Yesterday, I had a very interesting conversation with my friend Dr. Greg Arthur. He was introducing me to the work of the Ideos Institute, whose staff he recently joined. Ideos is centered on the idea of Empathic Intelligence. Their website describes it as follows:
Empathic Intelligence (or EmQ) is unique from almost every other intelligence in that it is an intelligence where the primary beneficiary is not oneself. Rather, it is an intelligence that exists primarily for the benefit and good of others.
Practically, it is the mutually reinforcing ability to understand (cognitive), relate to (affective), and make sacrificial decisions on behalf of others (active), all without losing one’s self in the process. It is also the key to the realization of a world that embraces the diversity and complexity of God’s created order, and where, as a society, we can love and live alongside others despite deep differences. Only from this position do we become freed to pursue social renewal and realize true human flourishing.
I’m intrigued with this concept. I’ve long been a fan of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. Both of these introduced me to ways of understanding individual differences and how those play out in groups.
One of the things Greg said in our chat was that empathic intelligence has connections to intellectual hospitality. This latter concept calls us to understand an argument within the framework of the one arguing, accepting that in good faith, and responding based on your perspective, knowing that you don’t know everything.
Focusing on empathic intelligence and intellectual hospitality made me recognize the ways in which the opposite was present in two recent online blowups. I want to unpack this a bit.
Last month, I wrote about Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman’s White Rural Rage. Here is what I took as the key argument of the book.
They address the litany of issues that have ravaged rural America in recent decades. Yes, there were jobs that moved overseas. But there was also the growth of corporate farming, the shuttering of local businesses, the closure of hospitals, the explosion of Dollar General stores, and the limited home equity destroyed in the Great Recession.
They also document the disproportionate political advantage present in rural America as a result of the Senate configuration, the Electoral College, and gerrymandering. Yet this comparative political advantage hasn’t been reflected in solutions to the issues listed above.
Part of that gap echoes the argument made by [Thomas] Frank years ago. So much of the focus of modern politicking is to stoke anger at the coastal elites, Hollywood, and big cities. It’s easier to be concerned about a trans person promoting Bud Light or to demagogue about library books or worry about caravans than to seriously address the lives of people who live in rural communities.
In the final chapter, the authors recount a conversation they had with Representative Chip Roy of Texas. They asked if he had an agenda to meet the needs of his rural constituents. Confused, Roy spoke of hot button issues like illegal immigration and complaints about inflation and described his opposition to the farm bill.
Over the last two weeks, other writers have attacked the Schaller/Waldman argument (or parts of it). In The Atlantic a week ago, Tyler Harper of Bates College wrote An Utterly Misleading Book about Rural America. He opens like this:
Rage is the subject of a new book by the political scientist Tom Schaller and the journalist Paul Waldman. White Rural Rage, specifically. In 255 pages, the authors chart the racism, homophobia, xenophobia, violent predilections, and vulnerability to authoritarianism that they claim make white rural voters a unique “threat to American democracy.” White Rural Rage is a screed lobbed at a familiar target of elite liberal ire.
He goes on to talk about the vagueness of definitions of “rural” and raises questions about the use of data. But I’d argue that his opening paragraph sets the stage for the piece. This book is to be dismissed because the authors are east coast liberals who look down on rural people.
The next day, Politico had an “ideas” piece from Nicholas Jacobs of Colby College. His article was titled “What Liberals Get Wrong About White Rural Rage — Almost Everything”.
The publication and widespread celebration of White Rural Rage among progressive circles is doing something different than those post-2016 post-mortems. It is not an attempt to understand the needs and concerns of rural America. Instead, it’s an outpouring of frustration with rural America that might feel cathartic for liberals, but will only serve to further marginalize and demonize a segment of the American population that already feels forgotten and dismissed by the experts and elites.
The people doing the work of protecting democracy in rural America recognized this immediately. The morning of the MSNBC interview, I woke up to a mountain of messages and threads from rural organizers, community activists and local officials from across the country. Each one was distressed over what they considered the authors’ harsh and hurtful accusations about the communities they cherish and strive to uplift.
