Barton Swaim writes columns for The Wall Street Journal. That is a picture of him, above. Swaim's column in the Saturday/Sunday, February 1-2, 2025, edition of the paper was titled, "Where the Left Studies the Right." The column discussed Swaim's attendance at a class taught by Eitan Hersh at Tufts University, which Swaim identifies as a school where "Left" views predominate. In fact, Swaim believes that most universities present their students with a "Left" view of the world - as do most other institutions, at least according to Swaim:
Liberals dominate the places where the big decisions are made: news media, higher education, school boards and K-12 administrations, the entertainment industry, state and federal agencies, corporate boardrooms and so on. If you’re a liberal in any of these places, conservatism doesn’t require much attention, except as an annoyance. If you’re a conservative in any of these places, you must learn to swim in a pool chlorinated by liberalism.
Liberals may attribute this state of affairs to the triumph of their worldview (or they might have before the November election—more on that in a moment). The left won the culture war, they might justifiably think, and conservatives have lost. The only problem is, conservatives are still pretty good at winning elections, because most people outside the aforementioned institutions don’t hold liberal views on politics and policy.
The upshot: A great many liberal VIPs in America simply don’t know much about their adversaries. The belief that conservative views are an outcome of either stupidity or perfidy, ignorance or greed—or both—is consequently very common among the country’s cultural elite.
Plainly universities, by transforming themselves into compounds of conformity and homogeneity, bear some responsibility for this state of affairs. “I think what has happened on campuses like ours,” says Eitan Hersh, a professor of politics at Tufts University, “is that the communities here have convinced themselves that they are all on the same page, that you walk into a classroom and you can expect that everyone present is pro-choice, pro-LGBT rights, and everyone is fighting the good fight for social justice.” Many schools’ mission statements convey a similar kind of message: We’re all on the side of goodness and light, not like those people (emphasis added).
I don't know whether or not Swaim would say I qualify as one of the country's "cultural elite," but I was, for eleven years, an adjunct professor in the Politics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is a university that is at least as far "Left" as Tufts. I do think that most students, faculty, and staff at UCSC would endorse "pro-choice, pro-LGBT, and social justice efforts." I emphatically do NOT think, however, that those who hold such views believe that "conservative views are an outcome of either stupidity or perfidy, ignorance or greed - or both."
In short, I think Swaim (and Hersh, to the degree he would endorse Swaim's statement) is just "projecting." Swaim correctly believes that his opinions about key political issues are different from the opinions of those on the "Left," and he, located on the "Right," presumes that those on the "Left," with whom he disagrees, must have come to their positions because of their disdain for what the "Right" has been advocating. I believe that this is an unjustified conclusion.
My belief is that it is important, as we all consider what public policies should guide the nation, that we realize that "opinions" are not "facts." Opinion statements are not judgments about the "Truth." They are just opinions. Whichever "side" you happen to be on, personally, this is, in fact, our actual situation. We - all of us - have various "opinions," and they should rise or fall, be adopted or discarded, only insofar as they have been proven to "work," and as they have been proven (or not) accurately to describe the real world that is inhabited by all of us, "Left" and "Right" together.
When Joyce Vance says, in her daily Substack postings on politics, that we "are all in this together" - a phrase of which I am fond, myself - she means that everyone is "in this together."
I fully realize that there are those on the "Left," who do disdain the "Right," in the way Swaim states, and I hope that Swaim realizes that there are those on the "Right" who hold opinions of those on the "Left" that are just as unfounded and outrageous.
What has happened in our politics, I am afraid to say, is that the kind of "polarization" that Swaim's comments exemplify has come to be accepted by almost everyone - those on both sides of the "Left" against "Right" divide - as a fair description of "reality." "Politics," as a consequence, has become an effort to "destroy" the side with which one disagrees. Again, this is a phenomenon seen on both "sides." It's a fundamental mistake, if we want our government to be effective in confronting and mastering the very real challenges before us - no matter which "side" we're on.
Politics needs to be centered on a discussion or debate about what we (collectively) should "do." Opinions differ, but since it is actually true that we are "all in this together," we need to find a way to be reconciled, and to compromise and work together, as we decide how to take action in the face of the very daunting, and perilous, conditions we face in the common world that is shared by us all.
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