Last week I introduced the idea that empathy may be one of the key factors that explain why some occupations tend to lean either to the liberal side or to the conservative side.
This week, I’d like to expand that to politics as a whole, and how it may explain some of the two major political parties’ policies.
It’s a fairly well-known fact that there is no question that the Democratic Party is the more diverse of the two major parties.
Exit polls from the 2004 presidential election show that a majority of women, Latino Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and other non-Caucasian Americans, those with no high school diploma, those with a graduate degree, those who are liberal, those who are moderate, those making less than $50,000, those who are Jewish, those who practice in a non-mainstream religion those who are non-religious those who attend services “occasionally” or “rarely” and those voting based on education, Iraq, health care and the economy all voted for Kerry.
Kerry also received 75 percent of the vote for those who voted based upon which candidate “cared about people”.
The point to all of this is that the Democratic Party represents the majority of virtually every demographic involved in American politics other than straight, white, Anglo-Saxon males who are Christian and attend church on a weekly basis.
This has many interesting effects. First, many disparate groups are required to work together in order to get their individual agendas accomplished. This working together helps create empathy for each other within the Democratic Party.
It’s hard to convince another demographic to work with you on an issue if you don’t understand that demographic’s motivations.
The Democratic Party, as noted above, includes every minority group, as well as many of the poorest Americans. This drives them towards policies geared towards equality for all, and equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of upbringing.
They believe that making sure that every person is given the rights that they are guaranteed should trump trying to deny rights to someone who maybe shouldn’t have those rights, such as felons or illegal aliens.
However, having a party that acts more like a coalition of groups makes it difficult for the Democratic Party to form a single, coherent platform.
The Republican Party on the other hand only has empathy towards the same, small group of people who are inside the party – those who are wealthy and/or of strong Christian faith.
While having empathy for these groups is not in itself bad, having an understanding for so few groups is. They approach problems based on their assumptions about other people, not on actual knowledge of other people.
Being an almost totally homogeneous group makes forming policy, and keeping those in your party in line in support of those policies, a lot easier for the Republican Party.
They can say “I’m for X” and stand firm, knowing that, since most of the people you represent are the same, there is less of a chance of dissent within your own ranks.
Both parties have a sort of superiority complex towards the groups of people they don’t understand.
Many Democrats have the attitude that the wealthy aren’t paying their fair share and that evangelicals are trying to ram their religion down everybody’s throats.
Many Republicans have made statements to the fact that many people who are poor are lazy or stupid and that is the only explanation for why they are still poor.
Many evangelical people accuse those who are less religious on the left of trying to suppress their religiosity.
As a result, Democrats typically support a progressive tax system, social programs for the poor to help them rise up and support the separation between church and state.
Also as a result, Republicans typically support highly restricted social programs, if they support them at all.
Opposition to Affirmative Action and Welfare programs just highlight this point. Republicans also tend to support pro public-display-of-religion policies.
After all, it was the Republican Party that spearheaded the campaigns to get “under God” in the pledge of allegiance and making “in God we trust” the national motto and put it on paper money in the 1950s.
Previous to the 1950s, the only place where any reference to God in anything the government made or approved of was on coins that said “in God we trust,” which only started in 1908.
This subject is so vast, that I could talk about it for the rest of the semester, but I’ll spare my readers of that.
I just hope that I have opened a few people’s eyes.

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