Both of these articles put the worst possible spin on the arguments in White Rural Rage. They focus on the issues of race and opposition to immigration or the disproportionate political power offered to rural America through our constitutional structures.
In short, both pieces seem to dismiss Schaller and Waldman out of the gate. (The use of “liberal” as a screed is a tell).
Yesterday, Schaller and Waldman wrote a response in The New Republic, titled An Honest Assessment of Rural White Resentment is Long Overdue. They write:
[T]he response to our book has been not just angry but personal at times. Harper delivered a torrent of abuse at us on social media, calling us “idiots” and “intellectual lightweights who wrote a dumb screed.” He also called us “soft-handed elites” and claimed that our book says that “white rural people are evil scum,” which of course it does not; that was one of many distortions of what we wrote that he sent out to his followers before penning his Atlantic article.
The positively obsessive attention our critics have given to one chapter in our book has located a few errors, which we’re happy to correct in future editions. Unfortunately, their legitimate criticisms are buried in a pile of personal insults, factual inaccuracies, and apologetics for rural whites.
Notice that they used resentment and not rage in their article. They have been very clear that White Rural Rage was the publisher’s title and that they should have pushed harder against that.
They go on to address shortcomings that may be in the book, especially about data. They promise to make changes for the second edition.
I’d call particular attention to the tone of the TNR piece. Yes, it pushes back on claims made by the critics. But where those were shrill and accusatory, they wind up engaging in the kind of academic dialogue that ought to be the norm.
Another example of this lack of intellectual hospitality showed up this week. Uri Berliner wrote a piece in The Free Press titled I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years: Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust. Before I go further, I need to underscore that this is NOT the Detroit Free Press. It is an online-only publication run by Bari Weiss, formerly an ultraconservative writer for the New York Times1.
Berliner’s argument has three parts. 1) NPR promoted the claim that there was “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, 2) They didn’t pay attention to the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, and 3) They were too dismissive of the lab-leak theory of Covid.2 He includes the obligatory attack on DEI.
NPR used to be part of my morning routine. My clock alarm would come on to Morning Edition and I would listen to the opening before I got out of bed. I no longer do that because 1) I’m retired and don’t need to get up at a particular time, and 2) One of my dogs insists on getting up with the sun.
I had my own critique of NPR that ran opposite to Berliner’s. Far too often, they would allow a conservative to filibuster their talking points with little interruption or pushback. Meanwhile, they would ask Democrats to address the talking points raised by Republicans.3
If Berliner were being intellectual hospitable, he could address concerns over coverage and suggest alternatives rather than picking right-wing hobbyhorses.
On Wednesday, NPR had a response from David Folkenflik. Folkenflik defends the role diversity plays in NPR’s operation. Others have pointed out that Berliner’s premises are wrong. Mueller wasn’t exploring “collusion” as it isn’t a legal standard but did document ties between the campaign and Russia, as did the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Given the fuzzy provenance of Hunter’s laptop, it was reasonable not to rush to judgment.4 The most scientific studies have downplayed the likelihood of the lab leak theory.
Again, if Berliner was making a concerned critique of NPR, he would have done it in the Free Press. The point was to make NPR look bad through whatever argument one could put forth.
There’s one more element of the need for intellectual hospitality I need to address. That deals with the number of my friends on social media who shared either a White Rural Rage critique or the Berliner critique. Often they did so without comment. But some addressed their concerns, based only on the arguments of the critics.
Intellectual hospitality should cause us to ask “Does this seem like a reasonable critique?” and “What does the critique omit or distort?” and “What is the agenda of the author” and “Am I willing to align with that agenda.”
For what it’s worth, I just bought a copy of John Inazu’s Learning to Disagree that came out last week. I very much enjoyed John’s Confident Pluralism and think that his new book will help us pursue intellectual hospitality in a more robust way.
Surprise! They have a story about what’s wrong with White Rural Rage!
You’d think Elon wrote the piece.
I listen to CPR Classical Radio during the day, so I’m still a subscriber!
A lesson the House Oversight Committee should have learned.