 1% while perpetuating a huge bureaucracy, lobbyists and political capital.

Dr. Munger believes we could do more, much more and touched on some solutions. He noted that part of the problem is that capitalism is arbitrary and cited some including what trickle-down-guru David Stockman terms today’s disemboweled, off-shored economy on Main Street.

He seems to agree with George Washington’s farewell-speech caution (co-authored by Alexander Hamilton) about the dangers inherent in self-perpetuating political parties given as he departed from office after his second term as the nation’s first President.

Dr. Munger is a proponent of tax reform to close loopholes. He seemed to agree that poverty is a problem of wealth and distribution, not rich vs. poor. He pointed out examples showing that the rich had merely worked the political system to their advantage and he was much tougher on elected officials for playing the politics that permits it.

Dr. Munger touched on our collective reluctance as a society to “trust” poor people to do the right thing if the funds to eliminate poverty were distributed directly.

I couldn’t help but think, as he concluded, that Dr. Munger may agree with an assessment David Brooks wrote so eloquently in The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, published just two months ago:

“…freedom should not be the ultimate end of politics. The ultimate focus of political activity is the character of the society. Political, religious, and social institutions influence the unconscious choice architecture undergirding behavior. They can create settings that nurture virtuous choices or they can create settings that undermine them…

…You can pump money into poor areas, but without cultures that foster self-control, you won’t get social mobility….Everything came down to character, and that meant everything came down to relationships, because relationships are the seedbeds of character.

The reason life and politics are so hard is that relationships are the most important, but also the most difficult, things to understand….character and culture really shape behavior, and… government could, in limited ways shape culture and character.

…government should not run people’s lives. That only weakens the responsibility and virtue of the citizens. But government could influence the setting in which lives are lived. Government could, to some extent, nurture settings that serve as nurseries for fraternal relationships. It could influence the spirit of the citizenry…

…The social fabric is based on the idea that effort leads to reward. But very often, government rewards people who have not put in the effort. It does this with good intentions…and it does it with venal intentions…By separating effort from reward, they pollute the atmosphere. They send the message the system is rigged and society is corrupt.

…Aristotle wrote that legislators habituate citizens. Whether they mean to or not, legislators encourage certain ways of living and discourage other ways.

Statecraft is inevitably soulcraft.”

Characteristics Of A Good CEO

Even having been one for 94% of the nearly four-decade career I concluded 15 months ago, I’m still learning what makes a good chief executive.

Much more interesting and relevant, in my opinion, than surveys of what CEOs themselves think are studies that correlate CEO characteristics and successful organizations.

A book published last month by David Brooks gives a brief synopsis of three studies beginning with the 2001 best-selling study Good To Great which found that the best CEO’s were “not flamboyant visionaries,” according to Brooks, but “humble, self-effacing, diligent, and resolute souls who found one thing they were really good at and did it over and over again….they demanded discipline and efficiency.”

Brooks also cites two other studies.

One is a 47-page 2009 report entitled “Which CEO Characteristics Matter,” by Dr. Steven Neil Kaplan at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and two other researchers which Brooks notes, “found that traits that correlated most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytical thoroughness and the ability to work long hours.”

But I notice the report also cites that an “important caveat is that different types of CEOs may endogenously match with different types of companies. In this case, the resulting performance may reflect company differences rather than a causal impact of CEO types.”

This was why a former counterpart in a nearby community and I would joke that I wouldn’t last five minutes as the DMO exec in his community and he wouldn’t last ten minutes in mine. In community/destination marketing at least, it is more critical that a CEO meshes well with the community and organizational culture.

Another 2001 study entitled Personality And Performance by Professor Murray Barrick now head of the Mays Business School Management Department at Texas A & M and two other researchers, according to Brooks, “surveyed a century’s worth of research into business leadership. They too found that extroversion, agreeableness, and openness to new experience did not correlate well with CEO success.”

Brooks continues that from the report “what mattered was emotional stability, conscientiousness – being dependable, making plans and following through.”

Brooks also notes that “these sorts of dogged but diffident traits do not correlate well with education levels. CEOs with law or MBA degrees do not perform better than CEOs with college degrees. Nor do they correlate with compensation packages, nor fame and recognition.”

So for all the folks who strut around annual conferences to impress job search consultants in hopes of climbing the ladder of success, it appears you’re better advised after all to focus on the continuing education and getting your organization accredited while keeping an eye out for communities with the right fit.

The rest will take care of itself.

Reweaving The Source Of My Motivation!

I’m really not certain now what motivated me to go to college. “Memory doesn’t actually retrieve information. It reweaves it,” according to a new book I’m almost finished reading by David Brooks.

I remember my parents, one of whom finished high school and the other who dropped out at age 16, being insistent that I go to college. As did both sets of grandparents, none of whom had gone to college and only one of whom graduated from high school.

While I was certainly surrounded by supportive influences, I suspect from statistics that Brooks cites that applying household income averages today to my family back then, I’d have only a 1 in 10 chance of graduating by age 24.

But I did and at a time (1972) when there was little or no premium to your income if you did. But today is different.

Brooks cites statistics that a family with a graduate degree today makes an average of $93,000, a college degree $75,000, a High School diploma $42,000 and a drop-out $28,000.

It isn’t all about money, though. According to Brooks, researchers in a Minnesota study followed 180 children and their families over three decades. They were able with 77% accuracy to predict if a child would drop out of high school by 42 months of age based on social and emotional factors.

If you want to read a fascinating book about those social and emotional factors, read The Social Animal – The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks.

It reminded me why my parents were emphatic that I not only attend college but graduate but it wasn’t all about income.

Having never been there themselves, my parents and grandparents saw college as a means to broaden my horizons, expose me to many different kinds of people and cultures, teach me to critically think, expose me to ideas and innovation and an architecture for making ethical decisions, deepen my compassion and empathy, hone my self-discipline and work ethic and fuel my ambition.

It also fostered my love of learning and exploration that is now making retirement so deliciously rich and rewarding.